Note: This is part 7 of a series on morality and ethics. Here are the other parts: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, and part 6 (plus additional posts on hypocrisy and free will). The entire series makes up the fourth chapter of my book, The Triple Path, which can be downloaded for free here in PDF and eReader formats or purchased at all major book retailers (in print and eReader formats).

The history of religious and moral thought over the last three millennia has led toward expanding notions of whom we include in our conceptions of “us”, but even with this expansion, we still maintain different categories of “us”. We probably always will. Imagine you see two people standing in the road in the path of an oncoming truck. One of them is a stranger and the other is a close friend or a family member. You only have enough time to push one person out of the way. Who do you save first? Almost everyone would, without hesitation, save their close friend or family member.

We are primates, and just like other primates, we are social animals with an innate need to maintain social contact with others. We are adapted to flourish and thrive as members of a mutually supportive group, and there appear to be physical cognitive limits to the number of people we can emotionally and intuitively include in our group. British anthropologist Robin Dunbar first proposed the existence of such a cognitive limit.

Dunbar found that among primate species, the best predictor of the average size of a social group in a species was the size of that species’ neocortex region in the brain. When a primate group grew beyond the average limit for the species, the group would become unstable and break apart. He hypothesized that the amount of neurons in a primate’s neocortex limited how many relationships the primate could keep track of at the same time.1

Applying his results from other primates to humans, Dunbar found that, based on humans’ average neocortex ratio, the expected natural human group size would be about 150.2 This 150-person limit is now known as Dunbar’s number. Dunbar found real-world evidence from a variety of fields supporting his hypothesis. Modern hunt­er-gatherer tribes commonly live in groups averaging 148 members (with a range of 90 to 222). Archaeologists’ population estimates for ancient stone-age villages in Mesopotamia showed a range of 150 to 200 people. Hutterite3 farming communities limit their size to 150 people; army units from Roman times until the present have remained between 100 and 200 men; and businesses (or sub-organizations within larger businesses) do not function well when they have more than 150 individuals.4

Two anthropologists, H. Russell Bernard and Peter Killworth, used surveys to study the size of personal networks in the United States and found a similar, but larger, limit to the number of meaningful social ties in modern society: a mean of 290 (and a median of 231).5 Why is there a difference between Dunbar’s number of 150 and the Bernard-Killworth number of 290? Perhaps it is because of differences in methodology or what was being measured. Or maybe our move to agriculture and living in larger groups has selected for better cognitive adaptations beyond just neocortex size that make us a little better at handling the larger, more complex societies of modern life.

Whether the number is 150 or 290, the takeaway is that there appears to be a maximum number of people with whom we are mentally capable of maintaining meaningful social ties, and that number is, at most, only a few hundred. We may intellectually believe that all people—even those outside our core social network—are worthy of equal moral consideration, but in the real world, when a truck is barreling toward two people, we push our friend out of the way first.

We are well-adapted to maintaining social cohesion in small groups, so it is relatively easy. In larger groups, however, we lack the cognitive and emotional capacity to intuitively self-organize the way we can in smaller groups. The large institutions of modern life are foreign to our natural mental disposition.

In light of Dunbar’s number, it thus becomes clear why the universalistic tendencies of the major world religions were necessary for the flowering of human culture and development that has happened over the last few thousand years. Such moral rules give us cognitive and emotional tools to step beyond our normal mental limits to reach out of our social circles and act morally to “others”, but universally applicable moral rules do not come naturally to us. Thus, while our intellectual conception of whom we include in “us” has expanded, in practical terms, our innate biological tendency is to morally and emotionally commit ourselves to relatively small social groups.

As we discussed, a useful way to conceptualize our moral obligations is to imagine our relationships with others as forming concentric circles. Color gradients provide another way to visualize this. Imagine again a chart showing your social relationships, with you at the center, your closest relationships near the middle, and ever-weakening relationships as you move farther from the center. This time, though, there are no concentric circles—just color. At the center is a deep, warm, vibrant red. The color gradually fades the farther from the center you go, getting paler, weaker, and colder. As you look at the people marked on such a chart, there is no one particular step as you move outward where you can definitively say your social obligations have materially changed, because the color weakens gradually. There is a clear difference, however, when you compare the very center of the chart to its outermost periphery.

Similarly, we usually do not perceive a stark either/or dichotomy between a homogeneous “us” in our core social network versus an undifferentiated “them” in the outside world. Rather, we feel the strongest connection with those closest to the center of our relationship circle (usually our immediate family and close friends); they are the people we most closely identify as “us”. The ties weaken gradually as we move farther from the center until we reach our core social network of 150 to 300 people for whom we have devoted our brains’ limited capacity for building strong social ties.

Most of us have contact with more than just 150 to 300 people in a given month. The farther those people are from our social core, the more we start to emotionally consider them as being “other”. As our social distance from others grows, the emotional ties we feel toward them weaken; we start to apply learned rules of morality to our interactions rather than our brains’ natural social capacity. Someone will be more or less of an “us” and more or less of a “them” based on that person’s social distance from us. The more different a person is from us—such as having a different regional accent, geographical origin, native language, religion, ethnicity, or nation—the greater our tendency to consider that person as being an “other”. We naturally see the world in terms of a small group of “us” to whom we owe strong moral duties, a weakening “us” made up of members of our community, ethnicity, and nation, and then a larger group of “them” to whom we owe fewer moral obligations.

Our great human abilities for learning, rational thinking, and adapting to novel situations make universally applicable moral rules possible; the good fruits of these moral developments have become obvious over the last few thousand years as violence in human societies has gradually decreased and stability has increased (along with accompanying increases in material welfare).6 But no practical moral system can ignore the realities of human biology. The “ought” of our moral system must take into account the “is”. Living in the society of people you regard as “us” is important. We naturally organize ourselves into groups and communities, and much of the meaning and fulfillment of life comes from our membership and participation in them. More than that, a lot of the material and emotional support we need during times of difficulty comes from the people in our social networks who are closer to us. Community members care for each other, and are willing to make sacrifices for each other that perfect strangers would be unwilling to make.

In recent decades, there has been a growing move toward claiming that increasing the diversity and the differences between individuals in society is of supreme importance. In the Untied States, proponents of this idea are prone to frequently repeating the mantra that “diversity is our strength”. Sometimes they quote as support our national motto, “e pluribus unum”, which is Latin for “out of many, one”. They seem to ignore the final word “one”. Historically, America’s great national strength was creating unity, not cultivating diversity.

Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam has found that, in the United States, greater ethnic diversity in a community decreases the trust residents have for those of other ethnicities. More surprisingly, greater diversity decreases trust that residents have for people of their own ethnicity.

Putnam found other detrimental effects of ethnic diversity. The more diverse the community, the less likely it was that residents would work together on community projects, give to charity, or volunteer. Residents of more diverse communities had fewer close friends, lower happiness, and lower perceived quality of life.

Even when controlling for a variety of variables (such as age, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, and poverty and crime levels), the relationship still held between ethnic diversity and these negative effects. Putnam found that “the difference between living in an area as homogeneous as Bismarck, North Dakota, and one as diverse as Los Angeles is roughly as great as the difference between an area with a poverty rate of 7 percent and one with a poverty rate of 23 percent, or between an area with 36 percent college graduates and one with none”.7

Putnam, a liberal progressive, was so shocked and dismayed by his results that he waited over six years to publish them while he searched for other potential explanations. He never found any.8

A robust body of research from a variety of fields such as psychology, sociology, political science, and international relations confirms Putnam’s results.9 A recent meta-analysis of 87 studies found “a statistically significant negative relationship between ethnic diversity and social trust across all studies”.10 A sociologist and a psychologist who together ran millions of computer models of different hypothetical neighborhoods concluded that it appeared impossible to have diverse neighborhoods that were also socially cohesive; the sociologist commented that “these trends are so strong, it’s unlikely policy can change it”.11

Researchers find that ethnic diversity has negative effects not just in the United States, but around the world. Studies have found that higher levels of diversity are associated with decreasing levels of social trust or cohesion in: a sample of 60 countries12 (this study also found that Protestant traditions also had a positive effect on social trust); in Europe13; in Denmark14; in Germany15; and in Australia.16

An 18-year longitudinal study of British households found that increased diversity caused decreased emotional attachment to, and feeling of belonging in, one’s community.17 Higher diversity in Dutch schools increased the likelihood of schoolchildren choosing same-ethnic friends.18 A study comparing Puerto Rican youths raised in New York versus Puerto Rico found that growing up as a minority increased rates of depression, anxiety, and psychological distress.19

Ethnic diversity is also associated with higher levels of societal conflict and instability. Heterogeneity decreases cooperation between different groups.20 Higher levels of ethnic and linguistic diversity in a country are correlated with higher levels of political instability and lower levels of democracy.21 An analysis of 187 countries found that the level of ethnic heterogeneity explained 55 percent of the variation in ethnic conflicts between countries.22 A study of diversity and conflict found that “population diversity, and its impact on the degree of diversity within ethnic groups, has contributed significantly to the risk and intensity of historical and contemporary civil conflicts”.23 Ethnic diversity even has a negative effect on a country’s level of innovation.24

Switzerland is one of the few counterexamples of a multi-ethnic society that has enjoyed long-term stability and lack of conflict. An analysis found, however, that Switzerland’s stability was not based on “integrated coexistence, but rather on well-defined topographical and political boundaries separating linguistic and religious groups”, as opposed to India and the former Yugoslavia, where the lack of such boundaries was associated with increased conflict.25

We flourish when we live in a community of people we see as being “us” and not “them”. Since strong communities and strong social ties are so beneficial, the best future outcomes for humanity will come from building strong and cohesive communities of ethical, relatively homogeneous individuals who try to integrate themselves into a unified group. We should thus seek to become part of communities where we fit in and where we can easily perceive other members as being part of an “us”. Communities should restrict admittance of new members to those who will easily assimilate into the group. Research shows that when a minority group reaches a certain critical mass, its members do not assimilate and continue to maintain a distinct identity from the surrounding culture.26 Communities should thus also limit the number of people they admit to manageable levels that can be assimilated. Most importantly, we should seek to assimilate ourselves to the norms, idiom, and culture of the communities of which we are a part. It is impossible to create an “us” unless each person is willing to change themself to become a part of the group.

And of course, none of this creates a right for an “us” to unjustifiably mistreat a “them”. We have universal obligations to all human beings. Even though we owe our strongest moral duties to those closest to us, we still have moral duties to everyone else and are never justified in treating outsiders immorally. It is never right to mistreat, be dishonest with, or take advantage of an outsider in an attempt to get some benefit for yourself or those close to you. On the other hand, it is morally justifiable—indeed, morally required—that you protect those who are close to you from threatened harm, even to the point of using violence in self-defense when threatened. For example, it is not moral to beat up your neighbor and steal his possessions. It is moral, however, to use force against a neighbor who is trying to steal your possessions or harm you or your family.

Maybe it would be better if we could conceive of humanity as one unified whole, but our brains are likely just too limited to emotionally conceive of a single community of 7 billion us-es. Universal moral rules help us understand our obligations to other people, even if those people are very different. These rules are important, but for a moral system to be robust, long-lasting, and effective, it also must take into account our biological and cognitive limits. Thus, it is not only morally justifiable, but also desirable, for us to focus on building strong, unified smaller communities.

Ethnicity and identity are malleable, but not infinitely so. A person of Western European descent would probably never completely fit into a Pygmy tribe, even if raised from birth among them. But ethnicity and identity can change to some extent. There is thus some element of choice to our identity.

Passive identities tend not to last. Every identity needs to have an element of setting itself in opposition to and in conflict with other identities—otherwise it will not survive as other forms of identity that are more oppositional and confrontational take it over or wear it down until it no longer exists. How many Roman pagans are there nowadays?

But a productive, meaningful identity needs to be more than just oppositional in nature, nor should confrontation or opposition be its main focus. Too often today, especially as religion declines in importance in most people’s lives, too many people increasingly define their identities in terms of confrontation against, or opposition to, the identities of others.

It is far more constructive to focus on defining your identity in terms of what you are. And it is even better to build identity in terms of being and becoming, to choose an identity that calls you to do good courageously, that demands you rise higher and be more. This is what following the Triple Path offers.

Do you feel something lacking in your life? Do you feel destined for something greater? When you honestly appraise yourself and your life, could you be aiming higher? Perhaps existence is calling to you to do more, to be more. Perhaps the Triple Path is calling to you.

 

 

Footnotes

1. Robert I. M. Dunbar, “Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates”, Journal of Human Evolution, Vol. 22, No. 6, June 1992, pp. 469-493.

2. At a 95 percent confidence level the range was between 100 and 230.

3. The Hutterites are an Anabaptist group similar to the Amish.

4. Robert I. M. Dunbar, “Coevolution of neocortex size, group size and language in humans”, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Vol. 16 No. 4, 1993, pp. 681-735.

5. Peter D. Killworth, H. R. Bernard, et. al., “Comparing Two Methods for Estimating Network Size”, Human Organization, Vol. 60, No. 1, Spring 2001, pp. 28-39; see also, H. R. Bernard, Peter Killworth, et. al., “How Much of a Network does the GSS and RSW Dredge Up?” Social Networks, Vol. 9, No. 1, 1987, pp. 49-63.

6. For a detailed description of the evidence that violence has been decreasing, and a discussion of causes, see Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, 2011.

7. Robert D. Putnam, “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture”, Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2, June 2007, pp. 137-174.

8. Same at 153; John Leo, “Bowling With Our Own: Robert Putnam’s sobering new diversity research scares its author”, City Journal, June 25, 2007.

9. Oguzhan C. Dincer, “Ethnic Diversity and Trust”, Contemporary Economic Policy, Vol. 29, No. 2, April 6, 2011 (this study found a negative correlation between ethnic polarization and trust, but a U-shaped relationship between ethnic fractionalization and trust).

10. Peter Thisted Dinesen, et. al., “Ethnic Diversity and Social Trust: A Narrative and Meta-Analytical Review”, Preprint, September 2019, DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.20314.70081.

11. Zachary Neal and Jennifer Neal, “The (in)compatability of diversity and sense of community”, American Journal of Community Psychology, Vol 53, Nos. 1-2, pp. 1-12, March 2014; Michigan State University, MSU Today, November 18, 2013.

12. Jan Delhey, “Predicting Cross-National Levels of Social Trust: Global Pattern or Nordic Exceptionalism?”, European Sociological Review, Vol. 21, No. 4, 2005, pp. 311-327.

13. Conrad Ziller, “Ethnic Diversity, Economic and Cultural Contexts, and Social Trust: Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Evidence from European Regions, 2002-2010”, Social Forces, Vol. 93, No. 3, March 2015, pp. 1211-1240.

14. Peter Thisted Dinesen and Kim Mannemar Sonderskov, “Trust in a Time of Increasing Diversity: On the Relationship between Ethnic Heterogeneity and Social Trust in Denmark from 1979 until Today”, Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 35, No. 4, May 31, 2012.

15. Ruud Koopmans and Susanne Veit, “Ethnic diversity, trust, and the mediating role of positive and negative interethnic contact: A priming experiment”, Social Science Research, Vol 47, 2014, pp. 91-107.

16. Rebecca Wickes, et. al., “Ethnic Diversity and its Impact on Community Social Cohesion and Neighborly Exchange”, Journal of Urban Affairs, Vol. 36, No. 1, April 2013.

17. James Laurence and Lee Bentley, “Does Ethnic Diversity Have a Negative Effect on Attitudes towards the Community? A Longitudinal Analysis of the Causal Claims within the Ethnic Diversity and Social Cohesion Debate”, European Sociological Review, Vol. 32, No. 1, Feb. 2016, pp. 54-67.

18. Anke Munniksma, et. al., “The Impact of Adolescents’ Classroom and Neighborhood Ethnic on Same- and Cross-Ethnic Friendships Within Classrooms”, Journal of Research on Adolescence, Vol. 27, No. 1, Jan. 2016.

19. Margarita Alegria, et. al., “The effect of minority status and social context on the development of depression and anxiety: a longitudinal study of Puerto Rican descent youth”, World Psychiatry, Vol. 18, No. 3, October 2019, pp. 298-307.

20. Ozan Aksoy, “Effects of Heterogeneity and Homophily on Cooperation”, Journal of Mathematical Sociology, Vol. 33, pp. 303-22, 2009.

21. Christopher Clague, et. al.. “Determinants of Lasting Democracy in Poor Countries: Culture, Development, and Institutions”, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, Vol. 573, No. 1, pp. 17-41, January 2001; Curtis Thompson, “Political Stability and Minority Groups in Bur­ma”, Geographical Review, Vol. 85, No. 3, July 1995, pp. 269-285; James Rogers, Honors Thesis: The Importance of the Middle Class in Political Stability and the Strength of Democracies, Brigham Young University, 2005.

22. Tatu Vanhanen, “Ethnic Nepotism as Cross-Cultural Background Factor of Ethnic Conflicts”, Open Journal of Political Science, Vol. 4, No. 3, 2014.

23. Cemal Eren Arbath, et. al., “Diversity and Conflict”, NBER Working Paper No. 21079, September 2019.

24. Bala Ramasamy and Matthew C. H. Yeung, “Diversity and innovation”, Applied Economics Letters, Vol. 23, No. 14, 2016, pp. 1037-41.

25. Alex Rutherford, et. al., “The Geography of Ethnic Violence”, in P. Fellman, et. al. (eds), Conflict and Complexity, Understanding Complex Systems, 2015; Alex Rutherford, et. al., “Good Fences: The Importance of Setting Boundaries for Peaceful Coexistence”, PloS ONE, Vol. 9., No. 5, May 21, 2014.

26. Arun Advani and Bryony Reich, “Melting Pot or Salad Bowl: The Formation of Heterogeneous Communities”, Institute for Fiscal Studies, IFS Working Paper W15/30, October 2015.