Can the ‘George Floyd case’ teach anybody anything in the world full of unhelpful social myths?

I am not a pessimist, rather a cautious optimist, and I do not want to do any fear mongering. Instead, as a social psychologist working with teams and groups, I would like to shed some scientific light on this issue from my area of expertise. (NOTE: as social psychologists we try to understand, explain and predict how groups behave, how they affect an individual, and how individuals function within group environment). 

Killing another human being is surely one of the most universally and severely morally condemned act anyone can commit. So, when does it become ‘justified’/’legitimate’? Intergroup relations (in-group vs out-group) tend to be complex and nuanced. What is extremely interesting in this context is the dehumanisation mechanism pertaining to our perception. It was explored in the situations of war time conditions: Nazis killing Jews during the Holocaust, who they depicted as ‘rats’, Rwanda genocide of Tutsis who local media depicted as ‘cockroaches’ - descriptors from animal kingdom, not human.

But the dehumanisation mechanism is doing quite well in peaceful times as well. Look at this interesting experiment (Kteily et all, 2015), where participants were presented with the famous “March of progress” image.

 The image (scientifically incorrect) was accompanied by a list of social categories with sliders (on a scale from 0 to 100) allowing participants to indicate how evolved they think each group is on the scale of evolution from animal to human. The groups assessed were: Americans, Arabs, Canadians, Chinese, Europeans and Muslims. British and American participants’ responses indicate that they indeed may see some groups, particularly Arabs and Muslims as less fully human than others. The mean ratings differences were statistically significant, and for Americans the score was 91.5, for Europeans 91.9, for Arabs 80.9, for Muslims 77.6.  The dehumanisation was evidently increased after terrorists’ incidents both in the UK and America and was correlated with participants’ ideology supporting violent forms of counter terrorism.

Harris and Fiske (2006) explored the same mechanism in a neuro imaging study (fMRI). They examined the activation of a brain structure named medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) – it is activated when we form impressions of other people as opposed to inanimate objects. In their experiment they found significant mPFC activation when the participants viewed the variety of social groups, but NOT when they viewed pictures of drug addicts or homeless people. Instead, views of these pictures lead to activation of amygdala and insula (responsible for processing disgust). The mechanism of ‘dehumanising’ in this case is a protective mechanism which ‘justifies’ our inertia – it’s easier to ‘dehumanise’ than do something about the problem.

For centuries our various societies have lived according to various myths. We skilfully integrate them into our cognition, emotion and behaviours, and completely incorporate them in our every-day lives, decisions and choices. We have created the myth of various gods (and that one is better than another), the myth of race (and that one colour should be treated better than another), the myth of gender (one deserves more than the other). Socially constructed categories like these are totally arbitrary, that’s why we call them myths… Often, what justifies their existence is merely their longevity. So, at some stage, we stop referring to them as myths, but treat them as truths instead (“a lie repeated hundred times…” etc.). And we launch wars over them and lose lives.

There are many theories exploring social conflict and tensions. One of the ways we stabilize and maintain oppression of out-groups may be explained by Social Dominance Theory (Sidanius and Pratto 1999). SDT observes that group biased hierarchies are universal in human societies. Some social groups will always enjoy greater access to wealth, education, power, status, prestige, health etc. SDT argues that intergroup bias, prejudice and discrimination while helping to perpetuate and establish the domination of some groups over others will inevitably lead to conflicts.

The following practices are highly legitimised:

·      Individual discrimination (in resources allocation, biased recruitment, voting decisions)

·      Institutional discrimination (schools, courts, police, businesses advantage dominant groups)

·      Behavioural asymmetry (members of dominant groups “have a voice” and power to discriminate in favour of their in- group) 

This is why the myths we have so swiftly incorporated are called Hierarchy Enhancing Legitimising Myths (HE-LM) – complex beliefs and ideologies that support the status quo. They are shared representations, stereotypes and ideologies that legitimise the social arrangements in place, keeping certain groups in dominant positions and others in subordinated positions. Thanks to the aforementioned longevity, it may seem these arrangements are natural, inevitable or deserved. But are they? When we think about it consciously and rationally, we clearly know the answer.

What’s more, people actually admit openly that they have relative scales of humanity in their heads. Such thinking drives the extreme acts of violence on behalf of OUR in-group. This is why I believe things will not change in the foreseeable future. What we need in order for things to change is a massive shift in our mentality and our mindset. We need to create new, prosocial myths and integrate them fully in our lives. We are still a long way off. However, understanding our ‘default settings’ (which are not natural or inevitable at all) and social mechanisms we use, may be the first helpful and useful step in the right direction.