25 Million Years of Us vs. Them Posted by The Situationist Staff
on March 21, 2011 From World News: Like people, some of our
monkey cousins tend to take an “us versus them” view of the
world, a study has found. This suggests that the tendency for
human groups to clash may stem from a distant evolutionary past,
scientists say. Yale University researchers led by psychologist
Laurie Santos found in a series of experiments that monkeys
treat monkeys from outside their groups with the same suspicion
and dislike as their human cousins tend to treat outsiders. The
findings are reported in the March issue of the Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology. “One of the more troubling
aspects of human nature is that we evaluate people differently
depending on whether they’re a member of our ‘ingroup’ or
‘outgroup,’” Santos said. “Pretty much every conflict in human
history has involved people making distinctions on the basis of
who is a member of their own race, religion, social class, and
so on. The question we were