A few months ago I published a post on how we should all choose our tribes — groups of people who we want to spend time with and who we want representing us to outsiders.
A major problem with belonging to tribes is that we undervalue people who do not belong to ours.
In a famous behavioural study, a random collection of teenagers were arbitrarily split into two groups. Each teenager was given $10 and told that they had to give it away to two individuals; one from their group and one from the other. They didn’t know which individual would get the money and they could divide the cash in any way they liked.
Since the group of teenagers were random, the groups arbitrary and the kids were splitting the money between anonymous individuals the theory would expect the money to be split $5/$5 on average.
As you would have guessed, the teenagers overwhelmingly gave more money to the individuals from within their group. It is scary just how arbitrary group loyalty is.
This experiment highlights how we discount people that don’t belong to our (often meaningless) tribes. We value people that support our sports team, go to our school, work in our business or have the same hobbies as us more than people that don’t.
This overvaluing of people from within our tribes means that, amongst other things, we value their advice, feedback and opinions more than the advice,
feedback and opinions that we get from people that are not part of our tribe. Even if they happen to be your client or customer.
We give more credibility to the opinions of people who we spend most of our time with. This reinforces our beliefs. This makes us blind to outside views.
How do we combat this?
Actively seek advice from people outside of your usual tribes and actually listen to them.
See an old man sitting alone in a bar? Go ask for his opinion on life. Is there someone at a party wearing a rival football teams jersey? Chat to them about why they support that team. Be conscious of what you hear and don’t discount it until you’ve actively listened to what they have had to say.