More unites us than divides us

A new study suggests that diverse groups around the world share more in common in terms of their beliefs and values than polarized reporting too often suggests.

It finds that people tend to grossly overestimate the difference between groups of people, helping to create a divisive narrative of 'us and them'. This narrative, they suggest, has been perpetuated by many commentators and seized upon by certain politicians to sow divisions.

At a time when conflict and debate surrounding Brexit continues unabated in the UK, or the vicious divisions engendered by the Trump campaigns are helping to tear the US apart, the work helps to answer important questions about public perceptions towards people from other nations and backgrounds.

Whilst the issue of free movement of people came under intense debate during the referendum campaign—and there was broad consensus that the referendum result reflected widespread concerns—the research suggests that talk of deep-divisions in society may be overblown.

Published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the study draws on data from over 60 countries and 140,000 people. The researchers looked at people's moral beliefs and attitudes including people's values surrounding equality.

As part of it, the researchers developed a new approach to analyze how similar or different groups were, and then applied this method to different groups of people split by nationality, religion, age, gender, income, and education level. Although the study was global, the authors suggest their findings are directly relevant to Britain and other Western nations.

What the researchers say:The research reveals people tend to overestimate differences between groups yet when their more commonalities are emphasized, attitudes become more positive.

The findings show that of the people studied, shared attitudes and values on issues ranging from crime and security to moral beliefs. For instance, on average, 95% of responses given by women were mirrored by men, and 80% of responses of individuals from one nation were mirrored by those from another.

Revealingly, they found that the values of British and Polish people are also much more similar than prominent Brexiters would have us believe. Across a host of social values, including security, loyalty, success and broad mindedness,they found that there’s far more overlap between these two groups in reality than people perceive. In many people's perception the difference between these groups is around 70%, whereas the reality it’s only 12%.

The authors behind the study hope the findings can reassure members of the public fearful of an ever-more divided society. Additionally they hope their findings will pave the way for academics and commentators to re-think how they talk about social cohesion.

The lead researcher explains: "Our findings suggest that groups of people are much more similar than people—including academics—would have us believe.This is because whereas others look for differences, we focus explicitly on similarities—and here there is lot that unites us.

"Social scientists often focus on relatively small differences between groups,” say the researchers. “This work shows that highlighting these differences at the expense of noting much larger similarities leads people to misinterpret findings and exacerbate prejudices.”

So, what? Alicia and I did a lot of work on this subject back in the 1990's at a number of universities. Our conclusions were very similar to those of this study and they’ve become a core part of our teaching in businesses, government and other organizations.

Recently studies have shown that what unites tribes—from hunter-gatherers to the present—was not genetics or kin but commonalities in the areas that the present researchers examined. For many years we have tried to persuade leaders to turn away from the old ideas of emphasizing and celebrating difference and instead to stress what people have in common and celebrate that.