53 pages • 1 hour read
Us and Them: Understanding Your Tribal Mind
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Summary and Study Guide
Overview
Us and Them: Understanding Your Tribal Mind is a 2005 nonfiction book by David Berreby about how humans divide and categorize themselves. The psychological text explains human nature and the neuroscience of human groupings like races, ethnicities, classes, and nationalities. Berreby also discusses the positive and negative effects of human-kind groupings and offers advice on how to better act on human-kind beliefs.
Plot Summary
Berreby begins by explaining the concept of human kinds—a number of people that is more than one but fewer than everyone. He describes human-kind categories we are born into, such as family and race; perceived human-kind categories, like being a nerd or punk; and acquired categories, like attorney or millionaire. Berreby explains the function of human-kind beliefs: They guide people through the world. He elaborates on how they work.
Berreby explains faulty pseudoscience that forms the basis of harmful human-kind beliefs like stereotypes. Science offers theories, but humans crave certainty and confirmation of preconceived biases. We are adept at manipulating scientific data to apply certainty to our faulty beliefs. This habit leads to stereotypes, which are inaccurate and erroneous human-kind beliefs. Berreby explores other methods of tricking minds into forming false human-kind beliefs, such as invention of tradition and Unlock all 53 pages of this Study Guide Plus, gain access to 8,900+ more expert-written Study Guides. Including features:
