Survival in the Gig Economy
Freedom from the nine-to-five or another form of exploitation? The gig economy is both!
Book gives you the truth about about what to expect and helps you make a plan when nothing is predictable.
Freedom from the nine-to-five or another form of exploitation? The gig economy is both!
Book gives you the truth about about what to expect and helps you make a plan when nothing is predictable.
When I first picked up this book, I was kind of hoping it would be about the power of collective action to drive change. Instead, however, it is about the powerful psychological force of social identity—which has both a good side and a bad side.
People are hard-wired to identify with a group—a collection of “us.” The identification with “us” is the foundation of social solidarity and mutual support. The authors suggest that the ability to identify a tribal “us” evolved into the ability to detect and identify shifting alliances in order to gain power within one’s own group. This laid the foundation for the hardwiring that enables categorization and discrimination based on social identity; i.e., the distinction between “us” and “them.” Another downside is that it has also created a tendency to form and protect social hierarchies…and to create systems that defend inequities and domination; e.g. racism and white supremacy.
Group identification is often stronger in leaders—or those who aspire to be leaders. Leaders who rise through the ranks can develop both an organizational identity (i.e. they are influenced by what made the organization successful) as well as a social identity as a leader. Those who aspire to leadership in a group will often adopt prototypicality, or exaggerated behaviors of group (or institutional) norms to prove they are “one of us.” Group members tend to gravitate toward more “prototypic” leaders during times of uncertainty or crisis.
“Constructing literal and metaphorical barriers to outsiders is a time-tested strategy for gaining political power.”
The authors describe how leadership and social identity can become perverted into tyranny and fascism. This begins by defining outsiders as threats, which then segues into dehumanization (describing the “other” as vermin or parasites). In the final stages, violence (including murder and genocide) against outgroups is justified based on some combination of arguments that (1) the “other” poses an existential threat, (2) “we” are being victimized by “them,” and (3) characterization of the “other” as evil, along with portrayals of the in-group as uniquely virtuous.
Studies on implicit bias suggest that preference for “in-groups” is evident in both brain-response and behavior of children as young as eight. The brain-response is autonomic (that is, the person is not conscious of it) and is measured by neuro-imaging equipment. This response has been found in people who adamantly deny (and have no known behavioral record of) racism. While these inherent preferences for in-groups are often based on race, race is not the only factor. The authors were able to create implicit bias responses (as well as behavior we normally associate with racism) in research subjects with artificially defined mixed race “in groups” and “out groups.”
However, implicit bias responses were higher among people who lived in the South. The authors suggest that the “normal” biological implicit bias response was compounded by long-standing attitudes formed as a justification for slavery. When slavery ended, these historical attitudes were bolstered by cultural symbolism (Confederate flags) and structural barriers (segregation). Thus, culture and socio-political systems can reinforce the pre-existing neurological hardwiring.
The authors then cite studies which confirm racial bias in police stops. There are larger racial disparities in daytime versus nighttime stops (where the officer can see the driver). Racial bias is also documented in vehicle search frequencies: 9% of Black drivers are searched, 7% of Hispanic drivers, and only 4% of White drivers. Ironically, police find contraband in 18% of searches of Whites, 14% in searches of Blacks, and 11% in searches of Hispanics.
Identification with a group has also been found to affect perception. Police have created a plethora of “shoot or don’t shoot” videos of ambiguous situations which they use in officer training. The purpose of these training videos is to make officers more aware of various situations where they may have to make a split decision to shoot. The authors cited a study in which participants were shown ambiguous shooter-training videos involving police after being pre-screened for how much they “trusted” the police. Not surprisingly, those who had high levels of trust for police were more likely to interpret the video scenario as posing a real threat to the officer, while those who trusted the police less were less likely to view the situation as threatening. We can see how social identity can influence the testimony of courtroom witnesses who might generally be truthful. but yet interpret the same situation entirely differently.
The authors address how social identity impacts communication, specifically what type of messages “go viral” on social media. Messages that were negative and directed toward an outgroup were 180% more likely to be shared, as were messages using the language of collective victimization and moral outrage. Just as cultural environment can compound implicit bias, social media platforms that reward extremist expressions because they generate engagement can also aggravate the problem.
Although most of us tend to think that political leanings are socially constructed (i.e., the result of environment), studies of Identical twins separated at birth suggest that nearly half of political beliefs have a genetic component. A group of scientists at University College London could predict political leanings with 72% accuracy from neuroimaging brain scans.
Research has found that conservatives have large amygdalae, while liberals have larger anterior cingulate cortices. Both are brain structures that affect how people react to emotions, social status, and conflict. The amygdala is activated by “emotionally arousing stimuli,” which can be either positive or negative. Emotions typically associated with the amygdala are fear, pleasure and anger. The anterior cingulate cortex is also part of the limbic system, but it serves as an error detection and correction device regulating both cognitive and emotional processing. The anterior cingulate cortex thus serves a more regulatory function, linking reward and punishment information to emotional responses.
The authors next address the problem of “fake news.” Research finds that if a “fake” story contains negative information about the “other side,” both Republicans and Democrats were about equally likely to believe it. However, Republicans were more likely to share it. Republicans were also more likely to believe “non-political fake stories” generally.
The authors conducted their own study to determine if partisan identities were affecting research itself. Based on anecdotal complaints, they were actually expecting to find a liberal bias. So, they took painstaking and scientifically valid steps to eliminate bias to the extent possible. They recruited graduate student reviewers from across the political spectrum to help collect, process and code data. They took other pro-active anti-bias measures while collecting and analyzing data, prompting one of them to state, “Someone’s going to hate us no matter how their results turn out.”
Their findings are that even if an individual researcher had a liberal (or any) bias, the safeguards of scientific procedure and anonymous peer review protected the replicability of results. They then did another analysis of papers presented at academic conferences—which are not subject to the normal scrutiny of peer review as journal articles. Here, they found “modest evidence” of liberal bias—mainly because conservatives were more likely to be the subjects of the studies—but the evidence was “much weaker than predicted.” Their conclusion was that the “norms and institutional practices of research are generally effective in screening out inaccuracies due to bias.”
The authors describe a study led by Anton Gollwitzer to illustrate how belief in fake news can have life and death consequences. Researchers at Yale analyzed geo-tracking data over 17 million smartphones from March 9 through May 8, 2020 (the early stage of the Covid pandemic in the U.S.) and found that the biggest barrier to responsible social distancing was consumption of conservative media. [As interesting as this is, the fact that researchers can gain access to both geo-location information and news consumption patterns has frightening implications for privacy]
Bias also implicates research on health and public safety: A study by Consumer Reports found a 17% increase of likelihood that female drivers would be killed in an accident because crash dummies and other safety features are modeled on the typical male body. Mainstream media has also noted how male bias in medical research has resulted in short-changing women’s health.
The authors include discussions about how social identity impacts our contemporary issues of inequality, economic and status anxiety, and the problem of climate change.
They cite a U.N. report finding that 71% of the world’s people live in countries where inequality has increased since 1990. In their 2009 book The Spirit Level, epidemiologists Richard Wilson and Kate Pickett document how inequality has negative effects for both individuals and society—and these effects extend to social identity. Here, our authors cite a number of studies finding that employees were less likely to agree that highly paid executives were acting as their champions (we can apply the same phenomenon to members of Congress), undermining organizational trust. This in turn negatively impacts the leaders’ ability to build solidarity and unite followers or constituents around a common purpose.
A related issue is economic anxiety and relative deprivation. Relative deprivation is not the same as poverty, but rather is a psychosocial perception that oneself (or one’s group) is receiving less than others—particularly minorities and outgroups. This can lead to more negative attitudes toward “undeserving” outgroups resulting in preferences for populist and authoritarian leaders.
The lack of consensus on climate change is not being driven primarily by social identity issues, but more by misinformation campaigns on the part of organized and well-funded vested interests. But misinformation campaigns need a receptive audience, and “our research suggests that partisan identity provides the lens that allows many people to accept or reject these claims.”
The effects of social identity have not all been negative. Only recently have more marginalized groups been able to form shared identities that help them mobilize for change. Many of these groups have adopted nonviolent resistance as a strategy to gain support for change because it is perceived as more legitimate and inclusive. The group also gains popular sympathy If the “system” responds with violence against the movement.
Social change campaigns by marginalized outgroups face a paradoxical challenge. While the movement needs to remain non-violent, it cannot be passive. To be effective, change movements need to not only challenge those in power, but to gain public attention, generate headlines and raise consciousness. “Moral rebels” like Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi were disparaged as trouble-makers during their day only to be recognized as forward-thinking heroes later. Moral rebels are unpopular because they call attention to the shortcomings of the dominant culture—which makes “us” uncomfortable.
Fortunately there are some suggestions for ways to mitigate the harms of social identity. The authors emphasize the necessity of fair and effective institutions. If institutions can’t be trusted to protect people from abuse by dominators or level the playing field, people will reduce their “circle of trust” to an ever-smaller circle of in-group. In addition to the previous example of how the peer-review process can keep implicit bias in check, there is citation to studies showing reduction of implicit bias in games where there is a neutral “disinterested enforcer.” This suggests that properly designed institutions, processes, and procedures can be helpful in eliminating the bias of “us.”
The authors also suggest a number of ways to reduce political polarization: (1) Remove political labels so people pay more attention to content; (2) Have people engage in short online chats with members of the “outgroup” on both political and non-political topics; and (3) Periodically disconnect from social media. This third suggestion is the one that is easiest for most of us to do.
The authors also touch on findings for how to avoid groupthink. They cite studies where a single “dissenter” was planted within a team. The teams that had these dissenters were found to have better performance outcomes, as well as more creative and “divergent” thinking.
Another suggestion was to have people work together in mixed groups on a common task or project. Scans of brain activity in people who work together in such groups over a period of time have shown that they develop a form of “brain synchrony.” The higher level of brain synchrony, the more successful the group was. These results were the same for student learning groups as well as for work groups. The trick is finding projects that mixed groups of “us” and “them” could do together. Sometimes this happens spontaneously (e.g., rescue and cleanup after a natural disaster) or through volunteer activities.
Should you read this book? It does a good job of explaining the neurological and behavioral bases for the “us versus them” polarization that is so problematic in our current times. It is also backed by science and not rhetoric, and it is written in language accessible to a college level layperson. The book includes appropriate citations to relevant studies for those who want more in-depth descriptions and analyses. I personally would have liked to have seen more discussion around solutions, but perhaps we are still awaiting the research on this.