blacklisted dissenters: Mariano Castillo, “Bolivian Journalist’s Family Wants to Know Who Was behind Attack,” CNN, November 1, 2012, https://www.cnn.com/2012/11/01/world/americas/bolivia-journalist-attacked/index.html; John Otis, “Forced Out of Jobs and Sidelined, Bolivia’s Independent Journalists See Their Audience Slipping Away,” Committee to Protect Journalists, October 10, 2019, https://cpj.org/blog/2019/10/forced-out-of-jobs-and-sidelined-bolivias-independ.php.
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highway across a protected reserve: Jon Lee Anderson, “The Fall of Evo Morales,” New Yorker, March 23, 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/23/the-fall-of-evo-morales.
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police brutally attacked protesters: Emily Achtenberg, “Police Attack on Tipnis Marches Roils Bolivia,” North American Congress on Latin America, September 28, 2011, https://nacla.org/blog/2011/9/28/police-attack-tipnis-marchers-roils-bolivia.
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“police bound their faces with duct tape”: Jim Shultz, “The Rise and Fall of Evo Morales,” New York Review of Books, November 21, 2019, https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/11/21/the-rise-and-fall-of-evo-morales/.
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We share in our fellow group members’ pride and joy: Marilynn B. Brewer, “The Psychology of Prejudice: Ingroup Love and Outgroup Hate?,” Journal of Social Issues 55, no. 3 (1999): 429–44. For a recent study limited to sports, see Charles E. Hoogland et al., “The Joy of Pain and the Pain of Joy: In-Group Identification Predicts Schadenfreude and Gluckschmerz Following Rival Groups’ Fortunes,” Motivation and Emotion 39, no. 2 (2015): 260–81.
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We ignore when members of our group behave aggressively: Rachael Goodwin, Jesse Graham, and Kristina A. Diekmann, “Good Intentions Aren’t Good Enough: Moral Courage in Opposing Sexual Harassment,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 86 (2020): 103894; Aaron C. Weidman et al., “Punish or Protect? How Close Relationships Shape Responses to Moral Violations,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 46, no. 5 (2020): 693–708.
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we assign outsiders as our nemesis: Groups often define themselves in relation to an antagonist. Think of Democrats rousing themselves in opposition to Republicans, or vegans identifying as the healthy, moral alternative to heartless carnivores. Identifying a nemesis is a psychologically sound strategy for bonding together as a tribe, because the presence of a nemesis motivates the tribe to build, create, and sustain a clear sense of what the tribe is and isn’t, what the tribe stands for and will fight against. Contrary to common wisdom, an arch-nemesis offers something beyond addictive story lines in superhero comic books. Research shows that in certain situations, such as the experience of extended unemployment or the loss of a romantic partner, people stave off the worst of their pain by blaming someone or something other than themselves. Viable scapegoats help people regain control and confidence. Unfortunately, by taking advantage of such psychological benefits, you initiate unnecessary conflict, leading to casualties. Without realizing it, you’ve provided justification for your nemesis to target you in the future. See Douglas, Scapegoats; Landau et al., “Deriving Solace from a Nemesis”; Sullivan, Landau, and Rothschild, “An Existential Function of Enemyship.”
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blame someone or something other than ourselves: Nigel P. Field and George A. Bonanno, “The Role of Blame in Adaptation in the First 5 Years Following the Death of a Spouse,” American Behavioral Scientist 44, no. 5 (2001): 764–81; Michael V. Miller and Sue Keir Hoppe, “Attributions for Job Termination and Psychological Distress,” Human Relations 47, no. 3 (1994): 307–27.
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As Martin Luther King, Jr., said: Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience (New York: Harper & Row, 1967).
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cutting-edge experiments conducted by Dr. Radmila Prislin: I find it mind-blowing that each of her primary empirical articles on the changing of majority and minority positions within a group has been cited less than seventy-five times in the past twenty years (as revealed by Google Scholar on March 30, 2021), even though Prislin published her work in the most prestigious social psychology outlet, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. I hope my discussion of her findings and their implications brings more attention to this underappreciated and eminent scholar. See “Radmila Prislin, Ph.D.,” San Diego State University, https://psychology.sdsu.edu/people/radmila-prislin/.
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This is the gist of Prislin’s research: Studies differ on other elements of the design. For instance, Dr. Prislin often manipulates another feature of the group. Sometimes the reactions of the other members of the group are made publicly and immediately so the participant knows exactly who said what. Sometimes participants are given reasons for why people supported or opposed their position. The reasons can be superficial, having nothing to do with the arguments made (“I just wanted to get over with it”), versus genuine support (they “made me rethink my position”). Sometimes there is another task after the debate or campaign and there is an option to continue working with the same people in the group or leave to work with strangers. Sometimes the new majority gets to devise rules for a second task and has an opportunity to show favoritism toward supporters and create rules that disadvantage opponents. Sometimes there is peer pressure applied by actors to be friendly or hostile to factions in the group, or be egalitarian. Sometimes the group interactions occur more than once, over the course of days or weeks. Like I said, she is a creative scientist trying to mimic what causes people to behave in various ways.
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After a structural change in the group: Radmila Prislin and P. Niels Christensen, “The Effects of Social Change within a Group on Membership Preferences: To Leave or Not to Leave?,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 31, no. 5 (2005): 595–609.
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As Prislin provocatively noted: Prislin and Christensen, “The Effects of Social Change.” A summary of her discoveries is provided here: Radmila Prislin and P. Niels Christensen, “Social Change in the Aftermath of Successful Minority Influence,” European Review of Social Psychology 16, no. 1 (2005): 43–73.
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the world’s most dangerous amusement rides: Andy Mulvihill, with Jake Rossen, Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America’s Most Dangerous Amusement Park (New York: Penguin, 2020).
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“we must develop a world perspective”: King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience.
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Yale University admitted 588 women to join its class of 1973: For an archive of documents about the fiftieth anniversary of women entry into Yale, see “History of Women at Yale,” Yale University, https://celebratewomen.yale.edu/history-women-yale.
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forfeit any game in which a female athlete played: For interviews with the first Yale class of women, to capture their firsthand accounts, see “First-Person Stories: Yale Men,” Yale Alumni Magazine, Sept./Oct. 2019, https://yalealumnimagazine.com/articles/4967-first-person-stories-yale-men. Check them out. You will find a wide-ranging mix of negative, positive, ambiguous, and neutral memories of their time as Yale students. See Anne Gardiner Perkins, Yale Needs Women: How the First Group of Girls Rewrote the Rules of an Ivy League Giant (Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2019).
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expecting hostility and a lack of helpfulness: Radmila Prislin, Wendy M. Limbert, and Evamarie Bauer, “From Majority to Minority and Vice Versa: The Asymmetrical Effects of Losing and Gaining Majority Position within a Group,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79, no. 3 (2000): 385–97.
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“women were not going to be considered”: Anne Gardiner Perkins, “Unescorted Guests: Yale’s First Women Undergraduates and the Quest for Equity, 1969–1973,” Ph.D. diss., University of Massachusetts Boston, 2018, https://scholarworks.umb.edu/doctoral_dissertations/389/.
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“I picked that up from the institution”: Perkins, “Unescorted Guests.”
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