...Patriotism is an innate human sentiment. It is part of a deeper subconscious drive toward group formation and allegiance. It operates as much in one nation under God as it does in a football stadium. Group bonding is in our evolutionary history, our nature. According to some recent studies, the factors that make us patriotic are in our very genes.
But this allegiance—this blurring of the lines between individual and group—has a closely related flipside; it’s not always a warm feeling of connection in the Cleveland-bound lounge car. Sometimes our instinct for group identification serves as a powerful wedge to single out those among us who are different. Sometimes what makes us feel connected is not a love of home and country but a common enemy.
...“Identification with a group prolongs your individual existence because the group has a transcendental existence beyond the existence of any of its individual members,” Kruglanski says. “Once you feel part of the group you are less afraid of death because as a member of the group you acquire a kind of immortality. So it feels very good to be a member of the group, to be part of the collective.”
Kruglanski has conducted research in Pakistan, Egypt, and Indonesia, among other places, and found a correlation between the degree to which individuals feel they are failing in their personal pursuits and the extent to which they identify strongly with their nation or religion. He argues the tendency to be group-oriented and identify with a group is strengthened when we “cannot very well hack it as individuals.” He adds, “A sense of weakness and anxiety lead us to depend on the group, to run to the group for cover, in the same way as a threat prompts little children to run to their mothers and fathers for cover.”
Kruglanski pioneered a theory he calls “cognitive closure,” which he equates with an innate need for a feeling of certainty and consistency about the world around you. It’s a research thread that has led him inevitably to the study of groups, and in particular extreme patriotism and nationalism.
“There’s an intimate connection between a need for closure and group identification, including patriotism,” he says. “Once you become uncertain about your own self, you seek certainty, and that certainty is afforded by the group ideology that tells you who you are. You are a member of this group and you adopt the group ideology.”
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