Race Differences in Ethnocentrism

by Edward Dutton

  I would suggest the solution to the problem is quite similar to the solution that we have seen to the issue of cousin marriage among Arabs. Religiousness, like cousin marriage, allows you to be ethnocentric — and thus group selected — which means that you will simply outcompete groups who are otherwise the same but are not as religious. Most recently, American psychologist Curtis Dunkel and myself (Dutton & Dunkel, 2016) have shown that the more religious a group is then the more group-centric it is, based on MIDUS (America in Mid-Life survey) data. Thus, once a group in an unstable environment — that is still relatively aggressive and impulsive — adopts religiousness, and especially religiousness where there is a God concerned with morality and group purity, this will lead to a number of positive effects for the group. In terms of positive ethnocentrism:

  1. They will believe that their lives — and their group — have eternal significance, meaning they are more likely to engage in self-sacrifice for the group.

  2. They will believe that a morally judgemental God is watching them, which will help to motivate co-operative behaviour; in other words positive ethnocentrism. This may also be motivated by the belief that their associates are Godly.

  However, religion will also make them more negatively ethnocentric, meaning more r-strategy, in certain specific respects. They will believe that those who do not share their religion are wholly other. They are either damned — in the case of moralistic religions such as Christianity or Islam — or they might be regarded as ‘impure’ and ‘barbarous’ by followers of polytheistic religions, where the focus is more on ritual and blood bonds than belief (de Benoist, 2004). The evolutionary benefits to this would be quite clear. At times of stress, such as during a war, there are roughly two possible reactions, one of which will be far more beneficial than the other. On the one hand, you can respond to stress by becoming depressed, anxious and withdrawn. During this withdrawal, rather like during sleep, you can process what may have got you to this problematic situation and gradually become better. But this is not going to help a society in a situation of immediate peril. As such, there will likely be evolution for religiousness.

  Furthermore, the religion will justify, with all the power implied by it being God’s will, various modes of behaviour which allow the group to outcompete rival groups. As such, religions can be seen to encourage behaviour which is simply beneficial to group selection. These include:

  1. Fertility: Encouraging adherents to have lots of children. This means that the group will both be relatively K-strategist and highly fertile, giving it a clear advantage over groups which are simply more cooperative in general or more aggressive in general.

  2. Matrimony: Encouraging a system whereby children should be born within a committed marital union and thus encouraging men to invest in females and their offspring. Females, to a greater extent than males, will sexually select for the psychological qualities of their potential mates (Buss, 1989). This is because they must invest more in any sexual encounter — as they may become pregnant — and will thus want a male who will look after them and their child. Accordingly, they tend to be attracted to the status of the male. In that women will thus sexually select the males with such qualities as Conscientiousness and intelligence (as these predict social status), an emphasis on the divinely ordained need for marriage can be seen to encourage cooperative behaviour in the group as a whole.

  3. Violence to Children: Being physically violent to their children in a controlled way. The use of controlled physical chastisement to children has been found to be much more common and severe among the religious than the non-religious when controlling for social factors. Indeed, it is sanctioned by many religious texts (Sela et al., 2015). This kind of treatment can be understood to prepare a person to endure hardship, and make them rule-following and cooperative; in other words more K-strategist. Indeed, studies have shown that children who are raised by strict yet loving parents will tend to be more law-abiding and stable than the children of loving parents who are not strict (see Wilson & Herrnstein, 1985). We would expect that a religious upbringing would be associated with precisely this kind of method. Religiosity would encourage you to invest in others and be kind to others but also to strongly punish any transgression.

  4. Mutilation, in particular genital mutilation. Undergoing this painful procedure can be understood to prepare you for pain and show that you are prepared to undergo pain to show your commitment to group, whether you are male or female. Accordingly, it can be regarded as a way of raising levels of trust. Genital mutilation is a mark that you are a trusted member of the in-group and so we would expect those who refused to be sexually selected against. In that it interferes with the ability to enjoy sex, especially for females, genital mutilation can also be regarded as a means of promoting K-strategy. Females who have undergone circumcision have shown (a) that they are cooperative and rule-following and (b) they are unlikely to enjoy having sex. Female Genital Mutilation is more common in societies with low levels of trust (Sela et al., 2015). This is presumably because it means that a male can better trust that his children are genuinely his. This will mean he is more likely to invest resources in them and more likely to trust his wife. Thus, it can be seen to boost K-strategy.

  5. Honour Killing and practices related to sexual honour. In that the practices outlined above are likely to boost positive ethnocentrism, failure to follow these practices should be severely punished and this should be religiously mandated. As such, in Islam and other religions we see the practice of ‘honour killing’ whereby a female who has broken the rules is ritually murdered by her family. Killing their close relative is also a means by which the family show that their commitment to the broader group outweighs even their commitment to each other. A high level of commitment to the broader group would obviously be associated with a K-strategy.

  6. Martyrdom: Many world religions encourage martyrdom. Martyrs can be understood to inspire group members, provoke pity and awe in the group’s enemies or simply be a function of intense military bravery, which will potentially benefit the group. Such behaviour is encouraged as the will of God, in certain circumstances, and something which will be rewarded by God.

  7. Celibacy: The maintenance of a celibate caste would be useful as, having no family, they would work for the benefit of the group. Divinely encouraging celibacy would also mean that unattractive or low-status males, who could not find mates, would be less likely to gang together and cause disorder, such as through gang rape. Instead, they could be funnelled into this celibate caste.

  8. Intense violence or enmity directed at non-believers. Sela et al. (2015) note that religion will ‘make things worse’ in terms of violence and this would be true in terms of negative ethnocentrism because killing or subjugating non-believers becomes the will of God.

  So, religiousness will make the group highly ethnocentric. This being so, we would expect more religious groups to dominate groups in the same ecology that are less religious as well as groups that are slightly more K-oriented but, nevertheless, not religious. We would also expect that specific doctrines of any given religion would tend to change in order maximise group selection and survival at any given point. Accordingly, it should be emphasised that the kind of behaviour that is divinely ordained will vary depending on what is most adaptive for the survival of the group, and the group that adapts successfully will survive. Thus, some religious groups, such as the Amish, have adopted a policy of pacifism towards outsiders, as anything else would be very difficult considering their desire to live an essentially seventeenth century lifestyle, with some technological exceptions, in modern day America. In much the same way, some religious groups begin life as aggressively evangelistic and ultimately turn in on themselves, and withdraw from society, if this appears to be the most useful way to survive. In each instance, they will be able to theologically justify this decision thus making followers more likely to adhere to it. So, in some cases, the group might conform to the d
esires of a more dominant group in order to survive. But they will still be more likely to survive as a united group if they maintained a feeling of enmity, a kind of negative ethnocentrism, towards the dominant group.

  But, with this model, we can see how it is possible for the religious to be broadly K-strategist but with certain specific r-strategy traits. In other words, religion makes the group highly ethnocentric and strikes the optimum balance between a fast and a slow Life History. This is why religiousness will often help a group to triumph over its competitors. We tested the relationship between religiousness and ethnocentrism by drawing upon Lynn et al.’s (2009) data on levels of atheism. Dutton et al. (2016a) had fifty-three countries where there was data for both atheism and our ethnocentrism measures. They found a weak but significant negative correlation between atheism and both positive ethnocentrism (r = −0.4) and negative ethnocentrism (r = −0.2), as we would have predicted. So, it appears that both religiousness — Arab countries are much more religious than their average IQs predict (Lynn & Vanhanen, 2012) — and cousin marriage explain high ethnocentrism among Arabs.

  Of course, we would also expect to find differences in the form of religiousness practiced, and these may even be underpinned by differences on the r–K spectrum. It has been argued that one of the reasons for the development of a moral God is that people who feel they are being watched will behave in a more pro-social way, meaning they are less likely to be caste out of the prehistoric band (see Norenzayen & Shariff, 2008). In a highly unstable ecology, in which cooperation is not especially important, there will be less of a need for a moral God, who encourages cooperation and impulse control, because bonding with people is simply less important to survival. Accordingly, religiousness, in such an ecology, would simply be concerned with allaying stress (see Boyer, 2001) which you would achieve by following certain rules, thus keeping the gods happy. As the environment becomes more stable and harsh, cooperation becomes more important and so adaptations that will cause people to believe in an all-knowing, moralistic God will be more useful because they will make people more pro-social and so more likely to survive and pass on their genes. As the environment continues to change in this direction, we would expect the religion to become increasingly open to conversion from people who are not members of the clan or tribe, permitting large, cooperative social organizations to develop and be group selected for. In such a context, religion, not kinship, would be an increasingly important marker that a person could be trusted. Other markers, such as mutilation, would, therefore, be less necessary. So, the group whose concept of kinship extended further would be larger, and it would have a larger gene pool. Its sense of ethnocentrism would relate to a much larger group. This would have certain advantages, under conditions of Natural Selection, which we will explore shortly.

  8. Genes for Ethnocentrism and Jews

  Much has been written on the ethnocentrism of Jewish people (e.g. MacDonald, 2002). The Jews can be roughly divided into three groups:

  1. Sephardic Jews, who settled in Iberia.

  2. Ashkenazi Jews, who settled in northern and eastern Europe.

  3. Mizrahi Jews, who settled in the Near East and Middle East.

  The largest group and the one which is the most influential, both in the state of Israel and worldwide, are the Ashkenazi Jews. Indeed, it has been found that this ethnic group has the highest IQ of any ethnic group with an average of 112. This is half a standard deviation higher than Northeast Asians and a standard deviation higher than Europeans (Lynn, 2011).

  The ethnocentrism of the Jews — and, in particular, the Ashkenazi Jews — has been explored in depth by Kevin MacDonald. In a series of books and articles (e.g. MacDonald, 2002; MacDonald, 1998), MacDonald has argued that Judaism should best be understood as a pronounced example of a group evolutionary strategy. He argues that European anti-Semitism can be regarded as a similar group evolutionary strategy (MacDonald, 2004). In classical Judaism, MacDonald claims, Jews strongly identify as separate from Gentiles even if there is minimal physical difference. They actively maintain cultural separation from the broader society, they actively maintain genetic separation, they are highly inbred, they strongly control individual behaviour, and they harshly punish free-riders, among other strategies. These policies ensure a high level of in-group altruism and out-group hostility, argues MacDonald, thus promoting the genetic interests of Jews.

  MacDonald argues that Ashkenazi Jews, in particular, have long been persecuted with intermittent pogroms, in the areas of Eastern Europe in which they originally found themselves. This persecution by gentiles, often involving extreme anti-Semitic violence, can be understood as a form of group selection. In such circumstances of harsh selection, genes for ethnocentrism are particularly likely to be selected for, something which we have already explored in relation to computer modelling of this process. After a period of harsh selection, we would expect the remnant group to be highly ethnocentric and this, argues MacDonald, is the case with Jews. MacDonald provides a number of lines of evidence in favour of the view that Jews are highly ethnocentric, but much of this is of a qualitative, subjective kind, involving interpreting significant Jewish texts and providing historical examples of supposedly representative Jewish behaviour.

  It has been argued that Jews have maintained a small gene pool, something which has led to their maintaining an unusual constellation of genetic disorders, especially among the Ashkenazi Jews. These disorders are so significant that medical organizations have been established specifically to offer Ashkenazi Jews screening for them (Ostrer, 2001). The most prominent conditions are:

  1. Tay-Sachs Disease: This appears in children and causes progressive deterioration of physical and mental abilities, culminating in the child’s death. In the USA, 1/27 Ashkenazi Jews carries this condition compared to 1/250 of the general population (National Human Genome Research Institute, 2011).

  2. Gaucher’s Disease: The defective gene for this is carried by 1/10 Ashkenazi Jews in the USA, but only by 1/200 Americans more generally. Four genetic mutations account for 95% of Gaucher disease in the Jewish population in the USA but for only 50% of cases in the general population (National Gaucher Federation, 2015). Those who develop this condition suffer seizures and brain damage, and it reduces life expectancy moderately.

  3. Riley-Day Syndrome: Also known as Familial Dysautonomia, this causes vomiting, speech problems, an inability to cry and false sensory perception. It is found among 1/30 Ashkenazi Jews but 1/3700 of the general American population. Indeed, it is essentially exclusive to Ashkenazi Jews. In addition, there are a number of other genetic or partly genetic conditions which disproportionately affect Ashkenazi Jews including Bloom’s Disease and highly genetic forms of cancer (Center for Jewish Genetics, 2015).

  It cannot be argued that these findings have some sociological basis, such as more Jews being scientists and thus studying Jewish issues, meaning that Jews are not significantly more inbred than European gentiles. Many of the conditions which they have developed are found disproportionately among other inbred, isolated populations. For example, very high levels of Tay-Sachs Disease have been reported among the Amish and the Louisiana Cajun, both of them highly endogamous populations (Sutton, 2002). Moreover, genetic disorders are less problematic among Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews, the reason being that the gene pools of these groups are significantly larger (Lynn, 2011). More importantly, there is direct evidence that Jews are particularly closely related. Atzmon et al. (2010) conducted a genome-wide analysis of various Jewish groups, including the Ashkenazi, and compared them with Non-Jewish groups. They found the Jews in their study had such high levels of genetic commonality compared to the Gentiles that the Jews were roughly the equivalent of 4th cousins. This finding was despite clear evidence of European genetic impact on the Jewish gene pool.

  It appears that Founder Effect and Genetic Drift combined with centuries of endogamy — with many Jews marrying out but very few Gentiles permitted to ‘marry in�
� — partly explains why the current Jewish population has such a high prevalence of these rare disorders. It has been found that the world’s 10 million Ashkenazi Jews are all descended from about 350 Ashkenazi Jews who found themselves in Eastern Europe in about the year 1400. This led not just to Founder Effect but a genetic bottle neck — due to endogamy — and thus Genetic Drift (Carmi et al., 2014). Accordingly, there were relatively high levels of inbreeding among Jews, either through choice or due to the pressure to marry another Jew in the context of small local population which would be more likely to survive if it was ethnocentric. There is direct evidence that consanguineous marriage is relatively high, or has been relatively high, in Jewish populations. G. H. Darwin, writing in 1875, found that 20% of Jews living in England were in cousin marriages. This was compared to 4.5% among the landed gentry, 3.7% in rural areas and 2.2% in London (Adler & Jacobs, 1906). An Israeli study of Jewish women between 1990 and 1992 (Cohen et al., 2004) found that 2.3% of new mothers were second cousins or closer (consanguineous) to their husband. In 0.8% of cases they were first cousins. Among Mizrahi Jews the rate of consanguineous marriage was as high as 7.1%. A survey between 1972 and 1975 found that 25.4% of married Jews living in Iran were in consanguineous marriages. This was compared to 0.3% among Chinese Singaporeans in 1980 and 0.4% among people living in Japan in 1981 (Bittles & Black, 2015).