Race Differences in Ethnocentrism

by Edward Dutton

  The idea that age and sex differences in ethnocentrism can be reduced to group and individual selection would obviously be the least question-begging of the explanations we have advanced. Clearly, it is true that the stressful nature of adolescence may increase ethnocentrism but this raises the question of why ethnocentrism, at that time, is higher in males even when Life History strategy is controlled for. An evolutionary model answers all of these questions. The relationship between age, gender, and ethnocentrism, then, has important implications for understanding why some regions should be more ethnocentric than others when salient other factors are approximately controlled.

  Firstly, if a society has a relatively large proportion of young people then we would expect it to be more ethnocentric than an older society. Accordingly, we would expect the Europe of a century ago to have been more ethnocentric than now not only because of lower genetic diversity (due to higher child mortality) and higher levels of stress, but also due to the fact that the average person would have been younger. In most Western European countries, the life expectancy is around eighty and the average person — the person of median age — is approximately forty years old, as of 2014. According to the CIA World Fact Book (2014), the median age is considerably lower in less developed countries. In Burundi, for example, it is just seventeen while in Niger it is fifteen. This factor alone would make these countries — and Western countries when they had similar conditions — far more ethnocentric.

  Clearly, a second relevant factor is the gender balance. Boys are more negatively ethnocentric than girls firstly because they follow a faster Life History strategy and, secondly, seemingly for evolutionary reasons. Accordingly, a young population will also mean a larger number of young males and these will be highly negatively ethnocentric. But, clearly, any country which had significantly more young boys than young girls would be ethnocentric for that reason. According to CIA World Fact Book (2014), the populations in China and India, in particular, have considerably more males than females both among those under fifteen and those aged fifteen to sixty-five, probably due to the infanticide or selective abortion of girls, who are less culturally desirable than boys. To a lesser extent, this gender imbalance exists in Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa. We would expect this gender imbalance to have four obvious effects which might increase ethnocentrism either directly or indirectly.

  1. The societies would be relatively negatively ethnocentric because there would be such a large percentage of men and particularly young men.

  2. But, in addition, these societies would be home to a relatively large percentage of single men who would have little hope of having children. Indeed, in that the females would select in favour of high-status males (see Buss, 1989) they would also indirectly select in favour of K-strategy males and thus against the more ethnocentric males as these would tend to be faster Life History strategists. In any polygamous society, this effect would be even more pronounced because it would be even more difficult for a low-status male to have children. Furthermore, in a monogamous society where living standards are low and there is little, if any, social security for the impoverished, women would be more strongly motivated to sexually select in favour of social status and thus K-strategy and low-status young men would be left without the possibility of having children. As such, one way that these sexually rejected fast Life History strategists could realistically pass on their genes would be by adopting a strategy of inclusive fitness based around the group. This being so, we would have a situation where the most negatively ethnocentric males would be motivated to be strongly positively ethnocentric in order to maximize their genetic fitness. So, we can start to understand why suicide bombing would be a prevalent strategy among Muslims in the Middle East and on the Sub-Continent.

  3. Most crime is committed by young men, something especially true of violent crime. This is because young men are particularly high in testosterone which makes people aggressive and means that they have poor impulse control (Wilson & Herrnstein, 1985). As such, in a society with a large number of single young men there would be a great deal of violent crime, rendering the society very dangerous. We have already seen that an unstable environment increases ethnocentrism and so we would expect such societies to be high in ethnocentrism on this basis as well. The youth gangs that would consequently develop would also be expected to attempt to pass on their genes via gang rape so we would expect gang rape to be a particular issue in such societies, leading to prohibitions on the freedom of young women, who would need to avoid being targeted. In the case of gang rape, we would assume that the gang’s most dominant male would rape the woman first with the remainder following in an approximate pecking order. Assuming the female became pregnant, in a society in which abortion was illegal or expensive or dangerous, the gang members would all have some chance of passing on their genes this way because the gang leader might not necessarily have the highest sperm count or the strongest semen.

  4. We would expect these men to try to emigrate to another country — especially a wealthier one — where the female selection on the social status of the male might be accordantly lower and where they, therefore, might be more able to have children within marriage, perhaps bringing a cousin wife from their native country. In the West, they would be able adequately to live off unemployment benefits or in a low-status profession. In addition, we would also expect these men to form gangs and engage in gang rape, especially, due to negative ethnocentrism, of native young girls, something which has been documented in the UK (see McLoughlin, 2016). However, it must be emphasized that a large body of research has shown that migration is predicted by intelligence (see Jensen, 1998). This being so, we would not expect that the extreme fast Life History strategists of such countries would emigrate to the West because they would lack the necessary organization, future orientation, industriousness and intelligence to be able to successfully make the journey and overcome its many attendant obstacles. Even so, we would expect the resultant immigrant population to be relatively ethnocentric.

  Dutton et al. (2016a) tested this hypothesis by looking at median age and male to female ratio, both of which were taken from the CIA World Factbook. They found, with a sample of fifty-eight, that median age was significantly negatively associated with positive ethnocentrism (r = −0.5). That is to say, a younger median age means a more nationalistic country, as might be predicted by higher stress at a young age. The relationship with negative ethnocentrism was, however, non-significant. There was no significant relationship in terms of male to female ratio.

  4. Pregnancy

  Navarette et al. (2007) found that women in the first trimester of pregnancy displayed elevated levels of positive ethnocentrism; that is favouritism towards the in-group. They explained this finding in terms of vulnerability to infection being heightened during this period of the pregnancy. However, we would suggest that a simpler explanation is that the first trimester of the pregnancy is the most dangerous and stressful period of the pregnancy as it is when the baby is developing at a very basic level. The nature of the environment at this point during the pregnancy will have the greatest impact on whether there will be birth defects, and if the woman miscarries then it is most likely to happen at this stage. This information is now widely known, so we would expect this period to be especially stressful for the expectant mother, potentially evoking higher levels of ethnocentrism. In addition, even if such information were not known, we would predict that higher ethnocentrism among women during the first trimester would be beneficial because they would be exposed to fewer dangerous pathogens. As such, this would make staying with people you know a more attractive option in these circumstances, and the researchers used as their measure of ethnocentrism the relative attractiveness of an American over a foreign target. Further, it would be adaptive to strongly bond with sources of coalitional support during periods of vulnerability and this could be aided by finding them more than usually attractive.

/>   This finding may have some small impact on the degree to which a society is ethnocentric. Until a few hundred years ago, women would have spent much of their child-bearing years pregnant due to the fact that child mortality rate was so high that only having high fertility could ensure that one had any surviving children at all, let alone grandchildren. As such, the women in such a society would be expected to more ethnocentric — quite apart from other factors — than women in societies that have lower levels of female fertility because a higher percentage of them would be pregnant at any given time. Unfortunately, I can find no data on the per cent of a country who are pregnant at any given time.

  5. Ethnic Diversity

  In defending the sociobiological understanding of ethnicity we have already explored, to some extent, the relationship between ethnic diversity and ethnocentrism. Drawing upon research by Vanhanen (2012) and Salter (2007) we have shown that when two ethnic groups are in conflict then we would expect an increase in both positive and negative ethnocentrism. However, it is important to distinguish this from the concept of ‘ethnic diversity’, wherein a community is composed of people of various different ethnicities that are not necessarily in a state of severe conflict. When this situation is achieved it has a clear effect on ethnocentric behaviour. If a multi-ethnic community is faced with a threat from outsiders it will tend to behave in a less ethnocentric way than will a mono-ethnic community.

  Belgian sociologist Marc Hooghe and colleagues (Hooghe et al., 2009) note that a large body of research has found that there is a negative relationship between ethnic diversity and social cohesion, specifically trust. In multi-ethnic communities trust levels are reduced not just between ethnic minorities and ethnic majorities but actually between members of the ethnic majority group that live in the ethnically diverse community (e.g. Alesina & La Ferrera, 2002). It is unclear quite why trust is reduced even among the majority ethnic group. One possibility is that there is now the risk that any member of the majority ethnic group may defect and achieve status by creating a coalition with the ethnic minorities and this would not previously have been a feasible possibility. Another possible explanation is that members of the majority community see that other members of the community have, together, permitted the incursion of a different ethnic group into the community and, therefore, they cannot be trusted to defend it from outsiders. However, this research tends to use just one attitudinal aspect and, in each case, focus on one country, usually the USA. Hooghe et al. employed a variety of attitudinal aspects and examined twenty European countries. For example, with regard to the measure ‘social cohesion’ they used not just ‘trust’ but also ‘ethnocentrism’.

  The authors note that there are variations in the nature of the immigrants taken into different European countries. In some cases, they are linguistically, culturally and genetically closer to the native inhabitants than in other cases, so we would expect this to have some effect on the extent to which social cohesion might be damaged. Drawing upon data from OECD surveys, Hooghe et al. found that, within Europe, generalized trust is the highest in what they term the ‘Scandinavian countries’ of Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland. In these countries, negative ethnocentrism (the authors use ‘ethnocentrism’ to mean this) is also relatively low. General trust levels are lowest in Portugal and Greece while negative ethnocentrism is highest in the former Communist countries of Eastern Europe. However, of all the countries examined, Greece had the lowest levels of generalized trust and the highest levels of negative ethnocentrism. Hooghe et al.’s findings on national level trust and ethnocentrism generally did not reach statistical significance with the exception of the inflow of foreign workers, which was shown to reduce generalized trust. Also, a large increase in asylum seekers was shown to increase ethnocentrism. Hooghe et al. conclude that their findings show that ethnic diversity does not reduce social cohesion but this appears to be a very odd conclusion since most of their findings, though they do not reach significance, are in the expected direction of ethnic diversity indeed reducing social cohesion; moreover, a number of these findings are statistically significant. This would potentially imply that further research, with larger samples, would place their findings in line with those of others.

  More recent research, in the UK, has again replicated the finding that the higher a community’s level of ethnic diversity is, the lower are the levels of generalized trust even within ethnic groups (Sturgis et al., 2011). The authors stress that the effect size is relatively small but, nevertheless, it is significant. British researcher James Laurence (2008) has also shown that community cohesion in the UK is reduced the more ethnically diverse the community is, implying that generalized trust is probably reduced as well. Hooghe et al.’s argument that the USA may be somehow exceptional in terms of its race relations can also be countered by research from Canada which has found that ethnic diversity strongly reduces general trust there. This is lessened, though not entirely neutralized, if ‘contact’ (such as sexual relationships) develop between the different ethnic groups (Stolle et al., 2008). Of course, this is not surprising because we have already discussed the way in which humans can create coalitions, and thus bonds, with members of different ethnic groups if these serve their own interests. Friendship can be seen as an example, to some extent, of overcoming the instinct to be only with those who are strongly genetically similar in order to create a useful coalition, though even this appears to involve a genetic dimension. Laurence (2013) finds that diversity undermines social capital at the neighbourhood level but does not reduce overall levels of individual engagement. This means that people stop participating in community activities and simply use that time to see family members and friends — in other words, people who are more genetically similar to them than the broader community of their own ethnicity would be. This finding, though not expanded on by Laurence, is interesting because it implies that living in an ethnically diverse area decreases an important aspect of ethnocentrism at the group level but may even increase it at a closer genetic level.

  Although some of the findings show that this is only a weak predictor, the direction of the evidence is that generalized trust — even between those of the same ethnicity — is reduced in multi-ethnic societies. The result, according to some studies, is a reduction in civil society, which is predicated on trust. These findings have obvious implications for levels of positive ethnocentricity. A multi-ethnic society will be less likely than a mono-ethnic society to successfully defend itself against incursion from outsiders for three key interrelated reasons. Firstly, there will be lower levels of general trust; such individuals will be less willing to make sacrifices for the society because they will be less confident that others will do the same. Secondly, there will be lower levels of positive ethnocentrism — as manifested in acts of self-sacrifice predicated on trusting that the co-ethnic would do the same for them — even within ethnic groups in this society. As such, even the majority ethnic group will be relatively unwilling to engage in the ethnocentric behaviour that would be necessary to repel any invading force. Thirdly, as Hooghe et al. have shown, ethnic minorities will tend to support immigration. This is because displacing the majority population will be in their interests since it will reduce the influence of this population and potentially increase the influence of their minority group. So, we might expect certain minority groups to actively collaborate with an invading force, especially if they were more genetically similar to it than they were to the majority population.

  Conversely, as we have already discussed in relation to Vanhanen’s (2011) research, we would expect that a situation of specific ethnic conflict would increase levels of ethnocentrism. Living in a multicultural community would seem to reduce positive ethnocentrism and increase negative ethnocentrism because it reduces trust at all levels. However, if a society is effectively segregated along racial lines, with quite separate areas occupied by each race, then this would be a situation of ethnic conflict and we would expect height
ened levels of ethnocentrism in both groups. Vanhanen argues that the closer in number to each other the two groups are, the more likely they are to mutually perceive each other as a threat, leading to heightened ethnocentrism on both sides of the ethnic divide. Or, to put it another way, the greater the percentage of the country’s population that is one particular ethnic group, the less ethnically heterogeneous (EH) the country can be understood to be.

  Based on this measure ethnic heterogeneity (EH), Vanhanen examined differences in the level of ethnic conflict (EC) based on a scale of (1) being low and (5) being high. Vanhanen’s categories were: (1) Minor incidents at a local level, minor ethnic political parties or interest organization. (2) Significant local ethnic violence, significant ethnicity-based parties or interest groups, institutionalized ethnic discrimination. (3) Violent ethnic conflict, separatist strivings in parts of the country, important ethnic political parties and interest groups, serious discrimination against a subjugated ethnic group. (4) Civil war, ethnic rebellion, terrorism, separatist wars, ethnic political parties/interest groups dominate politics, large ethnic groups repressed, ethnic refugees. (5) Violent ethnic civil war dominates politics, ethnic cleansing genocide.