Gray Matter: The Anxiety of Group Survival

ON or around the 21st of December, the 5,125-year Long Count cycle of the Mayan calendar will end. And some predict that our time will, too.

In May the research firm Ipsos surveyed more than 16,000 people in 21 countries about the purported Mayan calendar prophecy: 8 percent admitted to "experiencing anxiety or fear because the world is going to end in 2012."

But even after Friday comes and (presumably) goes, many will continue to worry. Their anxiety may not concern the demise of all mankind — say, by an asteroid slamming into Earth — but rather the death of a smaller, and more personal, slice of humanity: a social group to which they belong.

Social psychologists call this "collective angst." And many who experience the feeling may not even be aware of it.

Civilizations, of course, do come and go. The Assyrians and Vikings no longer have mail drops in the global post office. Political parties peter out, as the Whigs and Know-Nothings attest. Some religions — the Shakers, for one — don't last as long as their furniture.

Likewise, many a sports fan knows the pain of watching a beloved local team decamp for another city — and in the process, dissolve the clan of dedicated, jersey-waving boosters who long identified with it.

It's no wonder that collective angst is experienced by so many people. We simply don't want our groups to disappear. Our sense of self is based partly on the groups we belong to; so if one dies, a portion of the self dies with it.

I have some perspective on this not just as a social psychologist who has studied this phenomenon for years but also as, well, a Canadian.

Canadians worry a lot about their Canadian-ness (or un-American-ness) — which is why the band Nickelback is on the radio so much here. The Canadian government has legislated that a share of radio time must be dedicated to Canadian artists. The things we do for nationhood.

Many Québécois feel even more anxiously about their French-Canadian-ness, fearing that any erosion of the public (and official) use of the French language will put the group's survival in jeopardy.

The social group offers its members more than just a geographic or ethnic name tag; it can provide the existential ground on which they stand. Membership in a group often means embracing shared beliefs, values and traditions that are passed on through generations.

In this way, clans offer a preservation of identity well past the point of personal death.

That's why some members strongly encourage their children to marry within the group — or insist on it. Experimental and survey research at my lab has found, for example, that Jews who experience collective angst are more likely to want to marry fellow Jews, express the need to pass along Jewish traditions to children and donate to Jewish organizations.

We have similar data with Catholics, French-Canadians, Tamil-Canadians and other ethnic, cultural and religious groups. In one such study, French-Canadian participants who read a report that French- and English-Canadian culture might be indistinguishable in subsequent generations were more apt (than a control group) to support Quebec's secession from Canada.

Ultimately, we hope our research offers some insight into how some of the most intractable political fights in the world may one day be resolved.

Take the case of Israelis and Palestinians — groups that have particularly acute anxiety for their respective survival. In a study colleagues and I conducted in Israel, we divided volunteers into two sets, giving each different assessments of their country's defense capabilities. Notably, when we led subjects to believe that Israel faced a near-term existential threat (specifically, that the Israel Defense Forces did not have the ability to prevent an Iranian nuclear attack), they became less inclined to support negotiations with Hamas.

Why? Because a people concerned for their survival are likely to take a protective posture. In the case of Israel and Hamas, this invariably translates to: "Show strength and don't compromise."

People without a dog in the fight might look at these existential concerns as unfounded and senseless. Even those with a dog in the fight might (and often do) ignore the collective angst expressed by their adversary.

But if we are to have any hope of negotiating our way to settlement, we must understand this fundamental truth: Groups, like people, want to survive and thrive. To end the most bitter standoffs, perhaps the solution is as straightforward as getting each side to recognize the other's right to see the morning sun.

The alternative is to go the way of the Mayan calendar.

Michael J. A. Wohl is an associate professor of psychology at Carleton University.

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