Antipathy between groups emerges spontaneously across all scales of social life.

Evidence

There is nothing new, the report noted, about the failure of the FBI and CIA and other agencies to cooperate with each other. As Congress noted in its own investigations and hearings, this general problem has been pervasive and long term. In putting this general problem in broader perspective, however, it should be noted that the breakdowns in interagency cooperation described in the 9/11 Report are but one specific example of a generic and widely recognized problem in intergroup relations. The problem of securing cooperation between interdependent groups has been a central and recurring theme in the study of intergroup relations from its inception (Sherif, 1966; Sumner, 1906). Whether they are minimal groups created in a laboratory setting (Tajfel, 1970), groups of boys at a summer camp (Sherif, Harvey, White, Hood, & Sherif, 1961), or even nationstates (Kahn & Zald, 1990), reciprocal antipathy between groups seems to develop with surprising frequency and alacrity. So pervasive and overdetermined is this phenomenon, in fact, that intergroup antipathy has been viewed as an almost inescapable feature of intergroup contacts wherever they occur (see Brown & Gaertner, 2001, for a comprehensive overview of the current state of our knowledge about this). — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1972 (#expands, via linked claim)

4 I think everyone would accept that one had really gone beyond the definition of identifying the person as a as a supporter of football.. at this point, they’re just human beings struggling, to be fair : : : I don’t think anyone saw Liverpool fans and Notts Forest fans [ ] People stopped being supporters of a football team and were just people. — John Drury and Chris Cocking and Steve Reicher, Everyone for themselves? A comparative…, 66 (#complicates, via linked claim)

But then Freud adds a rider: in moving from “minor differences” to major ones - let us say in moving from ethnocentrism to racism - we are, according to this argument, simply seeing the same principle “writ large.” This is the fatal leap in the argument which many Freudians have been only too keen to take (Kovel, 1988). Major differences, that is, differences that are based on structures of power and domination, are not simply interpersonal or intergroup differences aggregated. That is the prime fallacy of methodological individualism. An explanation that might plausibly apply to relations of sibling rivalry, or the territorial rivalry between two neighboring gangs, and which might also apply to rivalries between socialist or Christian sects, or between different groups of black immigrants, does not translate into a model for understanding imperial rivalries, genocidal attacks, or systematic racial discrimination. These structures simply operate at another level of determination. This is first because where the other sex, race, nation, or class is concerned, difference is primary or constitutive, and similarity is, at best, something constructed after the event. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1388 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Intergroup antipathy develops swiftly and almost inescapably across nearly all contact settings — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1972; Antipathy migrates between target groups within one nation’s recurring cycle of hate — Irene Zempi and Imran Awan, Islamophobia: Lived Experiences of…, 154; Persistent societal life problems trigger dominant groups turning against subgroups — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 78 (+12 more)

Broader Connections

• Intergroup antipathy develops swiftly and almost inescapably across nearly all contact settings #expands (0.96) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1972
• Shared danger dissolves in-group rivalries into common humanity #complicates (0.78) — John Drury and Chris Cocking and Steve Reicher, Everyone for themselves? A comparative…, 66
• Racism operates at a structural level irreducible to interpersonal group rivalry #complicates (0.77) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1388