Category: group behaviour

Can Brexit be explained by the theory of Collective Narcissism?

Final year student James Taylor explores public attitudes surrounding Brexit as part of his coursework for Psychology of Nations.

The word ‘prelapsarian’ denotes a specific type of longing – a longing to return to a past of idyllic innocence and purity. The term was originally used to refer to the period of grace before the Fall of Man, as described in the Bible (literally, pre-lapse, before Adam and Eve were removed from the Garden of Eden). Because the past of no society is ever innocent or pure, the desire to return to a prelapsarian time is a delusional one. There has never been a time of innocence – every historical age has had its conflicts, its excesses, its own unique horrors. This sort of delusion may seem a harmless one. Unfortunately, it is anything but.

Attempting to contort the complexities of the world into an imaginary, idealised past is a symptom of the times we live in, expressed different ways in different countries. In America, it is Trump’s campaign slogan Make America Great Again. In Britain, it’s the idealisation of both post-WW2 society (where ‘the whole country pulled together’ in a self-sufficient fashion) and of a pre-Industrial Revolution England (of small and quaint villages, green pastures, and comforting stability), both of which played a part in the mythology of the Brexit campaign. When this sad pining for a false past has the tumultuous consequences of a Trump election and Brexit, then prelapsarian considerations need analysis of their root. Why do people long for something that they could never possess, and therefore never lose?

Let’s focus on Brexit. For months before the referendum, and in the two years since the referendum result, experts predicted it would negatively impact Britain – for public health [1], scientific research [2], living standards [3], and for the wider economy in a range of issues [4]. Since it is assumed common-sense that experts know best about the issues they are expert in, why did the majority of the British electorate ignore expert opinion in this instance? It may be, as Michael Gove said shortly before the Brexit referendum, that “people in this country have had enough of experts”. Psychology as a discipline can help to explain this reckless impulse.

One potentially applicable theory is that of collective narcissism, defined as “an emotional investment in an unrealistic belief about an in-group’s effectiveness” [5]. It could also be defined as a belief in unparalleled national greatness, in what the philosopher Isaiah Berlin called “narcissistic self-adoration of peoples”. People are emotionally invested in the greatness (at times even superiority) inherent in their group, and they support this belief because it boosts their self-esteem [6]. “I belong to a group that is great, and therefore, I am also great”.

The belief that leaving the EU would bring tangible benefits for Britain (or at the very least, the belief that the negatives of leaving would be offset by predicted future advantages), despite constant expert opinion to the contrary, is a good example of an unrealistic belief. This also ties into a wider cultural belief in the qualities British people supposedly possess: enduring troublesome issues with a ‘stiff upper lip’, politeness, and a cup of tea. We, as a nation, “keep calm and carry on”. This is not something based upon reason, but is in fact an emotional belief fuelled by misremembered history [7], and the mundane desire to improve your own self-image by grafting other people’s (oftentimes mythologised) successes onto your own personality – secular ancestor worship, updated for the modern era of fake news. There is not anything special or unique about being British – the idea that Britain is uniquely able, among all other nations of the world to weather social and economic change on the scale of Brexit is a falsehood.

Oftentimes, this collective narcissism doesn’t just stop at in-group love, but instead bleeds over into hatred of the out-group [8]. It is, psychologically speaking, a short distance between celebrating your in-group’s position and celebrating its relative position of superiority against out-groups. This is oftentimes a negative, causing inter-personal conflict in many cases [9], often on flimsy bases and with far-reaching consequences. The path from celebration of Britain’s attributes, to the hatred against those supposedly ‘against’ Britain (the EU and non-British immigrants, notably), is a well-travelled one.

This is not the only way that collective narcissism interacts with out-groups. Groups/individuals experiencing collective narcissism report high levels of perceived threat [10] from out-groups, regardless of what levels of actual, objective threat actually exist. Because of this inflated sense of threat, the individual or group experiencing the collective narcissism will react disproportionately. It makes a certain kind of logic – when an in-group you adore is confronted by a dangerous threat, then a radical solution may be needed to protect it. The trouble arises when a mild problem, or a problem that doesn’t truly exist, is ‘met’ by a response that is socially damaging in some way.

Collective narcissism has also been shown to be related to inter-group aggressiveness [11], and appears to be more effective than national attachment and national identification [12] in creating out-group rejection. Brexit voters obviously held negative opinions about the EU (otherwise they would have voted to remain within it). The theory of collective narcissism would explain the desire to leave the EU, as a circular form of self-defence. The Brexiteer is acting pre-emptively against what they perceive as an out-group hostile to their very existence.

It may be that the circumstances that led to a Brexit vote are too complex to be encapsulated within a single psychological theory. Whether that’s the case, this theory can help to explain certain aspects of Brexit – the unrealistic belief in post-Brexit conspiracy, an exaggerated sense of threat from the EU, and inter-group aggressiveness. And that is worth investigating, to make sure that events like these cannot be sleepwalked into, again.

References
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5688716/
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28358097
3. http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/brexit11.pdf
4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5628446/
5. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2011.00351.x
6. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19968420
7. https://intpolicydigest.org/2016/11/20/book-review-the-myth-of-the-blitz/
8. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18399895
9. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0097848
10. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2011.00351.x
11. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1368430211420891
12. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17014294

December, 4
147
group behaviour, political psychology, Public engagement, social psychology
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The public interest in dog intelligence – a very special case

At the beginning of October, CCCU Senior Lecturer Dr. Britta Osthaus with the University of Exeter jointly published a press release on a review paper giving dog owner’s ‘paws’ for thought about the intelligence of dogs.

The media went barking mad. I was invited to travel up to Salford to appear on the Breakfast Show the very next morning (no, thank you), and was instead passed around 16 local BBC radio stations on Tuesday morning, for interviews on how we dared to state that dogs aren’t the smartest of them all. To make it clear right away, before you growl at me: dogs are smart. They are lovely (most of the time). They are special. They are just not exceptional when compared to other species. The premise of the review paper was that we need to take into account what defines a dog, and then base any statements about their cognitive abilities on valid comparisons. Dogs are social hunters, they are carnivores, and they are domesticated animals. These three groupings were chosen for our comparisons because they affect cognitive abilities. For example, social hunters need to communicate fast and efficiently, and take the reactions of others into account. Carnivores have specialised abilities that help them to find food in a variety of environments, and therefore they differ from herbivores in their feeding strategies. And finally, domestic animals can have very different cognition from wild animals, as they need to be able to live in close proximity to other species, including humans, tolerate novel foods and environments, and are often selected for docility. What we found was that for each ‘special’ cognitive ability that dogs have shown, there are comparison species that do as well or even better than dogs. For details, see the original paper, available via the open access option of Learning & Behaviour.

Whilst we are very proud of the paper (thanks to two rather critical reviewers, we spent a lot of time on it, to groom it into its final version), we did not quite expect the media interest to take off as it did. We weren’t quite prepared for the indignation of the (dog-owning) public, nor the glee of the cat owners. Although I should have known, as I am a repeat dog-offender. In 2002, the Guardian published an article about my research on physical cognition in dogs (Man’s best friend is not so clever). The media uptake wasn’t that wide-spread, but when in 2009 I managed to ‘prove’ that dogs are cleverer than cats, my findings went around the world (e.g. It’s official: Dogs are smarter than cats, but just). But back then I got hissed at by the cat owners. This time we offended the pack of dog owners.

Don’t get me wrong: dogs are special. We share our homes with them, they do amazing work with and for humans, and they are good company. But ponies can guide blind people, rats can sniff out tuberculosis, pigs are working as therapy animals, and donkeys are great at guarding livestock. And whilst dogs can do all of this, we also need to take into account their nature: dogs are dogs, not small furry humans, and we must consider their needs and their limits when interacting with them.

October, 16
337
Animal wellfare, Dogs, Evolutionary psychology, group behaviour, Uncategorised
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Virtual reality – A Brief History, Current Trends and Future Directions

Technological advances mean virtual reality has gone from a clunky gimmick to the next stage of human-computer interaction and social engagement. Whole worlds can be explored without leaving the room and people can experience others’ perspectives at the flick of a virtual switch. Richard Weatherall, Senior Psychology Technician at CCCU explores current research in the realm of VR.

August, 17
1904
Creativity, Forensic investigation, group behaviour, Health and Wellbeing, Learning and Teaching, Public engagement, Research, social psychology, Technology, Therapeutic Approaches
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The social psychology of “10 German bombers”: Why a tasteless football chant about the Battle of Britain is more offensive to the English than the Germans

Dr. Dennis Nigbur, Senior Lecturer at CCCU, takes the opportunity to discuss the interplay between two of his favourite topics, namely football and national identity.