This Is Your Brain on Nationalism
22
February 2023
Robert Sapolsky asks whether humans can overcome the neurological, hormonal, and developmental underpinnings of their tribalism and offer a rather depressing take on nationalism’s cognitive enablers. When it comes to group belonging, humans don’t seem too far from chimpanzees: people are comfortable with the familiar and bristle at the unfamiliar. Taming our aggressive tendencies requires swimming upstream.
