Ethnocentrism and Group Realities

The Evolution of Ethnocentrism
ROSS A. HAMMOND
Department of Political Science
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

ROBERT AXELROD
Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Ethnocentrism is a nearly universal syndrome of attitudes and behaviors, typically including in-group favoritism. Empirical evidence suggests that a predisposition to favor in-groups can be easily triggered by even arbitrary group distinctions and that preferential cooperation within groups occurs even when it is individually costly. The authors study the emergence and robustness of ethnocentric behaviors of in-group favoritism, using an agent-based evolutionary model. They show that such behaviors can become widespread under a broad range of conditions and can support very high levels of cooperation, even in onemove prisoner’s dilemma games. When cooperation is especially costly to individuals, the authors show how ethnocentrism itself can be necessary to sustain cooperation.
Keywords: in-group favoritism; ethnocentrism; agent-based models; evolutionary models; contingent cooperation Ethnocentrism is a nearly universal syndrome of discriminatory attitudes and behaviors (Sumner 1906; LeVine and Campbell 1972). The attitudes include seeing one’s own group (the in-group) as virtuous and superior, one’s own standards of value as universal, and out-groups as contemptible and inferior. Behaviors associated with ethnocentrism include cooperative relations within the group and the absence of cooperative relations with out-groups (LeVine and Campbell 1972). Ethnocentric behaviors are based on group boundaries that are typically defined by one or more observable characteristics (such as language, accent, physical features, or religion) regarded as indicating common descent (Sumner 1906; Hirschfeld 1996; Kurzban, Tooby, and
Cosmides 2001). Such behaviors often also have a strong territorial component
(Sumner 1906). Ethnocentrism has been implicated not

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