Source | leadershipfreak.blog
Us/them-thinking comes naturally to everyone, even children.
Imagine giving blue shirts to one group of children and yellow to another. Us/them-thinking will animate perception quickly. Children think my group is better than your group. One researcher proved this.
“Kids started to think the blue was different from the yellow,” Rebecca Bigler Ph.D., says. “What comes very quickly after that is, ‘the blues are better than the yellows.’”
Us/them-thinking in life:
I worked in a group that was housed separate from the main division. I felt our group worked hard and delivered better results than the rest of the division. I lost the luxury of superiority when we were brought under the same roof. Those ‘bad’ people were actually talented hard-working colleagues.
We’re prone to illogical bias.
I asked a VP of Apple what people saw in him. Among other things, he said, “It doesn’t hurt that I’m 6’5”.” Research shows that, “… people hold implicit biases against short people.” Tall people are more likely than short people to be hired and promoted.