Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart

by Christena Cleveland

When we categorize, not only do we draw a very clear line between those who are like us and those who are not like us, but we also tend to think that all of the people who are not like us are the same. It’s not just that they are all different from us; they are all different in the same way.

On the one hand, we tend to view the outgroup as homogenous: “They are all the same.” On the other hand, we tend to view our ingroup as heterogeneous: “We are all unique.”

The satirical humor in Stuff White People Like heavily relies on the outgroup homogeneity effect. It overflows with stereotypes and banks on the fact that the reader will recognize the caricatures, chuckle to herself, nod in agreement and say: “Yes, this is how all white people are. They are all the same.”

Social psychologists have found that people from China, Vietnam and Japan perceive themselves as distinct from one another, but many Westerners have a tough time telling them apart.

Not only do we overlook valuable

information about a group’s variability, but we also think we know everything about them. We are certain that all of the women in the conservative church on the other side of town are pregnant and barefoot even though we have not yet gotten to know any of the members of the church (or their many homeschooled children).

When the white leader of the organization heard my suggestion, however, he scoffed, “Why bother spending resources on collecting data from people of color? I can probably tell you what they’re thinking.” How can a white leader of an organization that admittedly does not have a successful history of engaging people of color honestly think that he can estimate the rich and varied perspectives of people of color without even talking to them?

Perceptions of outgroup homogeneity often lead to prejudice. By perceiving the ingroup as heterogeneous and the outgroup as homogenous, group members are less likely to believe that their group would benefit from more diversity, more likely to perceive the outgroup in unflattering and oversimplified ways, and more likely to believe that the outgroup has very little to offer them.

Why do people who have a heart for unity have such a hard time actually uniting? This question has befuddled pastors and church leaders who have attempted to build bridges across cultural lines but have faced an unyielding barrier of division. An understanding of metaperceptions—what we think they think of us—can help us see the forces that lead us to stick to our own kind and keep us from sauntering over to the other side of the room in order to connect with different people.

When it comes to groups getting along or not, what we think of them is just as important as what we think they think of us.

Most importantly, our metaperceptions tend to be overly pessimistic; we tend to believe that what they think of us is far worse than what they actually think.

One reason why this scenario is so common is that inaccurate metaperceptions go hand in hand with perceptions of outgroup homogeneity to form a dynamic and divisive duo. If we assume that we already know what they are like, then we can assume that we already know what they think of us.

How many words were you able to list? Did you recall pillow? doze? sleep? peace? blanket? If you think you recalled sleep, you have been hoodwinked by categorization processes, because sleep was not on the original list.

Without knowing it, you relied on your category for sleep-related words to help you recall the list.

For better or for worse, we use the contents of our categories to fill in the holes when we’re asked to recall information.

We have a tendency to remember what we want to remember, whether it is accurate or not.

In the story of the good Samaritan, Jesus wisely addressed our tendency to cling to rigid and oversimplified categories. Jesus’ target audience—Jewish people living in Israel—had an unflattering and oversimplified category for Samaritans that Jesus challenged when he described a Samaritan who didn’t fit within the boundaries of the category.

It turns out that the cognitive processes that I described in this chapter are most powerful when they are hidden from view, when they are outside our conscious awareness. Once individuals become consciously aware of these processes—as you just have, by reading this chapter—the processes begin to lose their power. If you are motivated to override them, you absolutely can.

Using a test called the implicit attitude test, Keith Payne found that American participants of varied races automatically associate black men with violence and white men with nonviolence—when people are shown pictures of black men, they quickly assume that they are violent, but when people are shown pictures of white men, they quickly assume that they are nonviolent.

However, Payne found that when participants believed that their bias against black men should be suppressed and were motivated to suppress it, they did not associate black men with violence any more than they associated white men with violence.

What we need to do is really quite simple: rather than continuing on as cognitive misers who lazily rely on inaccurate categories to perceive others, we need to engage in what my friend Reverend Jim Caldwell calls cognitive generosity. We need to turn off autopilot and take the time to honestly examine our polluted perceptions.

As leaders, we must go beyond simply naming and addressing our own biased perceptions or leading the members of our congregations and organizations in naming and addressing their biases. We must also take active steps to expand our category of us so that they are now included in us.

In order to overcome the consequences of categorizing, we need to address the categorizing problem at its root: the us/them distinctions. We need to rid ourselves of us/them distinctions and lead others in ridding themselves of us/them distinctions. We can start to do this by talking about ourselves differently.

If we begin to use inclusive language such as we and us (rather than they and them) when we refer to the different groups in the body of Christ, we will begin to associate the different groups with the same positive attributes and feelings that we associate with ourselves.

What if there were no them in the body of Christ? What if all were simply we? Divisions would begin to weaken.

No longer would we perceive the problems of other groups in the body of Christ as solely their problems. As newly minted members of us, their problems are now our problems.

Research shows that the mere use of the word we leads individuals to recognize positive words and traits more quickly. When we refer to former outgroup members as we, we are more inclined to pay attention to their positive traits.

Unfortunately, the tendency to cling to rigid and oversimplified categories of other groups quickly leads us to exaggerate differences between us and them. We want to be perceived as different from them so we exaggerate our differences with the other group.

Whether the distinctions are meaningful or not, we’re inclined to move toward one extreme in order to further distinguish ourselves

from the outgroup.

Fixating on differences leads us to ignore glaring commonalities and focus on distinguishing ourselves from other groups, making it less likely for us to think that we should get to know other groups and collaborate with them. Even though the process I just described seems somewhat benign, it can lead to destructive consequences.

Exaggerating differences also gives way to wider differences in viewpoints. This is called perspective divergence—or what I call the gold standard effect—and is one of the main causes of divisions between groups. Basically, the gold standard effect leads us to believe that not only are we different from them, but we are also better than them.

Since we think that our way of doing things is the most normal, we interact with others while thinking that our alternate universal laws and way of life are the gold standard for the larger group. Essentially, we begin to believe that we are the model citizens of the larger group and that other subgroups can only hope to be as relevant and valuable as we are.

Essentially, each pastor gave the other a failing grade on leadership because they had very different criteria for evaluating leadership, criteria they thought were clearly superior. Neither pastor was aware of the way the gold standard effect was affecting his evaluation of the other pastor, and consequently, neither had thought to address their difference in leadership ideals.

These dynamics lead to disastrous crosscultural interactions. Not only do we distance ourselves from our group’s rivals, we also have the audacity to think our increasingly extreme opinions, unique characteristics and distanced group members wholly and accurately represent the larger group. In this way, different groups are further marginalized because they are perceived as “out of touch” and “incompetent.” Meanwhile, we are convinced that we have a perfect grasp on reality.

In one study, Dominic Abrams and his colleagues divided groups of participants into smaller groups based on trivial categories (e.g., groups based on numbers that were randomly assigned to them). Then participants were asked to complete a difficult perceptual task while receiving helpful information from members of either their ingroup or outgroup. They found that participants did not rely on input from outgroup members even when it would have been useful for them to do so. Instead, they toiled on alone. Abrams and colleagues wrote, “[Participants] resisted information purely on the basis that it was derived from a category of person to which they did not belong.”

At the end of chapter 3, I suggested using inclusive language to break down ingroup/outgroup distinctions. Similarly, we can use language to fight against our tendency to exaggerate differences between us and them. We can do this by intentionally and verbally emphasizing shared characteristics rather than differences—in our small group discussions, from our pulpits and in casual conversations. Groups that are aware of their similarities tend to like each other more.

Last week I spoke to a group of predominantly white pastors from a predominantly white denomination. During the Q&A, one of the audience members asked me what he could do to better understand some of the challenges that the small number of people of color in the denomination might experience. My answer was simple: in addition to simply asking people of color to share their personal experiences, majority group members should make a habit of going out of their way to “walk a mile” in the shoes of people of color.

Several research studies show that the simple exercise of taking the perspective of an outgroup member can powerfully break down the divisions constructed by the gold standard effect. According to prejudice researcher James Weyant, perspective-taking involves attempting to imagine oneself in another person’s shoes, thinking from the other person’s point of view, envisioning oneself in the other person’s circumstances and feeling what the other person is feeling.

However, while categorizing is primarily a helpful process that unintentionally wreaks havoc on our crosscultural situations, identity and self-esteem processes are driven by a more sinister force: our unmet desire to feel good about ourselves.

And lest you think that this sort of behavior is solely caused by adolescent immaturity, it is worth noting that social psychologists have witnessed it in full among adults. The truth is that many of us are still stuck in our high school identity wars. And as we’ll come to see clearly, our identity crises are a root cause of the divisions in the body of Christ.

Noted developmental psychologist Erik Erikson pointed out that “Who am I?” is a question we begin consciously asking around adolescence and continue asking for the rest of our lives.

First, according to sociometer theory,

Second, terror management theory

most people live with a constant fear of death,

Who am I? The better question might be, Who do others think I am? because our self-concept, the part of our self that holds information pertaining to our identity, is extremely susceptible to outside influences.

John Eldredge and Brent Curtis wrote, “Your evaluation of your soul, which is drawn from a world filled with people still terribly confused about the nature of their souls, is probably wrong.”

According to social identity theory, self-esteem is closely tied to our group memberships because our group identities often overlap with our sense of self. For example, not only do you think of yourself as an individual, but you also probably think of yourself in terms of your many group memberships: gender group, social roles groups (such as mother, spouse, friend, etc.), ethnic group, occupational group, church group, even hobby-related groups (book club, fly fishing, etc.).

The more you are invested in your group memberships, the more impact they will have on your sense of self and, by extension, your self-esteem.

Research on social identity theory has discovered that when it comes to group membership, we do four things to maintain positive self-esteem: (1) We tend to gravitate toward and form groups with similar others; (2) once the group is formed we engage in group-serving biases that defend the group’s positive identity; (3) we try to increase our status by associating with higher-status groups and distancing ourselves from lower-status groups; and (4) if all else fails we literally disparage other groups because in doing so, we elevate our own group.