TWO weeks after the dramatic fall of chunks of Iraq to Sunni rebels led by the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), a ferocious jihadist group, hostilities have simmered to a lower boil.
*Ethnocentrism and other forms of group-against-group hostility.
She found that the urge to display the flag "reflected patriotism and a desire to show solidarity with fellow citizens, rather than a desire to express out-group hostility".
We should be working hard to defy our impulse toward out-group hostility.
The benefit of out-group hostility has not only expired, but is now severely detrimental to our well-being both as individuals and as a species.
Religion not only promotes difference, it makes divisions impossible to eliminate, so between-group co-operation is discouraged and out-group hostility is fueled.
But the out-group hostility element of tribalism is no longer adaptive in the modern, complex form of civilization we have created.
As Frans de Waal puts it: 'In the course of human evolution, out-group hostility enhanced in-group solidarity to the point that morality emerged … And so, the profound irony is that our noblest achievement – morality – has evolutionary ties to our basest behaviour – warfare'.
"These inter-group hostilities make any kind of provincial, let alone national, opposition victory in Syria highly unlikely".
Darwin also stated that inter-group hostilities can have an influence on the evolution of socio-positive behavior, a notion that has received empirical support from anthropologists and human evolutionary biologists.
Dominique Sopo, head of SOS Racisme, an anti-discrimination group, says hostility to her reform is because she is "young, a woman, and of North African origin.
