The Civic Platform - A Political Journal of Ideas and Analysis » Xenophobia: Sociobiological Explanation

Xenophobia: Sociobiological Explanation

April 25, 2008 on 5:35 pm | Friedrich Braun | Ethnicity and Ethnic Genetic Interests , Genetics & Human Bio-Diversity , Science & Technology , Sociology | | Email This Post | Print this Post

The effects of xenophobia (dislike against the genetically dissimilar out-group and nepotistic favoritism towards the genetically similar in-group) are analyzed by many sociobiological researchers. Some see it as an innate biological response on the part of the evolved human organism in inter-group competition. In his famous book, The Ethnic Phenomenon, Pierre L. van den Berghe, anthropological professor of the University of Washington, discusses the concepts of kin selection, ethnic nepotism, and the biologically-rooted tendency of people that are more similar genetically to behave more generously toward each other. In Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing, author James Waller argues that all human beings “have an innate, evolution-produced tendency to seek proximity to familiar faces because what is unfamiliar is probably dangerous and should be avoided. More than two hundred social psychological experiments have confirmed the intimate connection between familiarity and fondness. This universal human tendency is the foundation for the behavioral expressions of ethnocentrism and xenophobia” (Oxford University Press, USA, 2002, p. 156). Frank Salter, an ethological researcher of the Max Planck Institute, deals with similar “taboo” topics in his controversial book, On Genetic Interests: Family, Ethnicity and Humanity in An Age of Mass Migration; this work has been praised by well-known sociobiology innovator E.O. Wilson as “a fresh and deep contribution to the sociobiology of humans.” Salter posits an “innate group-descent module” in the human mind to explain the universal occurrence of ethnic nepotism. In Salter’s view, favoritism towards one’s own ethnicity is an evolutionarily-based “objective” value and, from a political science perspective, Salter proposes a “universal nationalism”, in which all planetary ethnic-based communities or nations have the right to preserve their own heritage and distinctiveness.

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