Daily Times

Ingroup favouritism is a reality. People like to categorise others as Us and Them or as We and They. Scholars have experimented with the brains of young children only to find out that we are naturally biased and like people similar to us as compared to dissimilar people. However, this natural discrimination was probably developed in us to recognise and feel safe with our families as children. Adults categorise people as Us (or as Them) on a wide variety of factors such as ethnicity, gender, social status, political beliefs, and religious beliefs inside as well as outside the perspective of organisations.

In our country where anyone may instigate biases, the lack of recognition of ingroup-outgroup favouritism is rampant. There is no way that you can convince others that they are being biased towards you because you have probably ignored their undue—or at times even due—requests in the past, or you don’t hang out with a particular group or you have a friend who is supporter of them. Mostly, they will try to explain it as a figment of your own imagination yet they shall keep doing it.

In one of my previous articles, I brought up the matter of absence of anti discrimination laws in the academia. Academics can be as biased as any normal person. In academia much like any other organisation, people categorise others as ingroup or outgroup and then subject them to biases of unimaginative levels. This is not just limited to teachers vs. teachers but also includes teachers vs. students. The most obvious example of this phenomenon is hiring the people one powerful group considers as closer to them, protection of inefficient teachers by one teacher’s union group or awarding more marks to the student of the teacher’s own ethnicity. This has over time made institutions less productive.

Perhaps, we are the only country where we are even biased whilst making laws. Recently, the Punjab Protection of Women Against Violence act was approved. This was followed by criticism from religious groups. However soon afterwards a bill protecting the rights of men was proposed; that too was ridiculed. This is a perfect example of how much we as a nation are categorised into Us and Them.

Pakistan needs to make laws that should be free from all categorisations whether explicit or implicit as much as possible – harassment is harassment whether meted out to men or to women. On an individual bases, we need to minimise the use of ingroup and outgroup terms as they can shape evaluative responses towards others. Scholars found that the use of these terms influences our responses cognitively and form an impression of the people.

We should also discourage ingroup favouritism in our very personal daily lives. Someone has to start the trend of inter-group marriages as well; it is very surprising that even after living together as a nation for decades, Urdu speakers still marry among other Urdu speakers, Punjabis marry among Punjabis and Hazaras among Hazaras etc. We are simply not growing up together and that is why we are not growing as a nation. In the past, Kings use to bring daughters of Kings of other countries as brides, or as daughters-in-law to make peace and better understand others so it may have similar effects on our society even today.

There is a need to monitor and report more efficiently the incidences of ingroup-outgroup favouritism in our surroundings and teach our children to respect diversity– a right place to start discouraging ingroup favouritism indeed is academia where we all learn a lot of things. The need for various military operations will also decrease when our nation will be recognised by the spirit of our unity rather than the stock piles of our weapons.

The writer is an Assistant Professor. His twitter handle is @Prof_MKShaikh