Kim Samuel
The Power of Belonging
LONELINESS
How to Reverse the Psychology of
Othering
Building belonging is key to overcoming an age of division.
Change is alteration, or "othering" and this means diversity.
Posted May 11, 2023
Reviewed by Michelle Quirk
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KEY POINTS
Hate crimes rose nearly 12 percent between 2020 and 2021.
While othering is a kind of ignorance,
psychology shows us that it’s also deeply embedded in human motivations.
To overcome othering and build shared belonging, we need to engage in work to realize a shared vision.
Source: Chris Dale/Getty Images
Source: Chris Dale/Getty Images
In March, the US Department of Justice released new findings showing that hate crimes—including violence against people based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender, disability, and sexual orientation—rose nearly 12 percent between 2020 and 2021. As the New York Times reported, these new record-breaking statistics are still likely an underestimate.
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The numbers are heartbreaking. Yet they’re also not surprising. We’re living in an age of “othering.” In the simplest sense, othering is the process of emphasizing differences between human beings and using them as justification for boundaries and hierarchies. Taken further, othering is the temptation to see those who are not like us as “less than” and, in some cases, even less than human.
In times like these—when social media siloes enable disinformation and insensitivity, when voices in media and politics prey on division, and when people report extreme levels of social and cultural polarization—it’s clear that this tendency is on the rise.
And still, the tendency is arguably as ancient as humanity itself.
Understanding Why People Use "Othering"
To reverse the tendency toward othering, we need to understand it profoundly. While othering is a kind of ignorance, psychology shows us that it’s also deeply embedded in human motivations.
First, people use othering to make sense of the world. As the scholar Edward Said emphasized, othering takes hold because individuals are attracted to the supposed moral clarity of binary oppositions like “us” versus “them.” The psychologists Henri Tajfel and John C. Turner, in their work on social identity theory, emphasize that people often seek the straightforwardness of in-groups and out-groups to understand how they fit into the larger world. Amid complexity, we seek simplicity.
Second, people use othering as a means to enhance their own social position. The philosopher Michel Foucault emphasized that people tend to engage in these practices because they believe—consciously or not—that it enhances their own power. Through the language and norms of othering, people attempt to place themselves in the higher rungs of the social hierarchy. Tendencies toward othering are especially strong when individuals and groups are locked in competition for scarce resources.
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Third—and perhaps most importantly—people are motivated to engage in othering because they see it, erroneously, as a path to find their own belonging. The great American novelist and scholar Toni Morrison once asked,
What is the nature of Othering’s comfort, its allure, its power (social, psychological, or economical)? Is it the thrill of belonging—which implies being part of something bigger than one’s solo self, and therefore stronger? My initial view leans toward the social/psychological need for a stranger, an Other in order to define the estranged self.
Under conditions of disconnection and perceived scarcity, we are, as Morrison points out, often estranged from ourselves—cut off from meaning and resilience. This kind of estrangement is uncomfortable. So, we’ll often go to extreme lengths to fill the void.
Morrison spoke of how othering could manifest as the impulse “to own, govern, and administrate,” which, in turn, could fuel the flames of colonialism, and enable slavery, genocide, apartheid, political demagoguery, wage discrimination, and militarized policing. These are the most visible consequences of othering. But, in contrast to this desire to “own, govern, and administrate,” we also see “othering” manifest as what appears to be passive, systemic indifference. This includes subtle cues of not belonging, like microaggressions of language and refusals to listen. It includes policies that don’t purport to be discriminatory but, in reality, result in perpetuation of multigenerational inequities.
THE BASICS
Understanding Loneliness
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In researching my new book, On Belonging: Finding Connection in an Age of Isolation, the power of Morrison’s explanation became clearer to me. Othering isn’t just a false path to belonging. We might also see it as the shadow side of belonging.
In writing the book, I interviewed Rex Molefe, a former child soldier now living in South Africa, who explained to me that he felt a genuine sense of belonging as an early teen in war. “The mayhem and social ills that we are confronted with today in the world,” he said, “actually stem from that lack of sense of belonging.” Afghan researcher Weeda Mehran—who was secretly homeschooled with her mom in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and now studies propaganda in militant groups—explains that people often join these groups because of a desire to be part of a unified group, defined by opposition to a “wicked” outside group.
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