The Tribalism Trap: Overcoming Political Polarization in an Age of Outrage

Humans evolved in tight-knit tribes, fostering group loyalty, strong social identities, and suspicion of threatening outsiders. These tribal tendencies—shaped by natural and cultural selection—once served survival but now often misfire in modern, digitally connected societies. This chapter explores how tribal instincts combine with social media, partisan news, divisive ideologies, and related factors to tempt us toward vices like dogmatism, arrogance, and incivility. By integrating insights from moral psychology, social epistemology, and polarization research, the chapter offers a path forward that combines shaping one’s media environment and patterns of thought to promote virtues of humility and civility. The language of virtue is particularly helpful for integrating individual and structural solutions to the tribalism trap.