The Identity Trap

We all have a sense of our own identity. Some of it is rooted in the immutable traits we’re born with, such as gender and racial attributes, but most of it we acquire along the way. We pursue training in a particular field, take a job with an organization, decide to live in one place or another and come to care about certain causes.

It’s important for us to signal our identity, which we do constantly in both conscious and unconscious ways. We often preface statements with identifiers to signal status and let people understand the role we expect to play (“As a so-and-so, I think this or that”). We also take note of how others signal identity to us and act accordingly.

Anthropologists believe that identity and status played important roles in cultural evolution, communicating to others how best to collaborate with us. Yet identity can also become a trap when our need to signal status becomes more important than what we are trying to achieve. That’s how good intentions result in bad outcomes and we become our own worst enemy.

Building A Basis For Collective Action

Humans are, in so many ways, weak and vulnerable creatures. We’re neither particularly fast nor strong. We can’t fly or burrow underground to escape predators. We don’t have a particularly strong sense of smell, sight or hearing to sense danger nor do we have sharp claws or teeth to help us defend ourselves.

If humans have a superpower it is collective action. We collaborate in large numbers and in incredibly complex ways. That is how we were able to hunt and kill animals larger than ourselves, to build shelters to protect ourselves and to learn and innovate, passing down knowledge over generations, something no other species does. We created things like agriculture and writing as our culture evolved and became more sophisticated over time.

In order to collaborate effectively, we need to have clarity around each other’s roles. In the modern world, many of us wear uniforms to signal to others what role we intend to play, whether that is to enforce the law, to deliver a package, fix a machine or play for a particular sports team. We also put out more subtle cues, signifying our level of education, political beliefs and so on.

There is a large body of research that suggests that signifying our inclusion in particular tribes we also, both consciously and unconsciously, communicate what groups we do not want to join and what our identities can and cannot tolerate. Just as we are wired, through kin selection and other processes, to show loyalty to the values and beliefs of our own tribe, we also have an innate urge to be hostile to the values and beliefs of others.

We do this countless times a day, taking in the identity signals of others while putting out our own messages, communicating where and how we do and don’t belong, while at the same time, making it clear who and what we are likely to be hostile to.

Identifying With A Purpose

Religion is an incredibly expensive undertaking. Anyone who has traveled in Europe cannot fail to be impressed with the incredible cathedrals you find throughout the continent. Yet considering the fact that most of the population was struggling to scratch out a subsistence living when they were built, it’s hard not to wonder how it was all worth it. Even in primitive cultures, inordinate resources go to ceremonies, adornments and other trappings.

It’s become common today for many, especially in the academic world, to dismiss religion as the mere product of ancient superstition, yet that’s a dubious proposition. For most of human history different tribes competed to survive. If religion didn’t equip societies with some advantage, the nonreligious societies would quickly displace their more spiritual adversaries.

In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt makes a powerful case that religion plays an important role in enabling collective action. “There is now a great deal of evidence that religions do in fact help groups to cohere, solve free rider problems and win the competition for group-level survival,” he wrote.

Identity doesn’t exist in a vacuum, but is shaped by our connections with others and our devotion to causes bigger than ourselves, whether that’s religion, patriotism, or a specific pursuit. We naturally seek out things that give our lives purpose, and we express this sense of meaning through identity signals.

Playing Status Games

In The Status Game, science reporter Will Storr explains how we act out our roles in search of status, which we pursue by playing three “games,” that of prestige, dominance and virtue. By displaying competence, force of will or high moral standards we are, in effect, signaling to others what we desire our roles to be so they know how they can best relate to us.

Yet he also explains how our status games can work against us. As the players vie to signal identity, group polarization leads to “moral outbidding,” a purity spiral ensues and the most extreme views are proudly displayed, creating strong bonds of group identity and what Wittgenstein calls a private language begins to form.

That’s why protesters are willing to sleep in parks, why women wore pussy hats after the election of Donald Trump, why prominent DEI activists claim that anyone who doesn’t agree with them is racist, why a Cornell professor said he was exhilarated by the murder of innocents, and why America’s far-right activists identify with murderous dictators. It feels good to show that we are different, that we have status.

Research into the causes of the 9/11 attack found that “perceived injustice, need for identity and need for belonging are common vulnerabilities” that drive people to terrorism. We’ll do almost anything to attain the status we want. That’s why people who claim to be working for change will often rather make a point than make a difference.

Embracing Values And Shared Identity

On September 17th, 2011, protesters began to stream into Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan and the #Occupy movement had begun. “We are the 99%,” they declared and as far as they were concerned, it was time for the reign of the “1%” to end. The protests soon spread like wildfire to 951 cities across 82 countries.

Despite all the hoopla, within a few months, the streets and parks were cleared. The protesters went home and nothing much changed. Occupy was, to paraphrase Shakespeare, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Eventually, even its founder had to admit it was all a dismal failure, while he voiced support and admiration for Donald Trump.

This pattern of hype leading to discredit is not just for social justice warriors. Business leaders are prone to many of the same pitfalls. Fads like six sigma, stack ranking and the war for talent emerge for a time and create a cascade in which adherents rush to not only adopt a practice, but signal their inclusion into the tribe. Later, when the idea is found wanting, it is discarded and something else comes along. A lot of damage is done along the way.

This is the identity trap: if we’re not careful, signaling our identity can become more important than the underlying idea itself. Yet, our identities are not fixed. They grow and evolve over time as we add new elements and shed off others—switching careers, moving to new places, or shifting relationships. “Identity can be used to divide, but it can and has also been used to integrate,” Francis Fukuyama wrote in his book on the subject.

And that is the challenge for anyone who wants to lead an endeavor of any significance: How can you create an inclusive identity that doesn’t divide and ostracize those who don’t belong, but that integrates and empowers? If you are to achieve anything meaningful, you can’t just preach to the choir, but must venture out of the church and mix with the heathens.

Greg Satell is Co-Founder of ChangeOS, a transformation & change advisory, an international keynote speaker, host of the Changemaker Mindset podcast, bestselling author of Cascades: How to Create a Movement that Drives Transformational Change and Mapping Innovation, as well as over 50 articles in Harvard Business Review. You can learn more about Greg on his website, GregSatell.com, follow him on Twitter @DigitalTonto, his YouTube Channel and connect on LinkedIn.

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