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Even in the most difficult and trying situations, human beings tend to ‘other’ people who may be experiencing the same trauma and difficulties, because ‘they’ are not ‘us’. We see this playing out in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As of March 18th, an estimated 6.5 million Ukrainians have been displaced, alongside an additional 4 million people who are fleeing neighbouring countries. Yet among those people fleeing Ukraine, people of color are experiencing racism that puts their life at risk. According to a VOX report in March, “Many refugees of colour who’ve succeeded in crossing the border say they did so only after multiple attempts, and after being deprioritized in favor of white Ukrainians. ‘It was just a blanket bias against foreigners to favor Ukrainians and allow them to cross the border and access help first,’  Asya, a Kenyan national who was studying medicine in Ukraine, told Vox.” 

Why do human beings do this to each other? Why, when everyone’s life is at risk, do we still empathize with and prioritize other people who we probably don’t know, but somehow they seem like ‘us’? 

Are we susceptible to this well-researched bias? And if so, what can we do to ensure that we do not succumb to these tendencies in our own lives, whether at work or play?

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Episode Resources:

• The Brain with David Eagleman - Ep 5: Why Do I Need You? THE BRAIN with David Eagleman “Why Do I Need You?” – Episode 5. Series in which Dr David Eagleman takes viewers on an extraordinary journey that explores how the brain, locked in silence and darkness without direct access to the world, conjures up the rich and beautiful world we all take for granted. 
• How many Ukrainians have fled their homes and where have they gone?
• Black Ukraine refugees allege discrimination while trying to escape Russian invasion 
• Why it’s more difficult to flee Ukraine if you’re not from Ukraine: Non-Ukrainian refugees are trapped between racism and Cold War geopolitics. 
• Ingroup Favoritism and Prejudice 
• Social Identity Theory:The central hypothesis of social identity theory is that group members of an in-group will seek to find negative aspects of an out-group, thus enhancing their self-image. 
• Biases in Attribution: When we tend to overestimate the role of person factors and overlook the impact of situations, we are making a mistake that social psychologists have termed the fundamental attribution error. This error is very closely related to another attributional tendency, the correspondence bias, which occurs when we attribute behaviors to people’s internal characteristics, even in heavily constrained situations. 
• Their pain gives us pleasure: How intergroup dynamics shape empathic failures and counter-empathic responses: Despite its early origins and adaptive functions, empathy is not inevitable; people routinely fail to empathize with others, especially members of different social or cultural groups. In five experiments, we systematically explore how social identity, functional relations between groups, competitive threat, and perceived entitativity contribute to intergroup empathy bias: the tendency not only to empathize less with out-group relative to in-group members, but also feel pleasure in response to their pain (and pain in response to their pleasure).