People are pretty good at stirring up hate against large groups, as well as sympathy. I suspect racists, for example, don't think of "black" as "just another trait." We generalize across groups--not of people we see every day (which is why the number one predictor of non-homophobia is knowing someone who's gay)--but of people we don't have as much experience with. We may still "need" to think about these people, especially with the distance news travels these days, and are likely to chunk them. "I want to help the poor victims of the tsunami" is one chunk. "Fundamentalists are trying to take away our rights" is another chunk.
Your coworkers are likely to be within your monkeysphere, if I'm understanding the term correctly. People that you have enough experience with will be seen as individuals.
I'd wonder, in fact, if the 150 figure really is a limit, or if it was just the monkeysphere size of the brains they looked at. The brain is fairly elastic, and areas associated with our specialties tend to become larger than average. A painter, for example, is likely to end up with an unusually large visual cortex. A businessman, or just a socialite, might develop a larger monkeysphere area than normal, and be able to accomodate a larger group. That would imply that the size of the cortical area isn't actually the causal factor here--that in fact, you need to have a certain amount of experience with people in order to see them as real, and that 150 is the average number of people that we get this level of experience with.
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Date: 2005-04-08 12:04 am (UTC)Your coworkers are likely to be within your monkeysphere, if I'm understanding the term correctly. People that you have enough experience with will be seen as individuals.
I'd wonder, in fact, if the 150 figure really is a limit, or if it was just the monkeysphere size of the brains they looked at. The brain is fairly elastic, and areas associated with our specialties tend to become larger than average. A painter, for example, is likely to end up with an unusually large visual cortex. A businessman, or just a socialite, might develop a larger monkeysphere area than normal, and be able to accomodate a larger group. That would imply that the size of the cortical area isn't actually the causal factor here--that in fact, you need to have a certain amount of experience with people in order to see them as real, and that 150 is the average number of people that we get this level of experience with.