Much human cognitive error can be attributed to our primitive tribal instincts. Humans evolved in hunter-gatherer groups of around 150–300 individuals. Shortages were the rule, and storage of surpluses was an unexplored technology.
In a stone-age tribal setting, most individuals were related to many others in the group, so there was a strong biological urge to help them.
The groups that had the best chance of survival were those in which resources were shared among all members. Trade was fraught with risk and conducted collectively between groups. Besides allowing a group to trade its particular surpluses or special skills for those it lacked, trade filled more of a ritual function, preserved today in all modern cultures’ gift-giving rituals.
The individuals within the groups who had the best chances of surviving and passing on their genes were those who appeared overtly to be most cooperative, while covertly maximizing resources to themselves and their closest kin, a phenomenon which gave rise to the phrase "virtue signaling," an anthropological term which has entered popular culture.
This way of life died out gradually beginning about 6,000 years ago: an instant in evolutionary time! That's when the world saw the advent of settlements, with stored surplus and populations concentrated in towns. Along with this came money as a measure of value (the earliest examples of written language are trade ledgers). Sadly, with surplus, settlement, and storage, the persistent identification with the group led to warfare to expand territorial control and steal other groups' surpluses. The carnage and waste thus caused made it crucial to establish win-win trade among groups, incentivizing fairness and co-operation instead of violence.
Groups of 150-200 were now only subsets of a much larger group. The groups were now more fluid, and a person often belonged to multiple groups. Information and technical knowledge spread rapidly from group to group. Now, the individuals most likely to survive were those capable of generating a sense of affiliation, skilled traders and negotiators, and individuals with skills and talents for creating hard-to-find resources. This shift radically changed the unit of natural selection to favor the individual and select for her talents and abilities.
Unfortunately, our social brains are still hard-wired to function at the primitive societal level. Beginning with the printing press, evolving into newspapers, then radio and television, and on to the internet and social media. These media, by imitating face-to-face speech and group activities, trick us into believing that a city, state, ethnic group, political party, sports team fandom, or nation is the same thing as a small tribe, and to signal our submission to each collective group while being ashamed of secretly prioritizing the interests of our own selves and families. The symbols of virtue modern humans recognize are directly related to the exigencies of life in the Stone Age. Therefore, even when faced with a reality in which submission to the collective will objectively and inevitably lower each and every individual's quality of life, people can still be easily manipulated into feeling an emotional drive to act against their own self-interest...or at least, to appear to.
(Originally posted as an answer on Quora).
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