The dehumanization part with the computer generated faces was really interesting! Made me think of DU.

I found it particularly intriguing how people showed less empathy toward another group, even when the groups were extremely artificial -- i.e., created by the experimenter.

EDIT: It doesn't change the fact that Michigan Wolverine fans suck! (Kidding!!)

As a diversity trainer, I have run classes where I have used modified "Brown Eyes, Blue Eyes" type scenarios, and it never surprises me how fast a new "group" can be formed, even when they don't know why they are a group! They only know who is a member and who isn't! I have picked things as ludicrous as shoelaces or not, pen vs. pencil use, and other such "silly" things, to further demonstrate how easily a group can be formed over any type of thing, idea, event, etc.

ETA a LOL at your Edit!

... but it's never been put to the test. I might be "typical" in a test setting.

I like to participate in some kinds of rivalries, but I don't take it seriously at a deep level. I'm disturbed when some people seem to take the nonsense too seriously.

I also wonder if people of different skin colors could get along better if they understood the science behind it. Darker skin better protects from the Sun, and lighter skin more easily produces Vitamin D from sunlight. There was a time in this country, before Vitamin D was added to many foods and before nutrition improved overall, when several African Americans suffered from rickets.

People covered in furs in cold and overcast climates benefit from skin lightening because their skin isn't exposed to sunlight as much. Lighter colored children were more likely to avoid rickets and reproduce as adults. Put them back in a very sunny environment, and natural selection would work back toward darker skin. (Bad sunburns can be agonizing and even deadly in the worst cases.)

Knowing that all of humanity originated in Africa and that our ancestors would've all had dark skin at one time makes the skin pigmentation "grouping" pretty silly to me. (Not that I don't acknowledge that people with dark skin color often face bigger hurdles in this country, of course.)

The people in a group more resistant to group think. You can all get together and talk about how you all agree with each other on that.

I'm not resistant to all groups, however. I just consider many of them to be very "artificial," whereas I was a very willing group member in my biological family.

I got in trouble as a young child because I ran home from school more than once. I could tell that the "strangers" didn't care for me like my family did, so I didn't want to be around them. I also later wished that my father hadn't left his parents' farm (which he would've inherited as an only child) because the idea of a "family business" seemed far better than the "cog in a machine" feeling that I've had at my places of employment. I'm often amazed that large societies can stick together and cooperate well at all since I find appeal in small family tribes... even if it means there's a loss of technology and other benefits of a large society. So I do have some natural group tendencies, but they're kind of "primitive." I've tended to keep a very small group of friends over the years, not comfortable in very large groups.

There's many aspects of large society that I love, such as advancements in science and better understanding of the universe, so my "natural" small tribal desires get diminished in that way.

Thanks to that Through the Wormhole episode, I'm starting to read some books by Peter Turchin. He applies mathematics to history to help explain how very large groups form.

EDIT: Despite me naturally being more family-oriented, I don't deny reality. There's many freedoms that people in large societies give up, and I accept them because they're better for everyone. Our gigantic societies are a fact of life now, and there's some behaviors -- such as owning a bunch of automatic weapons -- that aren't good for it as a whole.