Psychologist Daniel Goleman recently gave some clues about the perhaps
surprising fact that it’s rather difficult to hate your neighbors because it’s
so easy to see the ways in which they seem to be pretty much like you.
On the other hand, disdain or condescension or indifference or plain
hatred aren’t too hard to conjure up when you thinking about or talking about
people you never see face to face.
Goleman, the author of Emotional
Intelligence, says, for instance, “A growing body of recent
research shows that people with the most social power pay scant attention to
those with little such power.” A big part of the reason is that the powerful
elite don’t see much of the bourgeoisie, or the hoi polloi, or the great
unwashed, or the “little people.”
He says although “. . . research finds that the
poor, compared with the wealthy, have keenly attuned interpersonal attention in
all directions, in general, those with the most power in society seem to pay
particularly little attention to those with the least power.” Out of sight, out
of mind. Very wealthy folks don’t usually encounter the poor in a meaningful
way, and so “rich people just care less” about less fortunate human beings.
The research of Thomas F. Pettigrew, research
professor of social psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz,
finds that “even in areas where ethnic groups were in conflict and viewed one
another through lenses of negative stereotypes, individuals who had close
friends within the other group exhibited little or no such prejudice. They
seemed to realize the many ways those demonized ‘others’ were ‘just like me.’ ”
This research reinforces earlier studies showing
that living in mixed neighborhoods, with a range of ethnic, racial and
socio-economic attributes, tends to minimize racist and discriminatory
attitudes among the residents who share the space.
It’s not impossible to hate your neighbors, but people
tend to mellow when they’re up close and personal….
