Finally, even in a free society, powerful government pressure can influence reporting. Some of this pressure is direct. The FBI in the late 1960s pressured Columbia Records and other companies to stop advertising in underground newspapers that opposed the Vietnam War.23 As a result, many of these newspapers went bankrupt. Subtler pressure is produced by government requests to underplay, not report, or report in a particular way certain events – or simply by knowledge of what the government would prefer. This power of government has many sources, including its ability to regulate access to news.
Self-censorship may be an intentional decision, a barely conscious bias, or an unconscious screening of reality. This cognitive screening can involve “dissociation,” the keeping out of consciousness aspects of life or reality that do not fit cultural self-conception and values. For example, members of the media probably screened out clues about atrocities in Vietnam before My Lai because they were discrepant from Americans’ views of themselves. Because the screening and the resulting dissociation are shared by the group, the distortions are difficult to detect. Attempts to call awareness to it will generate hostility. It is essential to promote public discussion that enhances awareness of self-censorship and its sources. One way to correct cognitive screening is to take seriously the voices of those who claim to point to a reality we do not see, even if they present an unpleasant image of us.
Self-censorship can work in many directions. Conservatives have claimed that the media have a liberal bias. This is debatable. In the mid-1980s there have been reports of atrocities by the Contras in Nicaragua. Especially because the United States was directly involved, “objective” reporting would have included pictures on television and in the papers of the aftermath of brutal Contra attacks on civilians. Such reporting did not occur. Whatever political orientation is its main victim, self-censorship impedes the natural processes of a free society.
a One reason Oliver North struck such a chord in the American people may be Americans’ ambivalent relationship to authority. In his testimony at the Iran-Contra congressional hearings North showed disrespect for members of congress and lectured them on a number of topics including patriotism, while professing deep respect for and obedience to the president. Respect for authority combined with a realistic sense of its limitations and imperfections makes a nation less vulnerable to excesses that might arise from a strong authority orientation.
18 The creation and evolution of caring, connection, and nonaggression
Changing cultures and the relations between societies
Crosscutting relations and superordinate goals
As I have noted, human beings tend to create “us” – “them” differentiations and stereotypes. Constrasting ourselves with others is a way to define the self. We see our values and way of life as natural and good and easily see others who diverge as bad. By preadolescence even trivial differences in clothing, musical preference, appearance, or behavior may cause substantial devaluation.
Crosscutting relations (a term proposed by Morton Deutsch) among subgroups of society and between nations can overcome these tendencies.1 To evolve an appreciation of alikeness and a feeling of connectedness, members of subgroups of society must live together, work together, play together; their children must go to school together. Members of different nations must also work and play together. Social psychologists found in the 1950s that given existing prejudice, it was not enough for blacks and whites simply to live near each other. To reduce prejudice requires positive contact. Later, as schools were integrated, minority children continued to do less well academically and had poor self-esteem. Cooperative learning procedures, which led to extensive interaction on an equal footing, increased the prosocial behavior of all children and the academic achievement and self-esteem of minority children. Real interaction in a framework of equality is essential for people to come to know and accept each other.
Ideally, people will join in the pursuit of shared goals. “Superordinate goals” are goals that are shared by individuals or groups and that are higher in the hierarchy than other potentially conflicting goals.2 Such goals express and further generate shared values and ideals. For example, in the civil rights movement in the United States, whites and blacks joined. In many other grass-roots movements in the United States diverse groups of people work together.a Economic well-being, protection of the environment, the creation of community, and working against nuclear destruction may become shared, superordinate goals.
We can begin in a small way. For example, in 1985 in Amherst, Massachusetts, old and young residents, members of the local police, and university professors and students joined to build a playground at one of the local elementary schools. For four days they worked, talked, and ate together. Those present were transported by the experience. People who came on the first day to work a four-hour shift remained until the end. A shared goal provided an opportunity and the permission to be part of a community. Similar events have occurred in other towns of the Northeast, under the direction of the same architect.
An outgrowth of this community action was a larger-scale collaborative effort at the nearby campus of the University of Massachusetts. The graduating class of 1985 cleaned, repaired, and painted one floor of the library building. The project was initiated by the director of the university’s physical plant, who had participated in building the playground. In the fall of 1986, students, faculty, administrators, staff members, and some Amherst residents, under the leadership of volunteers from the physical plant, repaired and repainted in four days the remaining 23 floors of the huge library. I believe this joint effort greatly improved cohesion within
