Nurturing the Cuckoos

Justin Park and Mark Schaller conducted an experiment to test the relationship between attitude similarity and a sense of connectedness between people.  What they found was a strong correlation between similarity in attitudes and a desire to treat a stranger with that similar attitude as “kin.”  

Treating another as “kin” leads to greater willingness to empathize with and offer help to that person, even though that person is a stranger.  Perhaps most striking in the experiment was the correlation between this embrace of the right-thinking stranger and the degree to which a particular subject relied on intuition to make decisions.  This last element indicates, the authors note, “that the activation of kinship cognitions—in response to an attitudinally similar target person—results from a reflexive, nonrational cognitive mechanism” (Park, 2005, p. 165).  Our tendency to treat people with attitudes similar to ours as family takes place prior to and beneath conscious thought and choice.

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”  So goes the old proverb.  How is it that people who would never connect in any other way find each other in the midst of conflict and develop deep and lasting emotional bonds?  Similarity in attitude may trigger family feelings prior to and beneath any conscious thought or choice.  This kinship response may be experienced as an immediate emotional “click.”  I’ve heard that from folks on the same side of a conflict.  “It was like we had always known each other,” they have told me.  “It was so good to talk with someone who sees things the way I do.”  The shared perception of a common enemy can equip relative strangers to battle to the death to defend each other in a communal conflict.

Park and Schaller identified this family feeling produced by attitude similarity as a “heuristic.”  Remember that a heuristic is a rule of thumb we use at a less than conscious level to make decisions about how to behave.  Because attitude similarity is such a heuristic, it is (as the authors note) a “fallible kinship cue.”  By this they mean that we can and do extend the family network to the strangers who seem similar to us, particularly when it comes to attitudes.  We will act on this heuristic without any further conscious—or rationally critical—thought.  We will extend empathy and support to this relative stranger who appears to see the world as we do.  “More than commonly recognized,” Park and Schaller write, “the psychology of kinship may subtly influence behavior in a wide variety of social settings that, from a rational perspective, have nothing to do with kinship” (Park, 2005, p. 167).

What does this mean for dealing with churches, and especially for dealing with those in conflict?  I think about a variety of implications—some in the area of prevention and others in the area of treatment.  I am always anxious about using “family” language to describe a congregation.  That set of metaphors is a double-edged sword.  When the church family is working well, that sense of closeness and connection is a powerful tool for mission and service.  People who interact as family have levels of trust, mutual regard, empathy, and mutual sacrifice that can really power the work of the Church. 

It is no accident that Jesus uses “family” metaphors to describe the common life of his disciples.  Of course, what binds that family together is a commitment to the values of the Reign of God.  He challenges his crowds of listeners with these words: “‘Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?’ And pointing to his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.’”  In most congregations, doing God’s will is not the primary basis for the feeling of “family” in the community.  Instead, there is a commitment to keeping all the members of the family happy and placid.  Outsiders who do not comply with the requirements of that shared attitude will, at some point be regarded as threats and even as enemies.

The “family” metaphor is a wonderful label for those who are already part of the family.  It can be daunting and exclusive for those who are not part of that family.  If attitudinal compliance is the price of kinship in the local congregation, there are many current strangers who will not pay that price.

What is to be done about this?  When we know what is happening, we can take steps to monitor our attitudes and to change our behavior.  In simple terms, people in local congregations can spend time and energy getting acquainted with the “strangers” around them.  Some of those strangers will sit next to us in the church pews.  Many of them will not come to us, so we must go to them.  If we can become familiar with the views and attitudes, the hopes and dreams, the needs and fears of those who are not part of our “family,” we will be more likely to embrace them with understanding, empathy and service.

One of the insights in the Park and Schaller study is that this “similar attitude” heuristic is not particularly accurate in assessing who our genetic kin may be.  “Kin recognition depends on inferences from necessarily imperfect perceptual cues,” they notes, “and is therefore fallible—often, it seems, in an overinclusive manner” (Park, 2005, p. 167).  They remind us of the tendency for reed warblers to nurture cuckoo chicks whose eggs get slipped into their nests.  They do this rather than to exclude any possible offspring of their own.  If we can spend time and energy interacting with those who are not like us, we will be much more likely to take them into our church nests and nurture them as our own.  Is this not the fundamental outreach strategy Jesus uses?  “Now all the tax-collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them’” (Luke 15:1-2).