Community Media, Social Cohesion and Zero-Sum Thinking

DALL·E 2024-06-17 21.59.32 - A television sales room in a department store set in a British working-class town in the 1970s. The room features retro decor with wood-paneled walls

One aspect that has been largely overlooked in the current General Election campaign is the media policy of the different political parties. With the passing of the Media Act, the role of the media in fostering or undermining social cohesion has not been sufficiently addressed in the debates about social renewal and change. Media policy affects how different groups are represented, how information is disseminated, and how public opinion is shaped. A media policy that promotes diversity, pluralism, and quality journalism can contribute to social cohesion by enhancing mutual understanding, trust, and civic participation. A media policy that allows concentration, bias, and misinformation can harm social cohesion by creating polarization, distrust, and alienation. Therefore, it is crucial to examine the media policies of the parties and their implications for social cohesion in the country.

Social cohesion is not a zero-sum game, indeed, it’s certain to say that a zero-sum mindset is detrimental to social cohesion and cooperation between groups. A zero-sum mindset views relationships and interactions as a win-lose situation, where one party’s gain necessitates another’s loss.[i] This opposes the idea of social cohesion, which requires cooperation and mutual benefit between groups. Social cohesion requires the normalisation of cooperation, non-discrimination, and non-violence between different identity groups in a society.[ii]

A zero-sum view is the opposite to a collaborative and tolerant mindset, as it promotes conflict rather than cohesion.[iii] Belief in a zero-sum game as a “social axiom” leads to aggressive, adversarial interactions aimed at securing limited resources rather than finding mutually beneficial solutions. This undermines collective action for public goods, which require social cohesion, mutual understanding and the tolerance of one another’s standpoint, experiences and potential contribution.[iv]

Research shows that greater social cohesion facilitates economic growth by enabling cooperation, reducing conflict, and allowing better utilisation of human resources without discrimination. A zero-sum perspective works against these benefits.[v] Evidence across multiple sources indicates that a zero-sum mindset erodes social cohesion by promoting an ‘us vs them’ mentality and conflictual relationships between groups, contrary to the norms of cooperation and mutual gain required for a cohesive society.

Erosion of Social Trust

A zero-sum mindset erodes social trust and cooperation. Holding a generalised zero-sum view of the world, where one person’s gain necessitates another’s loss, undermines trust across interpersonal and institutional relationships.[vi] People with a stronger zero-sum mindset systematically underestimate the potential benefits of trust, leading to lower behavioural trust in economic games measuring trust.

A zero-sum mindset can lead to the thwarting of a society’s ability to flourish by diminishing trust and cooperation, which are foundational for wellbeing and social cohesion. Perceiving relationships and interactions through a zero-sum lens tends to promote an ‘us vs them’ mentality, with increased hostility, founded on adversarial strategies aimed at securing limited resources rather than finding mutually beneficial solutions.[vii] This opposes the norms of reciprocity and mutual gain required for social trust. Across multiple studies with over 3,000 participants, the evidence indicates that a generalised zero-sum mindset leads to erosion of trust, lower commitment to democracy, increased social polarisation, and ultimately hinders cooperation to overcome shared challenges.[viii]

Evolutionary Origins

Research from multiple sources consistently shows that a zero-sum mindset, the belief that gains for one party must come at the expense of others, undermines social trust by promoting conflictual relationships, hostility between groups, and adversarial motivations contrary to the foundations of trust and cooperation in society.

Zero-sum thinking has roots in evolutionary psychology, cognitive biases like zero-sum bias and win-win denial, and generalised belief systems about the scarcity of resources and antagonistic social relations.[ix] One proposed ultimate cause is that zero-sum thinking may have evolved as a psychological adaptation to facilitate successful resource competition in ancestral environments where resources like mates, status, and food were perpetually scarce.[x]

The slow pace of technological growth during human evolution meant individuals lived in a world of constant resources with no observable growth, providing no incentive to evolve mechanisms for understanding economic growth.[xi]

A factor that may have contributed to the emergence of zero-sum thinking is the dependence of early humans on the fluctuations and cycles of natural resources, such as plants, animals, water, and weather. These resources were often unpredictable, seasonal, and limited in supply, making human survival precarious and subject to nature’s whims. It was only with the development of rudimentary technology and systems, such as tools, agriculture, irrigation, and trade, that humans could create and maintain more stable and permanent surpluses of resources. This enabled them to form sedentary groups and tribes that eventually evolved into complex societies and civilizations.

Zero-sum thinking also seems to arise with or from certain psychological and cognitive biases and heuristics, including:

Zero-Sum Bias: The tendency to intuitively judge situations as zero-sum, even when they are not. This promotes zero-sum fallacies like the fixed-pie fallacy in economics.
Win-Win Denial: The psychological inability to recognise mutually beneficial transactions as creating joint gains. This denial of win-win situations contributes to zero-sum perceptions of economic exchanges.
Mercantilist Thinking: Viewing economic exchanges through the lens of relative wealth comparisons rather than absolute gains. This zero-sum framing fails to recognise mutual benefits.

Zero-sum thinking may be a psychological defence mechanism to cope with the uncertainties and complexities of life, especially in situations of scarcity, conflict, or competition. By simplifying reality into a binary opposition of winners and losers, zero-sum thinkers can avoid the cognitive dissonance and emotional distress that may arise from acknowledging multiple perspectives, interests, and values. Zero-sum thinking may also serve as a way of protecting one’s identity and sense of belonging against perceived threats from others who are different or unfamiliar. By attributing negative intentions and outcomes to the out-group, zero-sum thinkers can maintain a positive self-image and justify their actions.

Moreover, zero-sum thinking may reflect a difficulty in appreciating the diversity and richness of human cultures and traditions, which often have different mythological, archetypal, and symbolic meanings and expressions. By reducing cultural differences to a single dimension of comparison, zero-sum thinkers can avoid the challenge of understanding and learning from other world-views and narratives.

Generalised Beliefs

Zero-sum thinking typically manifests as a generalised belief system about the antagonistic nature of social relations and the implicit assumption that resources are finite, so one person’s gain necessitates another’s loss. This belief in a zero-sum world seems to shape recursive thinking processes across domains.[xii]

One of the challenges of overcoming zero-sum thinking is that it requires a capacity, energy and daring to see beyond the fixed parameters that define the status quo. Zero-sum thinkers may lack or resist these qualities, as they involve intuitive and idealistic domains that contrast with the concrete and sense-oriented perceiving that is their comfort zone. Avoiding idealism is a legitimate concern for the conservation of a society, but if all expressions of idealism are stymied, then innovation, creativity and adaptation become limited. A balance between realism and idealism is needed to foster a non-zero-sum perspective that recognizes the potential for mutual benefit and cooperation in social relations.

For example, several key cultural factors that can influence the prevalence of zero-sum thinking:

Legacy of Oppression: Findings suggest the inherently zero-sum nature of oppression, both within the economic and social systems, has contributed to more zero-sum thinking among working-class people today, especially those with limited or low social mobility opportunities.[xiii]
Immigration History: A family history of immigration is often associated with less zero-sum thinking, likely due to the perception that immigration expands economic opportunities in a non-zero-sum way. Exposure to higher immigration levels in one’s ancestral communities also reduces zero-sum beliefs.
Intergenerational Economic Mobility: Greater experienced upward mobility across generations is linked to less zero-sum thinking, aligning with the American Dream ideal of an expanding economic pie.
Exposure to Economic Growth: Early life exposure to higher economic growth rates is negatively associated with zero-sum thinking across many countries, likely shaping beliefs about potential for mutual gains.[xiv]
Cooperative Economic Activities: Historical engagement in mutually beneficial trade and economic cooperation between groups, rather than zero-sum exploitation, seems to reduce hostile zero-sum attitudes.[xv]
Ideological Divisions: While ideology is clearly related, cultural factors likely influence the extent to which people perceive situations as zero-sum across the political spectrum.[xvi]

In essence, cultural experiences that reinforce beliefs about expanding economic opportunities, cooperation, and mutual gains tend to reduce zero-sum thinking, while legacies of oppression, exploitation, and relative deprivation promote more zero-sum mindsets.[xvii]

Perceptions of Inequality

Zero-sum thinking is closely linked to attitudes towards social inequality and support for redistributive policies aimed at reducing inequality. Those with a stronger zero-sum mindset tend to view economic and social inequalities as a zero-sum game, where gains for some groups come at the expense of others. They are more likely to perceive the success of the rich or advantaged groups as directly causing the disadvantages faced by the poor or marginalised groups.

Individuals exhibiting more zero-sum thinking show greater support for redistributive policies like higher taxes on the wealthy, income transfers, and social programs to correct perceived imbalances.

They are more inclined to want the government to intervene and redistribute resources from the winners to the losers, to offset the perceived zero-sum dynamics. This extends to support for policies like affirmative action aimed at boosting disadvantaged racial/gender groups, which zero-sum thinkers see as being held back by the advantages of majority groups.

Conversely, zero-sum thinking is associated with less support for policies perceived as benefiting one group at the expense of others, like immigration. Those with a more zero-sum world view tend to oppose immigration, seeing immigrants as gaining resources and opportunities that come at the cost of native-born citizens.

Zero-sum thinking, the belief that one party’s gains necessitate another’s losses, shapes views on social inequality as an inherently zero-sum situation. This then increases support for redistributive policies to “correct” perceived imbalances but reduces support for policies like immigration viewed through a zero-sum lens.

Norms of Cooperation

Zero-sum thinking frames social cohesion in a detrimental way, by promoting an us vs. them mentality and conflictual relationships between groups, undermining the norms of cooperation and mutual benefit required for a cohesive society. This includes:

Zero-sum thinking views relationships and interactions as a win-lose situation, where one party’s gain necessitates another’s loss. This opposes the idea of social cohesion, which requires cooperation between different groups for mutual benefit.
Social cohesion involves norms of trust, cooperation, non-discrimination, and non-violence across diverse identity groups in a society. A zero-sum world view promotes hostile, adversarial attitudes contrary to these norms.
Belief in a zero-sum world as a social axiom motivates aggressive strategies aimed at securing limited resources rather than finding collaborative solutions for shared challenges. This undermines collective action for public goods, which requires social cohesion.
Across countries, stronger zero-sum beliefs are associated with less support for policies perceived as expanding the economic pie, like immigration, which is seen through a zero-sum lens of immigrants gaining at the expense of natives.
Historically, cultural experiences of oppression, exploitation, and relative deprivation tend to reinforce zero-sum thinking, while exposure to economic growth, cooperation, and mutual gains reduces it.

Zero-sum thinking therefore erodes social cohesion by viewing group relations through an antagonistic, conflictual lens where one group’s advancement comes at the cost of others, contrary to the cooperative norms and mutual benefit required for a cohesive society.

Community Media’s Positive Contribution

Community media can play a pivotal role in challenging the zero-sum mindset and fostering social cohesion by promoting narratives and practices that highlight cooperation, mutual benefit, and inclusivity. Here are several ways community media can contribute constructively:

Promoting Inclusive Narratives: Community media can amplify voices from diverse backgrounds, providing platforms for underrepresented groups to share their stories and perspectives. By showcasing the benefits of diversity and mutual cooperation, community media can counteract the divisive “us vs. them” mentality inherent in zero-sum thinking.
Facilitating Dialogue and Understanding: Through talk shows, podcasts, and forums, community media can facilitate open dialogues between different community groups. These interactions can break down stereotypes, build empathy, and foster a better understanding of the common challenges and aspirations that unite different groups.
Highlighting Success Stories: Community media can spotlight successful examples of cooperation and mutual aid within the community. By sharing stories of collaborative projects, intergroup partnerships, and communal achievements, media can demonstrate the tangible benefits of a cohesive society where collective action leads to shared prosperity.
Educational Campaigns: Educational programs and content can raise awareness about the detrimental effects of zero-sum thinking and promote the principles of social cohesion. Workshops, documentaries, and articles can educate the public on topics such as economic cooperation, the benefits of diversity, and the importance of social trust.
Creating Participatory Platforms: Engaging the community in the production of media content fosters a sense of ownership and investment in the community’s narrative. Participatory media projects encourage collaboration among different community members, helping to build relationships and trust through shared creative efforts.
Showcasing Positive Role Models: Highlighting local leaders and community members who embody the principles of cooperation and mutual benefit can inspire others to adopt similar attitudes. Role models who actively promote social cohesion can influence public opinion and encourage more inclusive behaviour.
Addressing Misconceptions and Misinformation: Community media can play a crucial role in debunking myths and countering misinformation that fuels zero-sum thinking. By providing accurate information and presenting well-researched counter-narratives, media can challenge false beliefs about resource scarcity and competition.
Encouraging Civic Engagement: Promoting civic participation and involvement in community projects can strengthen social bonds and collective efficacy. Community media can inform residents about opportunities for engagement and highlight the positive impact of communal efforts on local well-being.
Building Digital Communities: Online community media platforms can connect individuals from diverse backgrounds, fostering virtual spaces where people can share experiences and support each other. These digital communities can transcend geographical boundaries, promoting a broader sense of solidarity and shared purpose.

For example, community radio stations might host a weekly program where residents discuss collaborative initiatives, share personal stories of overcoming division, and engage in live discussions with listeners about fostering unity. Simultaneously, the station’s social media channels could feature short videos and infographics that highlight the benefits of social cohesion and debunk common zero-sum misconceptions.

One of the benefits of community media is that it involves the active participation of the people in the creation and dissemination of information. This not only improves their media literacy skills, but also helps them to develop social competencies and capabilities. These capabilities are based on an intercultural understanding of the experiences of the people who come together to share their stories and discuss topics in a non-confrontational and objective manner. Participation in community media enables the people to learn from each other, appreciate different perspectives, and respect diversity. It also empowers them to express their opinions and concerns, and to collaborate with others for positive social change.

In conclusion, community media has the potential to significantly challenge zero-sum thinking by fostering narratives of cooperation, providing platforms for diverse voices, and educating the public on the benefits of social cohesion. By doing so, it can help build a more integrated and harmonious society.