Amerika

People still do it for that sense of group approval:

Su­i­cide at­tacks—today most of­ten as­so­ci­at­ed with acts against Amer­i­cans or Is­raelis by Mus­lims—seem to be one as­pect of a wid­er phe­nom­e­non in which col­lec­tive re­li­gious rit­u­al fos­ters a mind­set known as pa­ro­chi­al al­tru­ism, ac­cord­ing to psy­chol­o­gists. Pa­ro­chi­al al­tru­ism is a com­bina­t­ion of neg­a­tive at­ti­tudes to­ward an­oth­er so­cial group and sac­ri­fice for one’s own.

Su­i­cide at­tacks would be an ex­treme form of pa­ro­chi­al al­tru­ism, said the psy­chol­o­gists who con­ducted the stu­dy, from the New School for So­cial Re­search in New York and the Uni­ver­s­ity of Brit­ish Co­lum­bia. And when forms of pa­ro­chi­al al­tru­ism oth­er than su­i­cide at­tacks were con­sid­ered, the re­search­ers found many cul­tures and re­li­gions fol­lowed the pat­tern iden­ti­fied in the Mid­dle East.

World Science

This “parochial altruism” explains many dysfunctional behaviors in our own society, like ethnocide, which is probably why our media and pundits foam at the mouth when talking about Islam.

Tags: cognitive dissonance, parochial altruism