Chick’s Corner: Us Versus Them Gets Us Nowhere

Land use is a topic that we’ve gone into some detail here on Off Road Xtreme. Back in March of this year, I did an article on the ordeal of how government officials and off-roaders butt heads on the right to use federally protected U.S. land. The article brought a lot of attention to how organizations – the Off Road Business Association (ORBA), United Four Wheel Drive Association (UFWDA), and SEMA Action Network (SAN) – are taking the fight to Washington to help keep land open, but it glossed over an important point.

The article chose to look at off-roaders as a group: we all love modifying our vehicles, hanging out with friends, climbing over obstacles, and having a good time in the great outdoors. However, on an individual level, our code of conduct can be at best perfect, and at worst destructive. This is where getting into trouble becomes a possibility.

In the field of social psychology, there is a phenomenon known as the out-group homogeneity effect. The basic idea revolves around an individual who belongs to the in-group. The in-group is the one that the individual feels the most kinship with, and he or she can differentiate between the in-group’s members with personal details: personalities, shared memories, tastes, hobbies, and so forth.

So if you have Joe, an off-roader, and his buddies, together they constitute an in-group because everyone knows each other’s traits and quirks, which topics to discuss or not discuss, etc. Despite their love for off-roading, no two members are the same, and this is what gets you in-group heterogeneity: the perception that although they all have the more or less the same taste in vehicles, they all own different rigs and have done different things to them, and are quick to point out these differences if ever lumped together by an outsider.

The intriguing this is, however, that when you ask Joe or his buddies to characterize the enemies of off-road, you might find that they will make sweeping generalizations about such people: hippies, tree-huggers, insane, etc. Because the ideologies of both groups are so far apart, and the improbability that exists that two people in either group will ever find common ideological ground, it causes deep-felt resentment in both parties. This is what constitutes the idea of out-group homogeneity.

What this all speaks to are stereotypes. Stereotypes are joked about or dodged in certain conversations, but we as humans like to use them every so often. I’ve certainly had moments where I’ve lumped drivers together that tried to cut me off or drove on the shoulder in bumper-to-bumper traffic – that’s a stereotype, and all it served was a means to make me feel morally superior in a moment of frustration and anger.

I guess what I’m getting at is that there is more than meets the eye to a simple us versus them scenario, as it is with off-roaders and those who protest or bar us from using land for off-roading. I’ll just leave you with this – if you’re given the opportunity to do something sketchy or illegal when you’re out there in the wilderness, take the high road and don’t give anyone an excuse to label you an “abusive” off-roader.