Study: the tighter we interact with other people, the more intolerant to them

Since the telegraph was built in the 19th century, people believed that advances in communication technology would promote social harmony. The more we learned about each other, the more we would recognize that we are one. In an article in 1899 devoted to the laying of transatlantic cables by Western Union, a New York Times columnist expressed a well-known thought: “Nothing contributes to mutual understanding and common interests like cheap, fast and convenient communications.”

The creation of radio, telephone and television in the 20th century only reinforced this idea. Destroying the boundaries and erasing differences, they united the planet. The famous Italian radio engineer and Nobel Prize winner in physics, Guglielmo Marconi, stated in 1912 that the invention of radio "would make war impossible, because it would make it ridiculous." AT & T chief engineer John Carti predicted in an interview in 1923 that the telephone system "would connect all the peoples of the earth into one fraternity."
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In his 1962 book, Gutenberg's Galaxy, a media theorist Marshall McLuhan created the memorable term “global village”, describing the world's new electronic interdependence. Most people took this phrase optimistically, as a prophecy about the inevitable social progress. What, after all, can be better than a village?

If our assumption that communication unites people would be true, then today we should have observed universal peace, love and understanding. Thanks to the Internet and cellular networks, humankind is more connected than ever. The UN reports that out of 7 billion people worldwide, 6 billion have access to a mobile phone. Nearly 2 billion people use Facebook, more than a billion download and download videos on YouTube, and more than a billion communicate via instant messengers like WhatsApp and WeChat. With a smartphone in hand, everyone becomes a media center, continuously transmitting and receiving information.

But we live in capricious times, determined not by agreements, but by conflicts. Xenophobia is growing, political and social gaps are widening. For many years, psychological and sociological studies have questioned the idea that communication dissolves differences. Studies show that the opposite is true: free access to information makes personal and cultural differences more noticeable, setting people against one another, rather than uniting them.

In a series of experiments published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2007, a psychologist from Harvard, Michael Norton and two colleagues found that, contrary to our instincts, the more we learn information about someone else, the more we tend to dislike this person . “Although people believe that knowledge leads to favor, more knowledge actually leads to a decrease in sympathy,” the researchers write.

Worse, they found evidence from the theory that as we get more information about others, we focus more on the differences between us, rather than similarities. This tendency to emphasize differences increases as information accumulates.

An earlier study, published in 1976, revealed a similar pattern in communities. Three professors from the University of California at San Diego studied a condominium near Los Angeles, revealing the relationship between neighbors. They found that as people live more closely, the likelihood that they will become friends increases, but the likelihood that they will be hostile increases even more. Scientists have discovered that the more we get closer to others, the harder it is to avoid increasingly annoying habits.

This effect is enhanced in the virtual world, where everyone is in sight. Social networks and instant messengers contribute to continuous self-disclosure. One study found that people publish four times more information about themselves than when they talk to the other person face to face.

Too much personal information can create an oppressive sense of “digital glut” that British scientists wrote about in 2011. It can lead to stress and provoke antisocial reactions. The researchers concluded that with the advent of social networks, we will eventually learn more about people, which is more likely to lead to dislike them.

In addition to misanthropy, social networks may reveal the darker sides of the human person. In a 2014 article, three Canadian psychologists reported on research that found that people with sadistic inclinations are usually among the most active commentators on online forums. It turned out that the "trolls" get pleasure from inflicting psychological pain on others, just like people with other sadistic inclinations. And although it is not clear whether the Internet generates cruelty, or simply encourages it, the results of the work fell into a body of evidence linking the excessive use of technology with anti-socialism.

Despite his occasional utopian rhetoric, Marshall McLuhan himself had no illusions about life in a global village. He saw them as inherently tribal relations with pronounced distrust, prone to viciousness and violence. “When people get closer to each other, they become more and more wild and impatient,” he said in a television interview in 1977. “The global village is a place of very complex interactions and acute situations.”

Nevertheless, the desire to see in communication technologies a means of social problems is becoming more common and significant. In early 2017, the founder of the Facebook social network, Mark Zuckerberg, wrote a public letter expressing serious ambitions. He announced that Facebook is expanding its mission of connecting friends and families to create a global community that works for everyone. The ultimate goal is to transform the already huge social network into a kind of supranational “state” encompassing various cultures, nations and regions.

Despite the widespread publicity that Facebook’s recent struggle for control of hate speech, violence, and fake news has received, Zuckerberg is more than ever sure that a “global community” can be created through software.

The central element of his new project is a computerized “social infrastructure,” which will use the capabilities of artificial intelligence to manage information flows in such a way that everyone will be satisfied. The system will promote universal expression and at the same time protect individuals from unwanted content.

However, researchers believe that such ambitious plans go beyond human nature. Progress towards a more friendly world requires not only technological magic, but also concrete, painstaking and generally human measures: negotiations and compromises, emphasis on citizenship and reasoned debates of citizens, able to appreciate opposing perspectives. On a personal level, we may need less self-expression and more introspection.

Technology is an amplifier that simultaneously works with both the best and the worst features of a person. But he cannot make us better - we cannot hoist this work on cars.