You Don't Have To Hate Other Groups To Love Your Own

This a great article. I suggest reading the whole thing.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070818180311.htm

ScienceDaily (Aug. 19, 2007) — Shiite vs. Sunni. Red state vs. Blue state. Immigrant vs. native.

While it may appear that conflict is an inevitable part of interaction between groups, research actually suggests that fighting, hating and contempt between groups is not a necessary part of human nature, according to an Ohio State University professor of psychology.
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Brewer has spent much of her career studying “ingroups” – the groups we belong to – and their relations with “outgroups” – those groups to which others belong.
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Brewer said recent evidence suggests that people's attachment to their ingroups has nothing to do with conflict – or indeed any other kind of relation – to other groups.

Instead, people join groups to find a place of trust and security.

“Simply put, we prefer people of our kind, people we know we can rely on. That doesn't mean you have to hate anyone else. But you will be more likely to trust people from your own group,” Brewer said.

In one recent study, for example, Brewer found that people tended to put more trust in total strangers when they learned this stranger attended the same university they did.

“All you need is to have that shared group identity,” she said.