Coalitions compete in a collective, zero-sum fashion for status (relative entitlement to determine outcomes); lack of support for inflammatory representations, however inaccurate, is seen as immoral & disloyal

Tableaux, camera angles and outrage lock: the political cognition and cultural epidemiology of group-relevant events. John Tooby. Human Behavior and Evolution Society 31st annual meeting. Boston 2019. http://tiny.cc/aa1w6y

Abstract: Coalitions compete in a collective, zero-sum fashion for status (relative entitlement to determine outcomes). This selected for an evolved, group-directed motivational system that is designed to link individuals together to act as a unit to enhance, defend or repair their status, or initiate aggression in the interest of exploitive supremacism. The status of the group is a public good to its members. Hence, harms (“outrages”) to one or more members of the ingroup (or proxy members) by one or more members of an outgroup advertise potentially undeterred mistreatment as a new public precedent for tolerated mistreatment and low status. Typically, joint attention on outrages triggers collective responses, and so representations of outrages and grievances function as group-mobilizing resources, and are nurtured, embroidered, and exaggerated for their utility in advancing the group’s interests, including in subordinating outgroup members. Lack of support for inflammatory representations, however inaccurate, is treated as immoral and disloyal, leading to outrage lock, where extreme representations maintain themselves in the group long after whatever underlying reality has dissipated. The cultural epidemiology of representations of significant outrages and emblematic events become cognitively stylized imagery—what might be called tableaux—built out of underlying evolved systems of situation representation.