A lot of chatter about this article in Scientific American which discusses research that shows the area of the brain involved with prejudice and the success of focusing on similarity to reduce it.
This is a subject I am fascinated by, if I had to pick a single criterion to judge people by it wouldn’t be how nice they are, but how nice they are to people who are not part of their tribe.
I have noticed, for example, that people who belong to very strong social or cultural groups are more friendly than average if you belong to that group, or if you accept the mores of that group. The same people are less friendly if you don’t belong or go along, and most intransigent when it comes to personal compromise in order to eliminate personal differences between groups.
This can be anything from what team you support, skin color, religion, nationality or taste.
In other words, a civilized society depends not on the people who are currently the most civilized, but those who are most willing to accept change, as social or cultural groupings change, split or coalesce.
Inevitably this means reasonable people rather than faithful people.