ABSTRACT
Are you a Muslim or a Christian? Are you a Serb or a Bosnian? Are you a Catholic or a Protestant? Are you a Flemish or a Walloon? Quite often, questions such as these may come across as casual requests aimed at better knowing another person. After all, the various groups to which we belong shape a myriad of characteristics that contribute to making us the persons we are. We can think of such aspects as musical tastes, culinary preferences, or fashion favorites. We may also allude to somewhat more serious features such as political opinions or philosophical references. In most contexts, we are happy to provide the necessary information as knowledge about the likes and dislikes associated to various social groups will likely make the discussion more instructive. In some cases, however, the answer to inquiries of this kind may involve more dramatic costs. Depending on your membership in certain groups, you are likely to be discriminated against at work, denied full access to certain social services, confronted with restrictions on visits to certain countries, and so on. In extreme situations group membership means life or death for the person being asked. Clearly, the world may well be a global village, but cultural divides of all sorts continue to play a most important role in our everyday life. People not only regulate their feelings, beliefs, and behaviors in accordance with their membership in racial, sexual, ethnic, religious, or ideological groups, and the consequences of this “strategy” are far from trivial.
