ABSTRACT
A looming question for the LeVine and Campbell project was about the validity of Sumner’s assertion that the ethnocentrism syndrome is a universal feature of humans in all societies. Their project accepted this assumption and compared various theoretical explanations for its occurrence. In contrast, the article presented in this section treats the assertion as a hypothesis and evaluates it with data from an Inter-Nation Simulation. The question asked was whether all the simulated nations displayed an ethnocentric bias. The answer was yes with qualifications. The historical antecedents of the study of ethnocentrism as a sociopsychological syndrome can be traced back to Gumplowicz’s “natural theory of State”. The Inter-Nation Simulation is comprised of a system of interacting units that consist of teams of individuals. The unit-actors represent “nations.” The nation is a cluster of roles. Two types of roles are created, decision-makers and validators.
