Haidt’s argument is that color politics and other political mind-killingness are due to a set of adaptations that temporarily lets people merge into a superorganism and set individual interest aside.
This seems more likely to be part of a general set of adaptations and norms for being nice to those like you (often kin or tribe members who you have reciprocal relationships with) and not so nice to strange-looking outsiders, who are not in reciprocal relationships either with you, or with other group members—and are thus poorly motivated to cooperate with you. Such explanations are based on kin selection and reciprocity—and typically make little or no mention of group selection or “superorganisms”.
There’s a field known as “tag-based cooperation”—which is all about the game-theoretic basis of color politics. Here’s one of the papers that launched that field:
This seems more likely to be part of a general set of adaptations and norms for being nice to those like you (often kin or tribe members who you have reciprocal relationships with) and not so nice to strange-looking outsiders, who are not in reciprocal relationships either with you, or with other group members—and are thus poorly motivated to cooperate with you. Such explanations are based on kin selection and reciprocity—and typically make little or no mention of group selection or “superorganisms”.
There’s a field known as “tag-based cooperation”—which is all about the game-theoretic basis of color politics. Here’s one of the papers that launched that field:
Riolo, R.L., Cohen, M.D., Axelrod, R. (2001) Evolution of cooperation without reciprocity.