When People Sit Down to Dinner Together, They Tend to Be

When people sit down to dinner together, they tend to be civil and polite--and if they sit down to dinner repeatedly (e.g., as a family, as part of a book club), they may be more tolerant of behavior or ideas from other group members that they might find unacceptable from people outside the group. However, if people get into a discussion on social media, disagreements between them can quickly become far more angry and hostile than they would around the dinner table. Explain this behavioral difference by relating it to the concepts of community and social identity.