Our brains make us-them distinctions extremely quickly
Our brains form In-group and out-group dichotomies with stunning speed. Fifty-millisecond exposure to the face of someone of another race activates the amygdala, while failing to activate the fusiform face area as much as same-race faces do—all within a few hundred milliseconds. Similarly, the brain groups faces by gender or social status at roughly the same speed.
Rapid, automatic biases against a out-group can be demonstrated with the fiendishly clever Implicit Association Test. Suppose you are unconsciously prejudiced against trolls. To simplify the IAT enormously: A computer screen flashes either pictures of humans or trolls or words with positive connotations (e.g., “honest”) or negative ones (“deceitful”). Sometimes the rule is “If you see a human or a positive term, press the red button; if it’s a troll or a negative term, press the blue button.” And sometimes it’s “Human or negative term, press red; troll or positive term, press blue.” Because of your anti-troll bias, pairing a troll with a positive term, or a human with a negative, is discordant and slightly distracting. Thus you pause for a few milliseconds before pressing a button.
References
- Sapolsky, Robert. (2017). Behave Chapter 11. Us Versus Them (p. 441). New York, NY: Penguin Random House.
Metadata
Type:🔴 Tags: Biology / Neuroscience / Psychology / Neuropsychology / Social Psychology / Sociology Status:☀️