On Tue, 05 Apr 2011 17:55:26 -0700, Stuart McKelvie wrote: >>Dear Tipsters, >>D. O. Hebb made a similar argument years ago when he reported >>the fearful reaction of chimpanzees to disconnected chimpanzee heads. >>He speculated that there is an innate fear of the strange, which could >>form the basis of prejudice.
Which was in response to: >On Sent: 05 April 2011 20:39, Paul C Bernhardt wrote: >Possibly uncovering some evolutionary background for it? > > http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=evolution-of-prejudice I admit to being puzzled by the article and what appear to be assumptions for explaining what is going on. Let me make a few points: (1) I am deeply troubled by the last sentence in the article: |By taking into account the extent to which prejudice is deeply |rooted in our brains, we have a better chance of coming up |with long-term solutions that work with, rather than against, |our natural tendencies. I must have missed it in the article but I don't remember there being any evidence to show that "prejudice is deeply rooted in out brains". If one is saying that prejudice is learned, then, of course, assuming that cognitive processing occurs in the brain, it is rooted to some degree in the brain (probably in "prejudice center" which might be close the "pleasure center" since both of these centers start with a word that begins with "P"). If one is saying that prejudice is deeply rooted in the brain because it is somehow genetic, then I wonder what the evidence for this is? What genes are involved? And is it the case that the genes for prejudice in monkeys are the same as those in humans? Hmmmmm. (2) The Implicit Association Task (IAT) was used with monkeys to show that they had a pattern of response/attitude of "ingroup member/good" and "outgroup member/bad" in contrast to the pattern of response/attitude of "ingroup/bad" and "outgroup/good" or no association between ingroup/outgroup status and good-bad. One traditional explanation for the performance on the human version of, say, the White racial stereotype IAT is that the person has learned to associate positive evaluation with White people and negative evaluation with Black or African-American people. Typically, one measures RT on a speeded recognition task and then examines the RT pattern to determine which pattern of associations one has. People who have the traditional White racial stereotype would show a pattern of: Mean RT(White-Good/Black-Bad stimuli) < Mean RT(White-Bad/Black-Good) This has sometimes been referred to as the "Pro-White" bias. People who are "Pro-Black" show the opposite pattern, namely, Mean RT(White-Good/Black-Bad) > Mean RT(White-Bad/Black-Good) In the instances above, the faster RT is interpreted as representing a priming effect of processing associated stimuli. So, the Pro-White pattern means that one already has associated with being White with positive evaluation and being Black with negative evaluation. I focus on this point because of the following statement in the article: |If a person is quicker to associate “bad” with African-American |faces compared to European-American faces, this suggests that |he or she harbors an implicit bias against African-Americans. The problem is the wording "quicker to associate". The author perhaps meant to say "quicker to respond" because the association is already present -- the quicker response is due to the existing association of White-Good/Black-Bad. Perhaps the author didn't want to use the statement "quicker to respond" because (a) she would have had to explain why the response was quicker (pre-existing association) and (b) why reaction time was relevant because it didn't appear to be the dependent variable used in the Mahajan study. (Note: it is possible to have Mean RT(White-good/Black-bad) = Mean RT(White-bad/Black-good) which would mean there is no association between race and evaluation, that is, a neutral attitude toward races). (3) I have not read the article being described in the article but I am going to guess that there is a mash-up of the IAT task and the "duration of gaze" procedure used with infants (i.e., an infant looks at a novel stimulus longer than a familiar stimulus). being used. This would explain why a monkey would look longer at a "novel" stimulus. But wait a minute: is looking at a stimulus longer in the duration of gaze procedure equivalent to responding faster to Mean RT(ingroup-good/outgroup-bad) relative to Mean RT(ingroup-bad/outgroup-good)? At first blush, I don't think so. I would have to read the rationale for the combination of these two procedure and how the combined procedure related to the traditional IAT task. (4) I routinely use the IAT task on the opl.apa.org in my experimental psych lab course and from my reading of the literature, there is no reason to assume that the White racial stereotype task results are genetically based. Indeed, there are several studies that show how to unlearn the associations (as the author of the SciAm article acknowledges). A student of mine who worked for a major accounting company told me after we had conducted the IAT experiment that her company was bringing in Mahzarin Banaji (one of the creators of the IAT) as a consultant to aid them in their "lack of female executives problem" (the male dominated upper management apparently didn't associate being a women with being a top manager). So, the association can be unlearned or kept under control -- why then are genetics or brain function relevant if modifying behaviors and cognitions and eliminate prejudice? In summary, interesting article with a nice monkey with a heavy dose of pop-neuroscience interpretation for what might be best interpreted in terms of learning/experience and the corresponding associations stored in LTM between concept (i.e., White/Black people; Ingroup/Outgroup) and automatic positive or negative evaluation. Or, consider the lyrics of this song from "South Pacific": |"You've got to be taught to hate and fear |You've got to be taught from year to year |It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear |You've got to be carefully taught | |You've got to be taught to be afraid |Of people whose eyes are oddly made |And people whose skin is a different shade |You've got to be carefully taught | |You've got to be taught before it's too late |Before you are six or seven or eight |To hate all the people your relatives hate |You've got to be carefully taught " Rodgers and Hammerstein, South Pacific "You've got to be carefully taught" -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=9833 or send a blank email to leave-9833-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
