This Is Your Brain on Stereotypes

This Is Your Brain on Stereotypes — page 3

This Is Your Brain on Stereotypes — page 4 — Chapter 1 Perception Deception Some scientists believe stereotypes are part of our genetic code and evolved to help us recognize members of our own families or tribes This would have been a vital skill thousands of years ago Other researchers argue that we're not born understanding stereotypes we learn them from our parents and absorb them from society Because we find them useful we learn them quickly and we're reluctant to give them up Either way we've all got them Think about these labels terrorist senior citizen hip hop artist environmentalist Each of these probably conjures an image in your mind If you could capture those images and compare them with pictures from the minds of your friends you'd find many similarities Seniors use glasses terrorists carry guns Hip hop artists have tattoos environmentalists eat tofu These snapshots serve as mental shortcuts and they're sometimes useful If you invite your new environmentalist friend over for lunch the stereotype in your brain might help you remember to ask Hey are you a vegetarian In other ways stereotypes are scary They can lead us to judge people unfairly before we really know them

This Is Your Brain on Stereotypes — page 5 — Cranium Crackpots In the 1800s scientists were super committed to figuring out how people fit into categories Some measured people's craniums trying to prove that skull shape and brain size affected intelligence Others measured nose width or the space between people's eyes There was just one teensy problem those scientists were trying to show that upper class white people were best They were all trying to justify their own stereotypes A few scientists took this sort of research even further One of the most influential was an English guy named Francis Galton He studied everything you can think of statistics society the brain geography weather patterns and human hearing He figured out how to classify fingerprints and how to track storms Francis's cousin was Charles Darwin Yup THE Charles Darwin the guy who came up with the theory of evolution Thanks to his famous cuz Francis knew that traits are passed from parents to offspring He knew that the strongest creatures are best able to survive These concepts prompted one of Francis's wackier ideas eugenics He believed that if smart successful people passed on their traits to their children then it would be easy to improve civilization The government should just pay smart people to have more kids If the most brilliant parents hatched lots of brilliant kids the world's population would become more intelligent This was not so good for less bright people who would be discouraged from starting families But Francis didn't seem worried about them

This Is Your Brain on Stereotypes — page 6 — Outside the Box There are four words that researchers use to talk about the ways we categorize and misjudge people dishes are terrible Again that's a pre judgment or prejudice This isn't a big deal if you're talking about vegetables It is a big deal if you're talking about an entire race religion or class of people Bias Way back in the 1530s bias just meant a slanted line Today we also use it to talk about off kilter judgments When you make a biased decision it's because your own beliefs have slanted your thinking If you hate all green vegetables for example you're probably biased against broccoli and toward carrots Discrimination By choosing those carrots for dinner instead of broccoli you're discriminating between vegetables That use of the word dates back hundreds of years But in the 1800s as activists fought to end slavery in the United States the term gained another use discriminating against Or treating a person or a group of people unfairly because of their race Today we recognize many other reasons for discrimination including gender and sexual orientation Stereotype Until the 1920s a stereotype was an exact copy made by a printing press Then along came Walter Lippmann an American newspaper writer and a philosopher Walter believed that readers created pictures in their minds based on their own experiences He suggested that when people read newspaper articles or listened to politicians they didn't judge the information clearly Instead they made it fit their own mental images They made a copy or a stereotype based on the way they understood the world For example if broccoli was the only green vegetable they'd ever tried they might assume spinach cabbage and sprouts all taste like broccoli Prejudice This means pre judging something without trying it first If you've never tasted eggplant but you hate it you hold a prejudice Or maybe you had one burnt eggplant and now you assume all eggplant

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