This Is Your Brain on Stereotypes

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

This Is Your Brain on Stereotypes — page 7 — When Walter Lippmann created this new definition of stereotype he wasn't talking about race But it didn't take long for his word to catch on After all people were struggling against this sort of categorization in countries around the world In the United States women gained the right to vote in 1920 but through a tricky list of taxes and tests the Southern states managed to keep black women from casting ballots Around the same time Mahatma Gandhi was protesting British rule in India and trying to end centuries of discrimination there Canada was busy banning Chinese immigration and severely limiting Japanese immigration And something even worse was brewing in Europe ELECTION RACE TOO CLOSE TO CALL

This Is Your Brain on Stereotypes — page 8 — Eugenics Gets Ugly From the 1890s to the mid 1900s people all over the world toyed with the idea of creating stronger humans controlling which people had kids and encouraging a master race This was before there were even words to talk about stereotypes But some scientists professors and politicians were hard at work creating them Wilhelm Schallmayer Germany 1891 He thought that by treating sick and weak people doctors were leading to the downfall of civilization It would be better to help the strong and let the others wither away Georges Vacher de Lapouge France 1899 This guy believed tall strong white people were best and dark skinned Mediterranean types weren't so smart He suggested keeping them separate so the world would have high class leaders and lower class workers He spoke six languages so he could explain this in English German Charles and Gertrude Davenport United States 1910 These super rich Americans said upper class white people should have many children Lower class people especially immigrants should have none They even suggested operating on unfit mothers to make sure they couldn't have kids Alfred Ploetz Germany 1933 Alfred thought the government should decide which parents were strong and healthy enough to have kids And he believed Adolf Hitler was exactly the leader to put his ideas into action

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