Race and the human subconscious
Our subconcious mind may have an automatic, emotional response to people of a different race when our culture teaches us to be wary of people unlike us.Yet the conscious mind can "reason through" and moderate these subconcious reactions to race--giving the initial "imprint of culture" less influence on how we behave toward people of different races.
That's one implication of a new study on brain activity and response to faces of other races by researchers at Harvard, Yale, and the University of Toronto.
In the study, responses that brain researchers call "automatic"--that is, sub- or unconcious--seem more connected to and interactive with the brain's controlled, evaluative processes than originally thought. Some scientists have believed these brain activities to be separate.
The initial, emotional response to other-race faces is located in the amygdala, often characterized as the "primitive brain" responsible for the body's automatic fight-or-flight response to threats.
Less-primitive parts of the brain are responsible for the deliberation and evaluation that can counter subconcious responses to race.
I'm intrigued by the idea that humans, as created beings, have been fashioned with an essential, automatic subconcious that seeks to protect us from dangers--but that those subconcious processes are so strongly influenced by culture, a non-essential aspect of human being.
One might say that God has given us the ability to make split-second judgments, but that we, ourselves (as societies, not as individuals), are responsible for the content of those judgments.
.: Posted by Duane Bidwell on Monday, December 20, 2004
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