EL RACISMO ES NATURAL

La empata hacia nuestra propia raza es neuralmente distinta a la empata hacia

la humanidad
En un vistazo poco comn a la neurociencia de las minoras raciales, el estudio muestra que
los afroamericanos mostraron un mayor grado empata hacia los afro-estadounidenses que
enfrentan la adversidad - en este caso para las vctimas del Huracn Katrina - que los
caucsicos demostraron hacia los caucsico-americanos en dolor.

Encontramos que todo el mundo mostro empata hacia las vctimas del huracn
Katrina."

Dijo Joan Y. Chiao, profesor asistente de psicologa y autor del estudio.
Pero los afroamericanos, adems, mostraron una mayor respuesta emptica hacia
otros afroamericanos en el dolor emocional.
Initially, Chiao thought that both African-Americans and Caucasian-Americans would either
show no pattern of in-group bias or both show some sort of preference.The take-home point to
Chiao: our ability to identify with another person dramatically changes how much we can feel
the pain of another and how much were willing to help them.

"Its just that feeling of that person is like me, or that person is similar to me,"

she said.

That experience can really lead to what were calling extraordinary empathy and altruistic
motivation. Its empathy and altruistic motivation above and beyond what you would do for
another human.
1. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-04/nu-rae042610.php
Important to note when it comes to multicultural societies where there is no such strong
connection among the people. Instead the end result is an individualised and fractionised
society.


The study itself:
Neural basis of extraordinary empathy and altruistic motivation:
A central evolutionary challenge for social groups is uniting a heterogeneous set of individuals
towards common goals. One means by which social groups form and endure is by endowing
group members with extraordinary prosocial proclivities, such as ingroup love, towards other
group members. Here we examined the neural basis of extraordinary empathy and altruistic
motivation in African-American and Caucasian-American individuals using functional magnetic
resonance imaging. Our results indicate that empathy for ingroup members is neurally distinct
from empathy for humankind, more generally. People showed greater response within anterior
cingulate cortex and bilateral insula when observing the suffering of others, but African-
American individuals additionally recruit medial prefrontal cortex when observing the suffering of
members of their own social group. Moreover, neural activity within medial prefrontal cortex in
response to pain expressed by ingroup relative to outgroup members predicted greater empathy
and altruistic motivation for ones ingroup, suggesting that neurocognitive processes associated
with self-identity underlie extraordinary empathy and altruistic motivation for members of ones
own social group. Taken together, our findings reveal distinct neural mechanisms of empathy
and altruistic motivation in an intergroup context and may serve as a foundation
for future research investigating the neural bases of intergroup prosociality, more broadly
construed.
1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811910003125
Another study in regards to how we perceive other peoples actions if they are from the
own/known group or not:
Empathy constrained: Prejudicevpredicts reduced mental simulation of actions during
observation of outgroups:
Perceptionaction-coupling refers to the vicarious activation of the neural system for action
during perception of action, and is considered important for forms of interpersonal sensitivity,
including empathy. We hypothesize that perceptionaction-coupling is limited to the ingroup:
neural motor networks will fire upon the perception of action, but only when the objectperson
belongs to the ingroup; if the objectperson belongs to an outgroup these motor neurons will not
fire. Using electroencephalographic oscillations as an index of perceptionaction-coupling, we
found exactly this: participants displayed activity over motor cortex when acting and when
observing ingroups act, but not when observing outgroups an effect magnified by prejudice
and for disliked groups (South-Asians, then Blacks, followed by East Asians). These findings
provide evidence from brain activity for yet another detrimental aspect of prejudice: a
spontaneous and implicit simulation of others action states may be limited to close others and,
without active effort, may not be available for outgroups.
1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103110000661
The Human Brain Recognizes Race:
"Previous research shows people are less likely to feel connected to people outside their own
ethnic groups, and we wanted to know why,"

says Gutsell.


What we found is that there is a basic difference in the way peoples brains react to those from
other ethnic backgrounds. Observing someone of a different race produced significantly less
motor-cortex activity than observing a person of ones own race. In other words, people were
less likely to mentally simulate the actions of other-race than same-race people

Typically, when people observe others perform a simple task, their motor cortex region fires
similarly to when they are performing the task themselves. However, the UofT research team
found that participants motor cortex was significantly less likely to fire when they watched the
visible minority men perform the simple task. In some cases when participants watched the non-
white men performing the task, their brains actually registered as little activity as when they
watched a blank screen.
1. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-04/uot-hbr042610.php
Excerpt from the paper:
A deficit in the spontaneous catching of outgroup members actions and intentions can have
serious consequences for intergroup interactions. Perceptionaction-coupling, and the sharing
of somatic, autonomic, and emotional states, facilitate social understanding and foster helping,
morality, altruism, and justice (Batson et al., 1997; Cialdini, Brown, Lewis, Luce, & Neuberg,
1997). Thus, people might not be as responsive to outgroup members needs and feelings and
be less likely to understand their intentions; they might also be less likely to help and effectively
communicate with them.
1. http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michael_Inzlicht/publication/222952525_Empathy_c
onstrained_Prejudice_predicts_reduced_mental_simulation_of_actions_during_observa
tion_of_outgroups/file/79e4150c2322303b2a.pdf
Racism is Innate: The Human Brain Makes Unconscious Decisions Based on Ethnicity:
Racism is hardwired into the brain and operates unconsciously because areas that detect
ethnicity and control emotion are closely connected, according to scientists. Researchers
explain that the same brain circuits that allow us to classify a person into an ethnic group
overlap with other circuits that process emotion and make decisions, leading people to make
unconscious decisions based on anothers race. The latest study found that functional magnetic
resonance imaging brain scans revealed that interactions between people from different racial
groups trigger reactions that researchers think may be completely unknown to our conscious
selves. Researchers reviewed past brain imaging studies showing how different social
categories of race are processed, evaluated and integrated in decision-making.

Past research found that:
Amygdala, an almond-shaped brain region located deep within the brain processes fear and
emotions, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex involved in top-down emotional control, the anterior
cingulate cortex that manages conflict between intentional and unintentional tendencies, and
the fusiform face area that differentiates between familiar and unfamiliar faces were
simultaneously active during tasks that engaged racial bias like having participants view black
and white faces while doing different tasks.
1. http://www.medicaldaily.com/news/20120626/10458/racism-decision-cognition-
emotional-ethnicity-human-brain-psychology.htm
2. http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v15/n7/full/nn.3136.html#access

Image Above - Racism in Monkeys: The Evolution of Prejudice:
Psychologists have long known that many people are prejudiced towards others based on
group affiliations, be they racial, ethnic, religious, or even political. However, we know far less
about why people are prone to prejudice in the first place. New research, using monkeys,
suggests that the roots lie deep in our evolutionary past. Like humans, rhesus monkeys live in
groups and form strong social bonds. The monkeys also tend to be wary of those they perceive
as potentially threatening.

To figure out whether monkeys distinguish between insiders (i.e. those who belong to their
group) and outsiders (i.e. those who dont belong), the researchers measured the amount of
time the monkeys stared at the photographed face of an insider versus outsider monkey. Across
several experiments, they found that the monkeys stared longer at the faces of
outsiders. This would suggest that monkeys were more wary of outsider faces. However, it is
also possible that outsiders simply evoke more curiosity. To rule this out, the researchers took
advantage of the fact that male rhesus monkeys leave their childhood groups once they reach
reproductive age. This allowed the researchers to pair familiar outsider faces (monkeys that had
recently
left the group) with less familiar insider faces (monkeys that had recently joined the
group). When presented with these pairs, the monkeys continued to stare longer at outsider
faces, even though they were more familiar with them. The monkeys were clearly making
distinctions based on group membership.

Mahajan and her team also devised a method for figuring out whether the monkeys harbor
negative feelings towards outsiders. They created a monkey-friendly version of the Implicit
Association Test (IAT). For humans, the IAT is a computer-based task that measures
unconscious biases by determining how quickly we associate different words (e.g. good and
bad) with specific groups (e.g. faces of either African-Americans or European-Americans). 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.

For the rhesus monkeys, the researchers paired the photos of insider and outsider monkeys
with either good things, such as fruits, or bad things, such as spiders. When an insider face was
paired with fruit, or an outsider face was paired with a spider, the monkeys quickly lost interest.
But when an insider face was paired with a spider, the monkeys looked longer at the
photographs.

Presumably, the monkeys found it confusing when something good was paired with something
bad. This suggests that monkeys not only distinguish between insiders and outsiders, they
associate insiders with good things and outsiders with bad things.

Overall, the results support an evolutionary basis for prejudice. Some researchers believe
prejudice is unique to humans, since it seems to depend on complex thought processes. For
example, past studies have found that people are likely to display prejudice after being
reminded of their mortality, or after receiving a blow to their self-esteem. Since only humans are
capable of contemplating their deaths or their self-image, these studies reinforce the view that
only humans are capable of prejudice. But the behaviour of the rhesus monkeys implies that our
basic tendency to see the world in terms of us and them has ancient origins.

Psychologist Catherine Cottrell at the University of Florida and her colleague Steven Neuberg at
Arizona State University, argue that human prejudice evolved as a function of group
living. Joining together in groups allowed humans to gain access to resources necessary for
survival including food, water, and shelter. Groups also offered numerous advantages, such as
making it easier to find a mate, care for children, and receive protection from others.
However, group living also made us more wary of outsiders who could potentially harm the
group by spreading disease, killing or hurting individuals, or stealing precious resources. To
protect ourselves, we developed ways of identifying who belongs to our group and who doesn't.
Over time, this process of quickly evaluating others might have become so streamlined that it
became unconscious.

Psychologists have long known that many of our prejudices operate automatically, without us
even being aware of them. Most people, even those who care deeply about equality, show
some level of prejudice towards other groups when tested using the IAT. Despite this
overwhelming evidence that our brains are wired for bias, our society continues to think about
prejudice as premeditated behaviour.

Our current laws against discrimination, as well as the majority of diversity training programs,
assume that prejudice is overt and intentional.

Given that most of the difficult conflicts we face in the world today originate from clashes
between social groups, it makes sense to devote time to understanding how to reduce our
biases. But our evolutionary past suggests that in order to be effective, we may need to adopt a
new approach. Often we focus more on political, historical, and cultural factors rather than the
underlying patterns of thinking that fuel all conflicts. 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.
1. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evolution-of-prejudice/
2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21280966
3. http://www.academia.edu/1017146/The_evolution_of_intergroup_bias_Perceptions_and
_attitudes_in_rhesus_macaques
Evolved Disease-Avoidance Mechanisms and Contemporary Xenophobic
Attitudes
Avoidance of other races may be an instinctual disease-avoidance mechanism - as one is
more likely to have antibodies for diseases amongst ones own race compared to that of others.
Disease avoidance and ethnocentrism: the effects of disease vulnerability and disgust
sensitivity on intergroup attitudes:
Extending a model relating xenophobia to disease avoidance. We argue that both inter- and
intragroup attitudes can be understood in terms of the costs and benefits of interacting with the
in-group versus out-groups. In ancestral environments, interaction with members of the in group
will generally have posed less risk of disease transmission than interaction with members of an
out-group, as individuals will have possessed antibodies to many of the pathogens present in
the former, in contrast to those prevalent among the latter. Moreover, because coalitions are
more likely among in group members, the in-group would have been a potential source of aid in
the event of debilitating illness. Study 1 found that ethnocentric attitudes increase as a function
of perceived disease vulnerability. Study 2 found that in-group attraction increases as a function
of disgust sensitivity, both when measured as an individual difference variable and when
experimentally primed. We discuss these results with attention to the relationships among
disease salience, out-group negativity, and in group attraction.
1. http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/faculty/fessler/pubs/NavarreteDiseaseEHB2006.pdf<
/a>
Immunizing Against Prejudice: Effects of Disease Protection on Attitudes toward Out
Groups
Contemporary interpersonal biases are partially derived from psychological mechanisms that
evolved to protect people against the threat of contagious disease. This behavioural immune
system effectively promotes disease avoidance but also results in an overgeneralized prejudice
toward people who are not legitimate carriers of disease. In three studies, we tested whether
experiences with two modern forms of disease protection (vaccination and hand washing)
attenuate the relationship between concerns about disease and prejudice against out-
groups. Study 1 demonstrated that when threatened with disease, vaccinated participants
exhibited less prejudice toward immigrants than unvaccinated participants did. In Study 2, we
found that framing vaccination messages in terms of immunity eliminated the relationship
between chronic germ aversion and prejudice. In Study 3, we directly manipulated participants
protection from disease by having some participants wash their hands and found that this
intervention significantly influenced participants perceptions of out-group members. Our
research suggests that public-health interventions can benefit society in areas beyond
immediate health-related domains by informing novel, modern remedies for prejudice.
1. http://pss.sagepub.com/content/22/12/1550
Pathogen prevalence predicts human cross-cultural variability in
individualism/collectivism:
Pathogenic diseases impose selection pressures on the social behaviour of host
populations. In humans many psychological phenomena appear to serve an ant pathogen
defence function. One broad implication is the existence of cross-cultural differences in human
cognition and behaviour contingent upon the relative presence of pathogens in the local
ecology. We focus specifically on one fundamental cultural variable: differences in individualistic
versus collectivist values. We suggest that specific behavioural manifestations of collectivism
(e.g. ethnocentrism, conformity) can inhibit the transmission of pathogens; and so we
hypothesize that collectivism (compared with individualism) will more often characterize cultures
in regions that have historically had higher prevalence of pathogens. Drawing on
epidemiological data and the findings of worldwide cross-national surveys of
individualism/collectivism, our results support this hypothesis: the regional prevalence of
pathogens has a strong positive correlation with cultural indicators of collectivism and a strong
negative correlation with individualism. The correlations remain significant even when
controlling for potential confounding variables. These results help to explain the origin of a
paradigmatic cross-cultural difference, and reveal previously undocumented consequences of
pathogenic diseases on the variable nature of human societies.
1. http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/275/1640/1279.full.pdf
Human Threat Management Systems: Self-Protection and Disease Avoidance:
Humans likely evolved precautionary systems designed to minimize the threats to reproductive
fitness posed by highly interdependent ultra-sociality. A review of research on the self-protection
and disease avoidance systems reveals that each system is functionally distinct and domain-
specific: Each is attuned to different cues; engages different emotions, inferences, and
behavioural inclinations; and is rooted in somewhat different neurobiological substrates.
1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3024471/
Evolved Disease-Avoidance Mechanisms and Contemporary Xenophobic Attitudes:
From evolutionary psychological reasoning, we derived the hypothesis that chronic and
contextually aroused feelings of vulnerability to disease motivate negative reactions to foreign
peoples. The hypothesis was tested and supported across four correlational
studies: chronic disease worries predicted implicit cognitions associating foreign outgroups with
danger, and also predicted less positive attitudes toward foreign (but not familiar) immigrant
groups. The hypothesis also received support in two experiments in which the salience of
contagious disease was manipulated: participants under high disease-salience conditions
expressed less positive attitudes toward foreign (but not familiar) immigrants and were more
likely to endorse policies that would favour the immigration of familiar rather than foreign
peoples. These results reveal a previously under explored influence on xenophobic attitudes,
and suggest interesting linkages between evolved disease-avoidance mechanisms and
contemporary social cognition.
1. http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~schaller/Faulkneretal2004.pdf
Altruism, Prejudice and Race
Altruism, the desire to help other people, including strangers, appears to be genetic:

"Human beings routinely help others to achieve their goals, even when the helper receives no
immediate benefit and the person helped is a stranger. Such altruistic behaviours (toward non-
kin) are extremely rare evolutionarily, with some theorists even proposing that they are uniquely
human.
1. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/311/5765/1301.abstract
People with a specific allele of the AVPR1a gene are more altruistic:
1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17696996
Prejudice is an evolutionary evolved trait:
"These findings provide evidence from brain activity for an ingroup bias in empathy: empathy
may be restricted to close others and, without active effort, may not extend to outgroups,
potentially making them likely targets for prejudice and discrimination."
1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3375887/
Prejudice predicts reduced mental simulation of actions during observation of
outgroups:
Perceptionaction-coupling refers to the vicarious activation of the neural system for action
during perception of action, and is considered important for forms of interpersonal sensitivity,
including empathy. We hypothesize that perceptionaction-coupling is limited to the ingroup:
neural motor networks will fire upon the perception of action, but only when the objectperson
belongs to the ingroup; if the objectperson belongs to an outgroup these motor neurons will not
fire. These findings provide evidence from brain activity for yet another detrimental aspect of
prejudice: a spontaneous and implicit simulation of others action states may be limited to close
others and, without active effort, may not be available for outgroups.
1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103110000661
The roots of prejudice lie deep in our evolutionary past:
"The behaviour of the rhesus monkeys implies that our basic tendency to see the world in terms
of us and them has ancient origins. Group living also made us more wary of outsiders who
could potentially harm the group by spreading disease, killing or hurting individuals, or stealing
precious resources. To protect ourselves, we developed ways of identifying who belongs to our
group and who doesn't.
1. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=evolution-of-prejudice
2. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21280966
The human brain recognizes race:
"Observing someone of a different race produced significantly less motor-cortex activity than
observing a person of ones own race. In other words, people were less likely to mentally
simulate the actions of other-race than same-race people
1. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-04/uot-hbr042610.php
This study observed that blacks show more empathy towards their own race than whites:
"The more African-Americans identified as African-American the more likely they were to show
greater empathic preference for African-Americans, the study showed. People showed greater
response within anterior cingulate cortex and bilateral insula when observing the suffering of
others, but African-American individuals additionally recruit medial prefrontal cortex when
observing the suffering of members of their own social group.
1. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-04/nu-rae042610.php
2. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811910003125
3. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20302945
Racism Is Innate: The human brain makes unconscious decisions based on ethnicity:
"Racism is hardwired into the brain and operates unconsciously because areas that detect
ethnicity and control emotion are closely connected, according to scientists. Researchers
explain that the samebrain circuits that allow us to classify a person into an ethnic group
overlap with other circuits that process emotion and make decisions, leading people to make
unconscious decisions based on anothers race.
1. http://www.medicaldaily.com/news/20120626/10458/racism-decision-cognition-
emotionalethnicity-human-brain-psychology.htm
2. http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v15/n7/full/nn.3136.html#access
The Other-Race Effect: Why Faces of Other Races Look Alike
"They all look alike:

While that statement is certainly a generalization, it is true that people have a harder time
distinguishing between people from a different race than they do within their own race. This
phenomenon, called the other race effect, was first written about nearly a century ago (and
supported by several subsequent studies), but researchers have made little progress on
determining why, exactly, this task is so hard for people. This study is the first to identify a
possible neurophysiological basis of the other race effect. It has been suggested that the other
race effect is simply a result of differing amounts of facial variation between races, or varying
observational abilities of particular races. However, in this study, subjects of both races showed
the same trends, suggesting that the other race effect is a generalized phenomenon
experienced by people of more than one race.
1. http://arstechnica.com/science/2010/11/understanding-the-other-race-effect/
Different press article, same study:
The researchers found that brain activity increases in the very first 200 to 250 milliseconds
when seeing both same-race and other-race faces. Previous research has associated this very
early phase, known as the N200 brain potential, with the perceptual process
of individuation. That process involves making out the unique facial features of each person,
such as the shape of their eyes and nose. However, the amplitude of that increased brain
activity only predicts whether an other-race face, not a same-race face, is later remembered.

"There appears to be a critical phase shortly after an other-race face appears that determines
whether or not that face will be remembered or forgotten"
1. http://www.livescience.com/14879-faces-races-alike.html
The study itself: Neural repetition suppression to identity is abolished by other-race
faces:
1. http://www.pnas.org/content/107/46/20081
Childs Play? 3-Year-Olds Fancy Their Own Ethnic Group:
Even in multicultural settings, preschool children may gravitate toward playing with kids of their
own ethnicity, a new study finds. But when kids do engage with playmates of another
ethnicity, they show signs of adjusting their play style to match their partners, researchers
reported in June in the European Journal of Developmental Psychology. Even very young
children are influenced by the culture around them, the scientists wrote, and studies in the
1980s and 90s found that, when given the choice, children of the same ethnicity preferred to
play with one another rather than with kids from different ethnic groups. Unless a child has the
rare genetic disorder Williams syndrome, these preferences emerge by age 3 or so. The new
study of French-Canadian and Asian-Canadian 3- to 5-year-olds finds similar results.
1. http://www.livescience.com/14837-children-play-ethnicity.html
Racist Babies? Nine-Month-Olds Show Bias When Looking At Faces:
Adults have more difficulty recognizing faces that belong to people of another race, and this
deficit appears to start early. New research indicates that by the time they are 9 months
old, babies are better able to recognize faces and emotional expressions of people who belong
to the group they interact with most, than they are those of people who belong to another race.

"These results suggest that <biases in face recognition and perception begin in
preverbal infants, well before concepts about race are formed. It is important for us to
understand the nature of these biases in order to reduce or eliminate [the biases],

said study researcher Lisa Scott, a psychologist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in
a statement.
1. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/04/racist-babies-nine-month-olds-bias-
faces_n_1477937.htm
Interesting in the authors comments - their findings suggest that such racial biases are
genetically determined, inherited by race and therefore essentially fixed, yet in the last
paragraph it appears an aim for the researchers is not to understand, but to change (subvert)
human nature.