Prejudice

[flexibeast]

Detecting prejudice in the brain:

The MPFC is only activated when a person thinks about him- or her-self or another human. When viewing a picture representing disgust, however, no significant MPFC brain activity was recorded, showing that students did not perceive members of social out-groups as human.

No wonder people feel so comfortable treating people not in their "in-group" so badly - the people they're treating badly aren't even human, so what does it matter? :-/
 

Comments

[ubiquity.livejournal.com]

Sounds like the monkeysphere.

[flexibeast.livejournal.com]

Wow, indeed! But in all seriousness, i think my brain mustn't be wired like most people's: i often get genuinely upset at nasty things happening to people i didn't even know of before i heard of the nasty thing happening to them. That would explain a number of things: why, for example, virtually everyone believes that i'm over-sensitive (and why years of me trying not to be so sensitive haven't worked); and why i get so upset at marginalised groups being unpleasant to each other, when most of the people within those groups only seem to feel it's unfair for others to be unpleasant to them, and not vice versa too.:-/