The mechanisms behind our prejudices – Swedish Radio

We seem to find it easier to embrace dangers and unpleasant experiences of people who are similar to ourselves to look. It shows the new psychological experiment from the Karolinska Institute.

It’s about automatic processes in the brain that makes us feel less trust in the people who we imagine to belong groups other than ourselves, according to research leader Andreas Olsson.

– There seems to be some type of learning mechanism that does not treat all men equally. If I should learn something from them, it seems to play a role if this person belongs to my team or does not belong to my group, says psychology researcher Andreas Olsson.

To access to this was Andreas Olsson and his research colleague Armita Golkar proceed as follows:

Fifty-skinned subjects received regarded actor, called demonstrators, who were exposed to unpleasant shock when they saw a picture of a snake. When the demonstrators themselves were light-skinned, had the subjects easier to learn to ormbilden was associated with pain. They were simply afraid ormbilden when the latter prenseterades for those without a demonstrator. If the demonstrator was dark-skinned, however, it was not as easy to embrace the fear.

– What perhaps was most interesting was that if you could then learn of the fear, so working this not with the demonstrators who belonged to a different ethnic group. But it worked very well on demonstrators belonging to their own ethnic group.

The research team at KI have previously shown that light-skinned people are more likely to be afraid of people with darker skin color. Conversely, dark-skinned easier to be afraid of the light-skinned. The same applies for the grouping based on something as simple as the color of one’s t-shirt.

This research is important for understanding the basic mechanisms behind our prejudices and our “we and the Court of thinking, “according to research leader Andreas Olsson.

– There’s an important task, namely to learn more about these underlying processes to understand how we might be able to extend this definition around who belong to my own group.

Here you will find comprehensive research of the research group at KI Emotion Lab.

Niklas Zachrisson
niklas.zachrisson@sverigesradio .com

Reference:
Golkar A. Castro. Olsson A. “Social learning of fear and safety is Determined by the demonstrator’s racial group” Biology Letters 2015, DOI: 10.1098 / rsbl.2014.0817