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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13780
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Dateliene 26 May 2005, on http://www.365gay.com/newscon05/05/052605prejudice.htm
Article is reporduced in its entiretu below:
(Tempe, Arizona) Prejudice is a form of "common sense", hard-wired into the human brain through evolution as an adaptive response to protect our prehistoric ancestors from danger, according to a new study by researchers at Arizona State University.
"By nature, people are group-living animals -- a strategy that enhances individual survival and leads to what we might call a 'tribal psychology'," says Steven Neuberg, ASU professor of social psychology, who authored the study with doctoral student Catherine Cottrell.
"It was adaptive for our ancestors to be attuned to those outside the group who posed threats such as to physical security, health or economic resources, and to respond to these different kinds of threats in ways tailored to have a good chance of reducing them."
The study appears in the May issue of the "Journal of Personality and Social Psychology".
The study contends that, because human survival was based on group living, "outsiders" were viewed as – and often were – very real threats.
Unfortunately, says Neuberg, because evolved psychological tendencies are imperfectly attuned to the existence of dangers, people may react negatively to groups and their members even when they actually pose no realistic threat.
Neuberg and Cottrell had 235 European American students at ASU think about nine different groups: gay men, activist feminists, African Americans, Asian Americans, European Americans, fundamentalist Christians, Mexican Americans, Native Americans and nonfundamentalist Christians.
The researchers then had the participants rate these groups on the threats they pose to American society (e.g., to physical safety, values, health, etc.) and report the emotions they felt toward these groups (e.g., fear, anger, disgust, pity, etc.).
Consistent with the researchers' hypotheses, findings revealed that distinct prejudices exist toward different groups of people. Some groups elicited prejudices characterized largely by fear, others by disgust, others by anger, and so on. Moreover, the different "flavors" of prejudice were associated with different patterns of perceived threat.
Follow-up work further shows that these different prejudices motivate inclinations toward different kinds of discrimination, in ways apparently aimed at reducing the perceived threat.
"Groups seen as posing threats to physical safety elicit fear and self-protective actions, groups seen as choosing to take more than they give elicit anger and inclinations toward aggression, and groups seen as posing health threats elicit disgust and the desire to avoid close physical contact," says Cottrell.
"One important practical implication of this research is that we may need to create different interventions to reduce inappropriate prejudices against different groups," says Neuberg.
For example, if one is trying to decrease prejudices among new college students during freshman orientation, different strategies might be used for bringing different groups together.
"For instance, given that whites stereotypically perceive blacks as threats to physical safety, it would be inadvisable to suggest a game of outdoor night-time basketball, given that darkness heightens people's fear. Sharing a plate of nachos might be a better choice," Cottrell says. "But if the aim is to reduce prejudice against gay men – viewed to pose a health treat because of association with AIDS, and thereby eliciting physical disgust –sharing finger food might not be a good idea."
Neuberg and Cottrell are both adamant to point out that just because prejudices are a fundamental and natural part of what makes us human, that doesn't mean that learning can't take place and that responses can't be dampened.
"People sometimes assume that because we say prejudice has evolved roots we are saying that specific prejudices can't be changed. That's simply not the case," Neuberg says. "What we think and feel and how we behave is typically the result of complex interactions between biological tendencies and learning experiences. Evolution may have prepared our minds to be prejudiced, but our environment influences the specific targets of those prejudices and how we act on them."
©365Gay.com 2005
There you are. We are fighting prejudice because we are dangerous. So now we know! Avoid gay men like you avoid poisonous berries!
The oroginal source is behind a subscription barrier but the synopisis states:
Different Emotional Reactions to Different Groups: A Sociofunctional Threat-Based Approach to "Prejudice".
By Cottrell, Catherine A.; Neuberg, Steven L.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2005 May Vol 88(5) 770-789
The authors suggest that the traditional conception of prejudice--as a general attitude or evaluation--can problematically obscure the rich texturing of emotions that people feel toward different groups. Derived from a sociofunctional approach, the authors predicted that groups believed to pose qualitatively distinct threats to in-group resources or processes would evoke qualitatively distinct and functionally relevant emotional reactions. Participants' reactions to a range of social groups provided a data set unique in the scope of emotional reactions and threat beliefs explored. As predicted, different groups elicited different profiles of emotion and threat reactions, and this diversity was often masked by general measures of prejudice and threat. Moreover, threat and emotion profiles were associated with one another in the manner predicted: Specific classes of threat were linked to specific, functionally relevant emotions, and groups similar in the threat profiles they elicited were also similar in the emotion profiles they elicited. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2005 APA, all rights reserved)
It is at http://content.apa.org/journals/psp/88/5 and is article 4
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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No Message Body
The paradox has often been noted that the United States, founded in secularism, is now the most religiose country in Christendom, while England, with an established church headed by its constitutional monarch, is among the least. (Richard Dawkins, 2006)
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13780
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The journal is a highly respected journal, and has wordlwide recognition. It is the APA's main voice and contained learned papers.
In this case politically correct ones for the current administration
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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This is just bull. It makes me so mad when researchers make these great sweaping statments that people hide behind. Like, "I can't help that I'm racist, my brain is wired this way." This isn't how the brain works in the first place. There are no "pre-wired" behaviours in the brain other than simple reflexes. Neurons that fire together wire together. That means that if an individual is constantly having specific feelings toward another person, then thinking about these feelings causes certain neurons to fire and others to not. If he/she continues to think like this the neurons that fire together form associative conections. But what cames first? these connections or the original behaviour? The behaviour. The fact is our brains have evoloved to allow us to carry out our more frequent mental activities with greater efficientcy. If you constantly experience feelings of hate for another race or group, the neurons in your brain will actualy change themselves to make it easyer for you. If you feel that you can't help how you behave, and you're really a victim youre brain wires itself that way and makes the belief stronger. We need to stop telling people that their overt actions aren't their fault, or in this case even their choice because when we do that we aren't helping them at all. The person who hates gays hates them because he/she has a belief that they are something to be hated not because their brain makes them hate.
The murderer kills for any number of reasons but none of them are "My biology just forced me to do it." Sure the potential exists in the brain in become a murderer, just as the potential exisits to do a million other things, our brains have the potential to be helpful anywhere we want to take them in life.
So I think the bottom line is, take responcibility for your thoughts and actions, they are your own, they are generated by you. As soon as we start playing the victims of biology we strip ourselves of any ability to change.
Pyro
Do what you love, changing the world is incidental.
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I'm guessing you don't live in the United States, JFR; but as somebody who (unfortunately) does, I definitely hear you!
These days, I find myself relying on the wisdom of the one who said, "Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."
We do not remember days...we remember moments.
Cesare Pavese
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MattHHDE
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Getting started |
Location: Germany
Registered: May 2005
Messages: 1
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Well, it all comes down to one of the old questions: "Does mankind (and maybe OTHER animals too) have a free mind"
I think that the article is reasonable. It does not say that gays are dangerous, it just says that people FEEL that we are dangerous. And this feeling is based on how a child was raised and on all other experinces someone has.
Every event in someons lives leaves memories and these are always called for when we encounter a situation, meaning, that if someone encounters a gay man his or her brain calles for the sum of everything he or she has ever been told about gays (Like: Father: All fa.s shall rot in hell) or knows about gays (e.g. that gays are more exposed to HIV than straights, normaly).
Additonaly: A brain scientist just cannot start from the position that everything someone does is independent of brain chemsitry / electricity (and recent research shows it isnt independent). As that seems to be the case, it is someones biology that forces someone two do the things he or she does. BUT a brain is not "fixed wired" (mostly) and can be trained to think otherwise about something.
That does not mean that a murder must be set free. He or she may not be able to decide (in the meaning what this word implies) but is still a threat to the society and therefor has to be dealt with.
Sincerely
Matt
PS: No, i neither belive that humans or animals have a free mind/soul, and no, i dont belive in any god
PPS: Sorry for my english. I am a little out of practice with my "active english"
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The brain is unbelievably complicated, and there is basically no way that we will ever work out how it works. Any system developed by random factors will be unpredictable - even simple neural networks developed by a process of evolution on a computer are often too complicated to understand, and these are things that usually only have a couple of inputs and a couple of outputs. The brain has millions of inputs and millions of outputs. That's why neural networks aren't used more in industry - they are very powerful but you *don't know why they work* - you tweak them until they do roughly what you want them to do.
So, basically, the brain is a "black box" - we see what goes into it, and we see what comes out of it, but no-one can really say why a particular reading comes out, because there are so many inputs, so many outputs, and so many different connections inside it. Hence I tend to regard people who explain away people's actions as just the result of chemical or electrical activity in the brain as idiots. Yes - the brain is a machine, but it is such a complicated machine that we can't regard it like a computer - "something goes wrong, it's not its fault" - since we have no way of telling why it is wrong.
All one can do is look at it on a macroscopic level, as psychologists do: "it seems to behave this way in most situations, so it's probably helpful to think of it in a certain way". But it's not always helpful, as it means that people can come up with statements like this, and it is likely that nobody will never be able to prove or disprove their findings.
Personally, I imagine that predudice is formed from what one hears from one's parents and peers. The article doesn't seem to suggest any evidence for hard-wiring; it just establishes that predjudices exist. In fact, it doesn't give any information at all about how they arrived at their conjecture that it was a survival mechanism. Maybe the original article had more useful scientific data. The article as it stands is pretty useless.
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charlee
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Getting started |
Location: Austria
Registered: May 2005
Messages: 1
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Now, while i do agree that we shouldn't say it's not your fault, it's biology there are factors that lead to prejudices. If from an early age on you only hear how bad and dangerous something is you eventually will believe it and start to be afraid of.So to stop prejudices you have to start where they come from - the homes.
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saben
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On fire! |
Registered: May 2003
Messages: 1537
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I actually agree with the supporters of the article. I found it quite interesting and while it lacked substance (given that there was no actual research shown, just so-called "facts" by those who I assume have done the research) I have always been a strong believer in humans having an innate tendency towards prejudice. I mean, even take out the human element and we are very prejudice towards snakes and certain types of animals. We associate certain animals with certain behaviours and form quite strong positive or negative opinions of them.
Evolutionarily we have needed fear to survive but similarly we have evolved curiosity and acceptance- both of which are also valuable skills/ emotions. Homophobia and racism cannot and should not be justified and considered socially acceptable behaviour- the article wasn't arguing that but rather it was saying that we have an inbuilt tendency to fear things and characterise things that we have little exposure to- human or not. As (hopefully) rational beings, though, I would hope that most humans would also question their fears and prejudices and in fact question all their emotions. Feeling a certain way may be a valid response, but that doesn't mean it is a valuable response.
Look at this tree. I cannot make it blossom when it suits me nor make it bear fruit before its time [...] No matter what you do, that seed will grow to be a peach tree. You may wish for an apple or an orange, but you will get a peach.
Master Oogway
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Pyro, I completely agree with everything you said except for your last sentence.
You said "As soon as we start playing the victims of biology we strip ourselves of any ability to change." If I understand what you are saying here, and you do believe this, then you give huge teeth to the "straight, fundamentalist Christian, homophobic, right wing, anti gay, hateful assholes" that say all we need to do is decide not to be gay and we can then change who and what we are.
As for myself, I believe I am made this way. I am gay because I am "wired" this way... and through no association did I somehow determine I wanted to be gay.
I recently read an article that stated in a study that gay men react to male pheromones differently than straight men. It was purely "animal" or "biological" if you will, with no associative nonsense thrown in. If you would like to read it go to: http://kevxml2adsl.verizon.net/_1_2ZLFTO104WRFSOO__vzn.dsl/apnws/story.htm?kcfg=apart&feed=ap&sin=D8A00RE80&qcat=usnews&passqi=&top=1&ran=5569
Thanks for your input though. It was a great reply and read and I do appreciate everything you said here.
Hugs, and a Great Day to all !!!!
BamBam:-)
Celebrate your life... embrace your love... Become intimate with your place in forever !!!
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saben
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On fire! |
Registered: May 2003
Messages: 1537
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I don't think that you have to be in the "being gay is just biological" camp just to oppose homophobia. Until I see concrete proof that children are born gay- with evidence taken from infacts who DO grow up to be gay- then I am of the belief that while there is some biological influence being gay also comes from personal experiences. That being said though, I don't actually CARE why I am gay. Being gay is not a bad thing so even if it is "preventable" why bother? We shouldn't have to make excuses for being gay- really that seems like a bit of a cowardly approach. I simply AM gay, for whatever the reason and I am damn proud of it and I will NOT excuse my behaviour; people can be uncomfortable as they like watching me kiss another guy in public, but while a straight couple can do the same thing I will NOT refrain and I will not apologise or make excuses. Biological or not, it isn't something that can or should be changed because it just doesn't matter. My friends should love me partly because I AM gay and that is a part of the overall me, not just in spite of my being gay.
Look at this tree. I cannot make it blossom when it suits me nor make it bear fruit before its time [...] No matter what you do, that seed will grow to be a peach tree. You may wish for an apple or an orange, but you will get a peach.
Master Oogway
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