racists can now be found out by a cat scan
 

MENTAL ACTIVITY: New research suggests MRIs can detect prejudice but critics say the study's findings could be abused

THE GUARDIAN , LONDON
Tuesday, Nov 18, 2003,Page 6
American scientists have developed a brain scan that they say can detect people harboring racial prejudice. In racially biased white people who were shown photographs of black faces, the researchers found surges of activity in a brain region known to control thoughts and behavior, which they say are due to suppressed prejudice.

The research has already provoked controversy, with some experts arguing the study's conclusions are misplaced. At its most far-reaching, the study raises the possibility that the minds of people, including police recruits, could be screened for racist attitudes.

The scientist who led the research admits she was stunned when she saw the results. "I was shocked. I couldn't believe we got this correspondence with the brain activity," said Jennifer Richeson, a neuroscientist at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.

Richeson said the brain activity arises because the volunteers are concentrating on not doing or saying anything offensive. This inner struggle tires the brain so much, she said, that prejudiced white people who interacted with black people would find it difficult to concentrate afterward.

"If they had an interaction that was hard to negotiate and then went back to work, they might not be able to focus on the task they're doing because they're exhausted," Richeson said.

To conduct the research, her team first asked 30 white students to take an implicit association test (IAT), in which they associated white or black names with positive or negative words. The test is contentious, but it is widely used as a convenient measure of unconscious or automatic racial bias. The students were not told what the test was about. They then briefly met a black or white person before being asked to complete a difficult mental task. Two weeks later the same students were asked to help in an unrelated experiment, in which they were handed pictures of the faces of black or white people while having their brains scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) equipment.

The scientists found a strong link between a volunteer's IAT score and activity in a region of their brain called the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Those with the highest levels of brain activity also performed the worst in the difficult mental task.

"The people are working hard to negotiate the interaction and then they're spent. It's almost like depleting a muscle: if you work it out too much then you can't lift any more weight," Richeson said.

Others say it is dangerous to interpret the results that way.

"That's exactly the kind of inference we're arguing it would be unfortunate to draw at this point," said Bill Gehring, a psychologist at the University of Michigan. "There just isn't enough known about what this task is actually showing."

The controversial study is published today in the journal Nature Neuroscience, which also discusses it in an editorial as well as publishing an accompanying article trying to explain the context.

"This study is likely to be widely discussed, so it is important to emphasize that it is not about biological determinants of racial prejudice," the editorial says. "Although it describes neural correlates of implicit bias, it says nothing about the source of this bias; even more importantly it says nothing about the relationship between implicit bias and actual behavior toward people of other races."

Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, welcomed the research, but said using brain scans as a test for racism would not be useful.

"We spend far too much time worried about trying to detect racism in people rather than circumscribing the behavior which leads to bias," he said. "There are people who have racist attitudes who are perfectly fair and even-handed in the ways they treat people, and there are people who would think of themselves as committed anti-racists who consistently show bias in the way they behave."

Gehring, who helped to write the journal's accompanying article, disputes some of the study's conclusions: "These are very important empirical findings concerning the mental processes that go on when people interact with someone of a different race, but what these findings mean is not clarified yet. You have to be very careful about how you interpret them."

He said IAT scores are not necessarily an accurate measure of an individual's racial bias, and it is inevitable that the study volunteers would have realized what the researchers were looking for.

"Clearly at some point everyone realizes it must be about their racial bias and they feel they're being assessed. That is an additional factor that must be taken into account."

Others say brain activity like that seen in the study could indicate more than just racial prejudice.

"The effect the authors describe is really a subset of a much more general phenomenon, that of social distraction," says Professor Bob Turner, of University College London. "Consider the difficulty of remaining focused on a serious topic of discussion when one's interlocutor is a young, curvaceous blonde with a very low-cut dress." He said that comparison studies are needed with less politically loaded social distractions

<---------didn't read that long ass shit, but

what the fuck does it have to do with hip-hop?

^ cos hip hop has always been struggling with the white-black music scene.....

this was an interesting read, but i agree with that dude on there, needs to be more research before they start accusing people of being racists.... for example, i have a friend at school that always says "those bloody asians" or "those stupid indians" but they always treat everyone with respect... then theres this other dude i know who calls everyone a racist at the slightest mention of the word "asian" (hes asian) but then goes on to laugh at black people's hair, indian's head turbans, arabic peoples scarfs... just because someone might have racist bias doesnt necessarily mean they will BE racist... if u get what im trying to say

true to the fullest


walter got owned i think

Maybe they should do this on Eminem..it'd shut most people here up.

Yes - it'll prove that nigger IS racist ..

^^^

Saying "niggers" is degrating to BOTH races...

you act like i care, elvis ..

hmmmm some interesting shit. technology is craz-e......

technology sucks...... and yes i do realise it is because of technology that i am able to say that online but still... it sucks

as do racists.... still, more research needed before u attack ppl

yo i dont beleive dat shit

How can you NOT believe it?! He just posted this here to tell you its correct, lol.

and the other moron - Technology dosent suck, new advancements cure diseases saving hundreads of lives everyday - how can you say it sucks?

what a stupid idea

That is some shit right there. They shud do it on eminem.

Vote - Do It On Eminem The Racist White Boii

Yeah do it to em, then we'd all findout...so the t-rex won't pull up more underground tapes..

^ Lmao at T-Rex .. why is everyone trying to deflect from what Eminem said and trying to turn it onto Benzino ? Damn .. kids must love the taste of Em's balls ..

Wait... so the brain gets more active when a person is trying to NOT offend a black jabroni?

Y'know what confirms to me? It confirms that white people living in places without a lot of black people (If any) don't know how to react when they really do see one.

One day I was riding my board and this negro on a street corner stopped me and asked how long I'd been growing out my afro. ('Cause I'm colored like that, despite my white skin. Same with my broad nose and fat lips and brown eyes and huge... uh...) And I replied with "Six months" and skated off. I didn't care.

But... if that event happened a few years more ago, when I did care about things, it probably would've played out a bit differently. After all, where I live there are only like six black people. Two are twins who've graduated from school, another is a fat chick whom I rarely if ever seen at school, and the other three are grown men whom I've seen one trick or treating and the other two when I'm walking around in the afternoon.

By not interacting with a lot of negroid people, I'd be worried at what they might think of me. (Back along time ago, I cared about what people thought of me.) And I ended up doing scheiße that would go along the lines of "Wait... I probably shouldn't ask about his little black book. He might be offended." Or "I probably shouldn't talk about that black cat that hangs around my house, he might be offended." Or even, "No, I don't think I should talk about that hacked Super Mario Brothers nintendo game for emulation where you get to play as a ku klux klan member and kill negros the whole time... he might find that offensive."

And just like the article says, my mind would lock up and everything.

Am I racist? Yes. But only against those filthy Apatellians of planet Moryot. But not against anyone on Earth.

Fucking Apatellians of the planet Moryot. It's there fault. They send us brain wave signals to make us racist.

But y'know... tolerance extends even further than that. I mean sure, most folks would look at a fellow whitey and not think twice. But in many places in America, old darkie there sticks out like a sore thumb. (That is of course, considering blacks make up thirteen percent of the population of America. Most of it is condensed as well.)

But what about other things that stretch tolerance? Did you know the ratio of hate crimes towards colored folk and hate crimes towards homosexuals has reached a point where homosexuals are getting attacked and killed with a much higher and much more alarming frequency?

And don't think the numbers be fixed out of population percentages. Because homosexuals make up fourteen percent of the American population. (Same as Australia, making those countrys the same sex partners of the most homosexual countrys of the world.) Which is to say, you're just as likely to encounter a homosexual as you are a negro.

With numbers like that, I'd think the hate crime ration between the two groups should be more even. Then again, the numbers should be zero hate crimes period. But they're not.

And then there are prejeduces that have been around since the dawn of XX and XY chromosones. Men and women.

Women get fucking trampled on in todays society. It's true. Maybe nowhere near as much as with the societys of other cultures, or are own culture in previous generations. But it still happens.

I think it's funny that Eminem song where everyone had made claims that it proves he's a racist... that's fucking bullshit. People focus on the fact that he dissed blacks. But it's not true. He dissed on black WOMEN. Why do people just focus on blacks? Perhaps because they themselves diss on women and they don't want to sound like hypocrites.

And y'know, while not considered hate crimes, did you know that one in four women in America have had been sexually assualted at least once in their life? And in inner citys, one in two women have been or know someone who has been raped.

There are even... forms of discrimination regarding even more people.

Did you know in America you MUST be registired as either MALE or FEMALE? So... what about Hermaphrodites? Well, they've always registered themselves as that of whom they shared more genetic information with. (Men with ovaries considered themselves men, women with dick-clits considered themselves women.) But that leaves a burden of lies upon those hermaphrodites, and leaves no dicision for the ones that are equally half and half.

And y'know hermaphrodites make up ten percent of America's population. Pacific Islanders, such as myself, make up three percent. Which easy math makes you realize that for every three pacific islanders (Me, my brother, my mother.), there are TEN hermaphrodites out there being oppressed by our own government. And that is not even beggining to delve into the implications of our own society's hatred towards different people. Considering most Americans would react to an effeminately gay man with a knife in the head, I'd hate how they would react to an effeminatly gay man with a vagina.

But ah... those are just my two cents. (And boy our my two cents huge.)

^ i dont know about some of your figures..14% homosexuals?... 10% hermaphrodites?... thats stretching it a bit, id say, but correct me if im wrong... otherwise, your completely right.... there isnt enough work on this new tech to make sure its 100% accurate, they could make some big mistakes with it

ps. i am NOT a moron camarac... im an idiot.... some technology is good, like medicine, but not all of it... alot of money is invested into weapons development created for the sole purpose of killing people.... biological and chemical technology aint too good either...

man i live in the south i see racism more than alot of people and Em ain't racists sides there's not just white racism even though there is alot of it. Jewish people are hated on alot too.