Related:
http://www.slate.com/id/2267299/
“Priming” people by making them write an essay about either “Tyrone Walker” or “Brad Walker” has powerful effects. (Tyrone being a stereotypically black name and Brad a stereotypically white one.) The subjects who wrote an essay about “Tyrone Walker” were more likely to believe an editorial painting Obama as the Antichrist.
I found this rather shocking. All you have to do to get the effect is to prime people to write about an imaginary, supposedly black man. The prompt is just “Tyrone Walker”! The mind must be incredibly frail.
That depends on what you mean by “the mind”. I think individual minds aren’t all that bad. The problem is that minds are incredibly strong at building up group effects like racism.
Sometimes I think humans are built (by evolution) to be lied to, but I can’t figure out why.
Related: http://www.slate.com/id/2267299/ “Priming” people by making them write an essay about either “Tyrone Walker” or “Brad Walker” has powerful effects. (Tyrone being a stereotypically black name and Brad a stereotypically white one.) The subjects who wrote an essay about “Tyrone Walker” were more likely to believe an editorial painting Obama as the Antichrist.
I found this rather shocking. All you have to do to get the effect is to prime people to write about an imaginary, supposedly black man. The prompt is just “Tyrone Walker”! The mind must be incredibly frail.
You say “incredibly frail”; I say “exquisitely sensitive”.
That depends on what you mean by “the mind”. I think individual minds aren’t all that bad. The problem is that minds are incredibly strong at building up group effects like racism.
Sometimes I think humans are built (by evolution) to be lied to, but I can’t figure out why.