Unconscious Social Attitudes

As directed by group affiliation, forming rich social categories helps individuals in reasoning about other people’s norms, values, beliefs, and actions. However, social categorization in neuroscience research has resulted in adverse impacts. Examples of such consequences include prejudice, discrimination, and stereotyping, among others. Social categorization starts at the infancy stage. According to Liberman et al. (556) work, social inclinations for in-group members begin in their early days of life where infants use the social subgroups to guide their inductive generalities and hopes regarding social relationships. When trying to form new information, children tend to look up to the in-group rather than the out-group. Social categorization is automatic rather than conscious. However, controlled/deliberate judgment may be engaged in later encounters with the out-group member (s).

I agree with the IAT study that everyone is judgmental and biased and especially to people outside his/her social group. People keep judging others based on their values and behaviors due to schemas, which occur quickly and automatically. Besides, Liberman et al. (557) found that a social categorization is an automatic form of cognition. Also, Anderson (1818) argues that a part of perception is spontaneous where things occur without taking much effort. Hence, judgments against the outer-group are unconscious.

I agree that there is no hope for overcoming racism and prejudice in our society. One may prejudice another social group automatically at the first encounter. Such discrimination is more deliberate in later encounters. From the above exploration, it is evident that biases are entirely automatic brain processes. In this case, one does not have to plan on discriminating against people from another social group on the first encounters. However, Ferreira et al. (797) proposed a later controlled judgment which is more deliberate and can be used in ending racism.