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...be less prejudiced than average. What's more likely: all of us harbor more biases than we think we do. Social neuroscience suggests that most of us don't even know the half of it. twenty-year eruption of research reveals exactly how automatically and unconsciously prejudices operate. As members of a society with egalitarian ideals, most Americans have good intentions, but our brains and our impulses all too often betray us. That's the bad news from the 'decade of the brain.'
But the good news, from the current 'decade of behavior,' provides solutions. Individual values and organizational commitment can override our worst impulses. Getting information, however, is the necessary first step, and we now know a lot about bias, both blatant and subtle, with the aid of the social sciences and neurosciences.
The first thing to understand: modern prejudice is not your grandparents' prejudice. Old-fashioned racism and sexism were known quantities because people would mostly say what they thought. Blacks were lazy; Jews were sly; women were either dumb or bitchy. Modern equivalents continue, of course. Look at current images of immigrants. But most estimates place such blatant and empirically wrongheaded bigotry at only 10 percent of citizens in modern democracies. Blatant...
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On the economic origins of democracy., January 01, 2007
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