firecat

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111221140627.htm

Excerpt:

In a new article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, Arne Roets and Alain Van Hiel of Ghent University in Belgium look at what psychological scientists have learned about prejudice....

People who are prejudiced feel a much stronger need to make quick and firm judgments and decisions in order to reduce ambiguity. "Of course, everyone has to make decisions, but some people really hate uncertainty and therefore quickly rely on the most obvious information, often the first information they come across, to reduce it" Roets says....

It's virtually impossible to change the basic way that people think.

I'm very curious about that last statement. At what point does the "basic way" that a person thinks develop? Is it nature or nurture, and in what proportions? If it's true that some people need to reduce ambiguity more than others, do we know what contributes to that? Is it possible to teach people to tolerate more ambiguity, or to tolerate ambiguity in more situations?

I'm obviously assuming here that tolerating ambiguity would generally be a good skill to have (although I think it might lead to problems in situations where immediate action is required). I really dislike prejudice and the damage it causes, so if training in tolerating ambiguity might help diminish it, I would be in favor.

I think I've learned to tolerate ambiguity a lot better over the years, so my personal experience makes me doubt the assertion that it's impossible to change the way people think. It's possible that being on antidepressants is what made the difference for me, though.

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/745181.html

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From:

evilawyer

At what point does the "basic way" that a person thinks develop? Is it nature or nurture, and in what proportions? If it's true that some people need to reduce ambiguity more than others, do we know what contributes to that? Is it possible to teach people to tolerate more ambiguity, or to tolerate ambiguity in more situations?

I think the trick would be to teach people to (1) reduce the amount of immediate threat people perceive in "the other" (or to put it another way, to feel less fear when faced with individuals that do not conform to the norm they have developed in and adapted to) and (2) not to tolerate ambiguity so much as to confine the dislike of ambiguity to elements of living that do not impact human and societal interaction (because you're right about wholesale increase in tolerance of all ambiguity would be stifling and probably even dangerous). Which might be difficult given that we humans aren't really as evolved as we like to think in terms of our hardwiring. Then again, I'm an ethologist at heart, so I tend to see a lot of the "uglier" aspects of human behavior (be more pessimistic about the ability to correct it, perhaps) in terms of that outlook.

I'd be interested to see a study of how infants react to exposure to people of different races, etc. Maybe --- and this is just a for-instance --- a white baby who squalls just because a person of color is bending over their crib is the kind of person for whom "fear-of-the-other" reduction training (or whatever) would be of benefit.

From:

staranise

Are you serious in the last paragraph? The studies have all been done. One just needs to trawl the psych databases for them.

From:

evilawyer

Don't have time to do that, though I do recall reading papers way back when re: infant response to different facial expressions (no mention of different races or genders,, etc. in the ones I remember), but thanks for pointing it out to me. If you have any specific links ready to hand, I'd be interested in receiving them.