Why Affirmative Action Isn’t Sufficient to Counter Racial Bias

The last few years have seen emotional conversations about race in America, including the role of racial bias in the criminal justice system. Despite the important issues these conversations have raised, we may not be paying enough attention to how variations in skin tone and other physical features affect different degrees of bias even within racial groups, according to Keith Maddox and Jennifer Perry.

In an article for Policy Insights from the Behavioral Sciences, the researchers summarize

Changing Broader Social Stereotypes is Our Best Chance of Ending Implicit Bias

September 20, 2018

Educated and enlightened?  Chances are you’re discriminating and don’t even realize it.

“If you do nothing and just try not to discriminate, you’re going to discriminate,” explains B. Keith Payne, co-author with Heidi A. Vuletich of “Policy Insights from Advances in Implicit Bias Research,” published in the current issue of Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

In the paper, Payne and Vuletich define implicit bias as stereotypes and

Places Can Be Prejudiced, Too

June 29, 2018

The problem of prejudice is often discussed but remains widespread. One of the reasons may be that we’re not looking for solutions in the right places; in fact, too often we aren’t looking in places at all.

“When we think of prejudice, most of us think of it as a problem of people,” according to Mary Murphy, Kathryn Kroeper, and Elise Ozier of Indiana University Bloomington. In other words, we tend to focus on individuals’ biased attitudes and on punishing or

Clues to Violence May Be Visible in the Brain

May 23, 2018

Aggression has destructive and painful impacts on society, as we have seen with mass shootings, domestic violence, and childhood bullying. It is strongly tied to mental health problems, and can manifest not only in antisocial personality and conduct disorders but also with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), narcissistic personality disorder, alcohol dependence, and even anxiety and depression. But it appears that some common brain pathways underlie violent behaviors