Racism Not Hardwired, Scientists Say

In recent years a number of studies have reached the same thorny conclusion about human cognition: when encountering a person for the first time, our brains automatically make note of the individual’s race. But new research indicates that this is not necessarily the case. Findings reported today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicate that even brief exposure to an alternative social world can markedly diminish the extent to which people categorize others by race. The results suggest that racism may be an erasable by-product of cognitive adaptations that evolved to detect coalitions and alliances. Scientific American