Babies That Don't Stereotype? Its a MIRACLE!

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"A few people are completely and utterly blind to race: children with a rare genetic disorder known as Williams syndrome, according to findings published in the journal Current Biology."




     While the link above does not really provide much information about the actual disorder itself, it is DEFINITELY thought provoking.  A naturally occurring confound for a phenomenon that has received as much attention from psychologists as just about any other human characteristic.  "Um....Mother Nature?  Um, yeah hi, this is Jerry calling, are you, are you playing games with me and my "psychologizing" homies or what?"

     According to the description found in the article, those diagnosed with Williams Syndrome have little or no detectable social fear, and do not exhibit ANY racial stereotypes.  

NOW I'm going to get FREAKY on you:

     Fast forward 200 years in the future.  Work on the human genome has isolated the specific genetic traits for this "race neutral" perspective, and has successfully grafted it into otherwise fully functioning healthy human beings.  These are the next generation members of the "Equality Force", the latest incarnation of an international Supreme Court (keep in mind, the world is now run by one unified government)
     The Equality Force decides rules with perfect objectivity, swayed by neither race or ethnicity.  There's just one problem, one fatal flaw in this utopian judiciary bliss.....

Nurture Sucka!

Seriously though, what do findings regarding the Williams Syndrome suggest about stereotypes in the rest of us?


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This finding appears to support the function of stereotypes and prejudice suggested by evolutionary theory. Specifically, according to this theory prejudices are adaptations that help humans to avoid threats posed by their social environments, especially threats coming from people outside of the group (Neuberg & Cottrell, 2006). Upon perceiving another person, people process the target’s appearance, and based on that information they categorize the target as a member of a specific group, about which they have store information they have learned from different sources such as education, the media, etc. After this process, people make decisions about their subsequent behavior towards the target. If they determine that the target person might be dangerous, they can then decide to avoid him or her, or take other defensive actions. The notion of fear is embedded in this process, because fear is the emotion that is caused by any kind of threat, including social threats.
People who are diagnosed with this disorder have a very friendly and trusting personality, and this finding suggests that they would behave in this way with all kinds of people, regardless of their social group memberships. It would be very interesting to know more about how this disorder affects people’s emotional responses and cognitive responses, to further explore this phenomenon. This is a very interesting finding that not only informs social theories, but also seems to support the role of biological and genetic aspects regarding the development and expression of prejudice.

For other news reports on this research:
http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2010/04/14/when-social-fear-is-missing-so-are-racial-stereotypes.html

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=williams-syndrome-kids-show-no-raci-10-04-13

For more information about the disorder:
http://www.williams-syndrome.org/

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