Do Football Visors Fit Lacrosse Helmets

racism is a genetic problem?

racists show only limited human sympathy

( ddp / science) prejudices prevail even over deep-rooted, instinctive behaviors. The researchers from Italy have shown for the first time. In a study of light-skinned fellow Italian and African immigrants with dark skin, they examined how people respond to xenophobic sentiments when they see suffering strangers. The result: the intensity of sympathy with the same skin color was much more intense than in other colored complexion. When not clearly identifiable color, such as with a purple tinge, prevailed, however, the instinctive sympathy for the suffering stranger, Alessio Avenanti report of the Università di Bologna and his colleagues.

When people see or imagine how another person suffers pain, their nervous system reacts as normally as they suffered themselves, this form of empathy disappears, however, when people see a racist attitude, as a people of color pain is inflicted. This is very surprising, because the pain of empathizing previously considered instinctive behavior that is independent of the person of the sufferer. Although social psychologists have already suspected that racism manifests itself in a lack of empathy, evidence of differentiated empathic responses to the suffering of individuals of the same or another race but were not yet available.

For the current study showed Avenanti Alessio and his colleagues for their subjects films to see where his hands were injured by either a pin or cotton swabs were gently stroked. They measured the brain activity of subjects and possible muscle contractions. In the experimental subjects on the one hand, the brain areas were active, responsible for emotions and pain. Second, the same muscles stimulated as in seeing the film at hand. But with Italian and African racists was this reaction from a single source for the "wrong" skin color. In further experiments with a violet-colored hands in the movie - the actual color that was not visible - are shuttled to the emotional reactions of the subjects again to normal levels.

"The automatic muscle response human sympathy shows the suffering of strangers, at least as long as they are not occupied by prejudiced stereotypes, "says Avenanti. "Racial prejudice thus lead to less pitiful than that alien people are viewed." Vice versa According to the researchers therapeutic methods to strengthen the human capacity for empathy could potentially also be used to reduce racial prejudice.

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