Perhaps throughout his or her life, this person has made irrational decisions to socialize with very irrational and emotional people of the opposite sex, and through these experiences has thus formed a gender bias<\/em>.\u00a0Research shows we tend to mostly place people into categories of gender, race, and age. This task is so pervasive that scientists have deemed it our \u201cprimitive\u201d categorization.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Our brains are hard-wired to automatically categorize things based largely on surface information. It\u2019s an adaptive process that allows us to quickly perceive the meaning of a given stimulus and move onto other things that require more elaborate cognition. These mental snapshots of ours are pretty accurate, but when we apply this automatic categorization to extremely complex human beings, we often get first impressions wrong.<\/p>\n When we classify others, we mentally put them into an \u2018ingroup\u2019 or \u2018outgroup\u2019. \u00a0An ingroup is any group of which the perceiver is a part of, while the outgroup is a group in which the perceiver is not a member. We have many ingroups for ourselves. Some ingroups of myself for example would be women, people from Long Island, artists, neuroscience majors, motorcyclists, and Siberian husky lovers.<\/p>\n Research shows that whichever ingroup is salient in the perceiver’s mind will affect what behaviors the perceiver feels free to do, and what his or her expectations are for the behaviors of those he or she is with. It’s natural to curtail how we act based on our environment. There are some jokes and behaviors that would be considered unprofessional in a classroom environment, yet perfectly normal when out with friends.<\/p>\n We tend to see ingroup members as unique snowflakes, while outgroup members are perceived to share most of the same characteristics, values, and goals. We view these people as all alike, and that’s where stereotypes arise. This is referred to the outgroup homogeneity effect<\/em> in social cognitive neuroscience. Since we have much more interaction with ingroup members based on shared values and interests, we feel comfortable understanding their motives and expectations. We know how to behave around them and what sets each apart. The lack of knowledge about outgroups meanwhile leads to faulty assumptions and sweeping evaluations.<\/p>\n Our brains are to designed to ‘fill in the gaps’ in order to provide organization in our knowledge- this system aims to make sense of our environment and dispel fears. One reason people may have negative opinions about outgroups is because of underlying fear. The amygdala, the limbic system structure responsible for salient emotions like anger and fear, plays a key role in forming prejudices as an adaptive function. \u00a0fMRI studies showed higher levels of amygdala activation when perceiving outgroups as a whole. Yet research shows that the more heterogeneous we view \u00a0outgroups, the less likely we are to feel prejudice.<\/p>\n![\"prejudice-2\"](\"\/ombs\/files\/2013\/10\/prejudice-2-636x310.jpg\" "\\"prejudice-2\\"")
<\/a>Once we\u2019ve made up our mind about a group, or even someone in particular (consciously or not), it\u2019s often hard to change our opinion. When beliefs are formed, confirmation biases kick in and begin to look for information that supports our views, and selectively ignore everything which\u00a0doesn’t. Maybe someone had decided that you were shy and uptight when you first met. You were more reticent than usual because you had only gotten 3 hours of sleep the night before. Now that acquaintance may not notice all the times you\u2019re friendly and outgoing, but instead seems to pounce on all the times you\u2019re a little quiet.<\/p>\n![\""All](\"\/ombs\/files\/2013\/10\/3689230-150x150.jpg\" "\\"3689230\\"")
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![\"JudgingOthers_001\"](\"\/ombs\/files\/2013\/10\/JudgingOthers_001-150x150.jpg\" "\\"JudgingOthers_001\\"")
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