Study finds a link between infectious diseases and racism in the United States

[RKP5637]

https://www.psypost.org/2019/09/study-finds-a-link-between-infectious-diseases-and-racism-in-the-united-states-54413

New research published in the scientific journal Social Psychological and Personality Science provides evidence that the prevalence of infectious diseases plays an important role in racial prejudices across the United States.

The findings support the parasite-stress hypothesis, which holds that people exposed to diseases become more likely to adopt anti-pathogen behavioral strategies — such as avoiding and expressing more negative attitudes toward groups with dissimilar features.

“I was surprised when a 2015 study found an association between exposure to black Americans and racial prejudice, such that white individuals living in U.S. states with more black people showed increased prejudice towards this group,” said study author Brian A. O’Shea, a EU Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska Curie Global Fellow based in the Psychology Department at both Harvard University and the University of Amsterdam.

“The finding was counter to the extensive literature showing that contact with outgroups actually reduces prejudice. I suspected that the study was showing a spurious correlation and that perhaps infectious diseases might better explain variation in racial prejudice across the U.S. This epiphany likely occurred because I was lucky enough to have an office beside Corey Fincher while at Warwick University, who developed Parasite Stress theory, along with Randy Thornhill.”

In their study, the researchers utilized 2006-2013 data from Harvard’s Project Implicit website, a nonprofit organization that collects data about people’s automatic, or implicit, attitudes toward different groups as well as their explicit biases.

The study found “that at the aggregated group level, regions with more infectious diseases are likely to have higher intergroup racial tensions,” O’Shea told PsyPost.

“Specifically, we found that if you’re a white or black person living in a U.S. state with more infectious diseases, you have a stronger feeling in favor of your in-group and/or a stronger opposition to your out-group, both consciously and unconsciously.”

“These effects occur even if we control for individual factors like age, political ideology, religious belief, education and gender, and a number of state-level factors, including median income, inequality, race exposure and more. Importantly, even within areas with high infectious diseases, there is substantial individual variation in prejudice,” O’Shea explained.

[demigoddess]

1. sounds like someone trying to make racism sound reasonable. lol

stupid and racist.

[RKP5637]

2. Or excusable ... I don't buy it all. ... some of it, but not all of it. n/t

[abqtommy]

3. I guess I'd call this presentation "Babble-Speak" and it reminds me of a sociology

class I took in college where a lot of common-sense ideas were dressed up in proprietary language to the extent of making them nearly unidentifiable. Yes, there is prejudice. Duh! Yes, there is "substantial individual variation in prejudice." Duh!

I try to restrict a broad application of ethnic/cultural prejudice. It's not healthy or productive to make judgments according to skin color, gender or age. I've been rewarded by finding out that 99% of the people I meet I consider to be supportive or at least neutral toward me. That leaves 1% to narrow into a firm prejudice that I base on behavior, based on my judgment.

My in-group/in-crowd is much like me. My out-group/out-crowd would be white supremacists and nazis and the like. But within those groups they are their in-group and I'm their out-group.

I accept that it's ok to hate the hate/haters so I suppose it's fair to say it's ok for them to hate me. Sometimes we can only do so much but we can use clear language. Hate is not productive or desirable in a healthy society. Psychological experiments have proven that healthy groups and individuals are accepting and supportive. I'll go along with that.

I also admit to some strong food prejudices but we can leave that discussion for another time.

[RKP5637]

6. Well thought out! n/t

[abqtommy]

7. Thanks... I do try and sometimes succeed!

[Wounded Bear]

4. Basic group psychology...

in times of stress, people tend to close ranks with their "in group" and want to isolate from who they think of as "the other."

Infectious disease is just one manifestation of this syndrome. Econmomic stress, upticks in public violence, there are other stressors that would trigger racism and ethnic exclusion.

It takes conscious effort to counter act that, because it is ingrained into our psyches from thousands of years of antropology.

It's called becoming more civilized and rational.

[RKP5637]

5. Yep!!! n/t