hidden biases in the WaPo

"If anyone in Washington is skeptical about these findings, they are in denial."

today the washington post has an interesting article on implicit racial bias and voter preference focusing on research suggesting white conservatives have stronger implicit bias against blacks than do liberals. the study's not published yet, so i can't say much about it except the following: the study seems to be utilizing an outdated - or at best simplistic - understanding of bias. recent studies have shown that, given an additional 500 milliseconds, most implicit reactions disappear and the brain utilizes more advanced regions, such as the frontal cortex, instead of the amygdala which is activated in the shorter-response-time studies (30 milliseconds).

so do these initial amygdala reactions matter at all for behavior? are conservatives in general really more racist? i don't know. either way, let's not forget about the frontal cortex either.

the 500 millisecond article was published in psychological science, but i forget the actual reference - if i find it i'll post it as an update here. i blogged about it before, but archives are temporarily missing b/c of the transition to a new URL.

thanks to nigel for the article.

Labels: ideology