Decisions & Discrimination

Discrimination refers to noticing differences and making choices based on evaluating differences. One of the trends in neuroscience involves  understanding of how decisions are made. You could argue that detecting and responding to differences is the most universal strategy in animal brains.

Humans are good at detecting differences and make millisecond decisions that have a lasting influence on their subsequent decision making procedures. The kind and degree of difference is always in flux and depends on prior learning, context and social status. Discrimination is a deeply imbedded property of the human mind that is expressed in almost every human behavior we might consider. However, discrimination as a popular topic is often a misinterpretation of the normal activity of noticing and acting on differences.

In popular debates, discrimination is treated as an aberration. Terms that end in “ism” and “ist” are often used to describe discriminating people in a derogatory manner. Thus anyone with a different ancestry who disagrees with you becomes a racist.

This is not to argue that noticing differences is always positive. It is to argue that humans base a lot of their decisions on noticing differences. In a positive mode, the description “a discriminating shopper” identifies human who notices differences in design and quality of manufacture, choosing high quality products rather than cheap ones.

We have recognized that group membership is all important to humans. You recognize familiar humans who speak and act like yourself as members of your group. In a crowd you notice humans who display small differences in speech, costume and behavior. Most often these small differences are the basis for shunning or ignoring the “strange” humans. In the most rigid groups, everyone wears the same costume, repeats the same polite language, with the same intonation and behaves in a predicable, ritualistic manner. 

We have recognized that racial and ethnic boundaries exist but obvious boundaries are not required for discrimination.

The ideal of an egalitarian society is to recognize the merit of individuals; to allow social mobility based on learning and achievement; and to protect individual expressions by social policy and law, but human nature does not change. Group preferences and boundaries that separate groups can always be identified.

Neuroscience Notes places the human brain at the center of the universe. Since the brain is the organ of the mind, consciousness and all knowledge is contained within the brain. Neuroscience Notes is part of the Persona Digital Psychology and Philosophy Series of related books. The closely related volumes are the Human Brain, Language and Thinking, Emotions and Feelings, and Intelligence and Learning.

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	Group Dynamics
	The Good Person
	Pieces of the Puzzle
	The Sound of Music
	Language and Thinking
	I and Thou
	Emotions and Feelings
	Neuroscience Notes
	Children and Family
	Intelligence and Learning
	Religion for 21st Century

Neuroscience Notes is published by Persona Digital Books. Copyright 2011, 2012. All rights to reproduction by any means are reserved. We encourage readers to quote and paraphrase topics from Neuroscience Notes published online and expect proper citations to accompany all derivative writings.  The author is Stephen Gislason MD. The latest date of publication is 2012.  The URL to the book description is http://www.personadigital.net/Persona/Neuroscience/  Persona Digital Online is a download server for digital media.  Also See Persona Digital Music Studio