Tag: Bias

Tribalism: used by politicians and corporations to divide, dominate, and manipulate society

Intersections

Tribalism has been used for centuries by some politicians, dictators, authoritarians, etc. (including religious leaders) and, more recently, by some large corporations to divide, dominate, and manipulate societies. Statements by the Trump administration in the United States, Vladimir Putin in Russia, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Narendra Modi in India, among others, offer prime examples. The motivations to divide and dominate are often power and greed….

See more

Facial recognition: technology and privacy

Intersections

“Facial recognition technology is increasingly used for identity verification and identification, from aiding law enforcement investigations to identifying potential security threats at large venues. However, advances in this technology have outpaced laws and regulations, raising significant concerns related to equity, privacy, and civil liberties. Facial recognition connects an image of a face to an identity or connects an image of a face to a database…

See more

Discrimination based on how we talk and how we sound

Featured Article

Does discrimination happen based on how people talk and sound? Based on accents, word choice, enunciation, emotion, etc.? In the United States, people can be judged harshly because they do not sound “American” or do not speak what a person may consider is “standard English”, or because they (often women) show emotion through voice and actions in a way considered inappropriate (but not when a…

See more

Discrimination based on how we talk and how we sound

Featured Article

**See the updated version of this post (November 4, 2024)** Does discrimination happen based on how people talk and sound? Based on accents, word choice, enunciation, emotion, etc.? In the United States, people can be judged harshly because they do not sound “American” or do not speak what a person may consider is “standard English”, or because they (often women) show emotion through voice and…

See more

Why do we fear change?

Quick bibliographies

“Fear of change is a natural impulse; the desire to pull up the drawbridge follows. But as we have repeatedly reported, that response is irrational and self-defeating” (New Scientist, 18 June 2016, volume 230(3078), 5). Why do human beings fear and resist change? Every day in our lives, more things change than stay the same. Change is the most stable and enduring condition of life…

See more

Updated: In-group bias is ingrained in humans

Featured Article

Adults and children–even children as young as three–“are really quick to sort themselves into … social groups and to form a preference for their in-group.” This tendency has been found in people–again, even children–across “gender, race or ethnicity, language, nationality, and religion.” Decades of research indicate that in-group favoritism occurs even when the group is based on very superficial criteria; the group does not have…

See more

Updated: Prejudice, discrimination and social norms

Featured Article

News: Donald Trump, the former President of the United States, continues to make and post derogatory statements that are based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and a host of other things. The fact that the (former) highest elected official in the United States, a position with immense influence in the U.S. and in other countries, makes and made these statements on a regular basis creates…

See more

Updated: The psychological origins of prejudice, discrimination, and racism

Quick posts

Are people “hard-wired” to discriminate based on skin color, ethnicity, religion, place of origin, gender, sexual identity, etc.? Is it hereditary? Do we have no choice? Or, is it learned? As children, are we taught to discriminate by our parents, our greater family, in school, in church, by our friends? If we learn to be racist, can we learn not to be racist? If so,…

See more

Revisiting: Politics and Fear

News

Whipping up fear is a common tactic in politics. Providing stark, seemingly life or death choices, us versus them, scapegoating, creating a false bogeyman to distract from real problems, using lies and disinformation … fear is used because it often works. The invoked fear is often based on racism and bias. It’s those “other people”–with a different skin color, from another place, who follow a…

See more
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.