

Individuals with Rare Disorder Have No Racial Biases - theycallmemorty
http://www.livescience.com/culture/sexism-racism-social-stereotypes-100412.html

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carbocation
This is a novel finding and does help parse out the difference between how
gender bias and racial bias form.

That said, I wish people would stop talking about Williams syndrome as if it
were, on the whole, desirable. Yes, these people are blessed with some
desirable traits. They are also cursed with cardiovascular defects such as
aortic and pulmonary stenosis; renal defects; vitamin D metabolic defects; and
often delayed development. Not to mention that their most desirable trait — a
lack of social fear which makes them very friendly — is incredibly maladaptive
in most circumstances.

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tokenadult
_This is a novel finding_

Yes, that is why I would look for replication of the finding, including
replications with different ways of estimating racial prejudice, before
accepting that this generalizes to the whole human population. But it's always
a good idea to do research on a long-standing interesting issue (racism) with
a new study population (Williams syndrome patients). An astrophysicist who was
one of my undergraduate teachers said that one can often make a great
scientific discovery simply by putting a scientific instrument where it has
never been before. (His example was putting a Geiger counter into earth orbit,
which discovered the Van Allen belts.) Similarly, doing this or that kind of
psychological or sociological assessment or surveying can find new results if
it happens with new subjects.

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sp332
_99 percent of the 40 children studied_

    
    
      *facepalm*

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wdewind
And to finish that quote... "pointed to pictures of girls when asked who
played with dolls and chose boys when asked, say, who likes toy cars."

Yeah one kid's arm had no gender bias, but the rest of them were full of it!

Also is the 40 kids 40 kids with Williams or 40 kids total? Either way it's a
pathetically small sample size, but one is way worse...

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lutorm
A sample of 40 may well be enough to indicate a difference, depending on how
large the effect is.

But more pointedly, it's not clear to me that saying that girls play with
dolls is not a fact and not just an _unfounded_ stereotype. That question
seems very different from the racial one.

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whimsy
The problem I noted is that 99% is nonsense when your sample size is 40. 39
out of 40 kids is 97.5%. The next gradation, all 40 kids, is 100%.

The small sample size is also a concern, of course.

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stan_rogers
An actual inability to formulate prejudice, as opposed to an ability to
suppress it, would be a dangerous trait to have. Prejudice, whether it
manifests itself in the form of latent tribal/racial preference or in
sex/gender assumptions, is simply an indicator that the template-matching
engine in the nearly autonomous, more primitive and survival-oriented areas of
our brains are working properly. It takes training to associate "girl jobs"
with girls and "boy jobs" with boys, or to associate skin tone with stereotype
(and may we find a way to stop passing on our own training), but the
recognition of "other" is probably vital to the survival of the individual.
It's how we "smell danger" in details of our surroundings we may not have time
to become consciously aware of. It's how we protect children and their
nurturers, sometimes at our own expense, without thought of reward.

What's so funny 'bout peace, love and understanding? Nothing -- unless you
think of it as a problem of genetics.

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billybob
"Despite their lack of racial bias, children with Williams syndrome hold
gender stereotypes just as strongly as normal children, the study found. That
is, 99 percent of the 40 children studied pointed to pictures of girls when
asked who played with dolls and chose boys when asked, say, who likes toy
cars.

The fact that Williams syndrome kids think of men and women differently, but
not blacks and whites, shows that sex stereotypes are not caused by social
anxiety, Meyer-Lindenberg said."

Call me a crazy ignorant bigoted redneck, I don't think there's ANY bias in
these kids minds. These kids do not think black kids are naughtier than white
kids because they don't have the deep-rooted xenophobia we all do, so they
just observe that on average, white and black kids are equally likely to be
nice or mean.

On the other hand, girls ACTUALLY DO play with dolls more often than boys do,
and boys ACTUALLY DO run around making explosion noises with their cards more
often than girls do. It's not sexist to observe that. Whether you want it to
be that way or not is a different question. Whether what you want is realistic
is still another.

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bigboote
In a related study, blind people showed no racial bias due to skin color.

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epochwolf
+1 best this actually does point out something important.

If you are incapable of forming biases about your environment, you are blind
to the environment input that generates racial bais in most people. As pointed
out earlier, this trait is also fatal in the wild, as blindness would be.

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tjic
The clear implication is that racism has adaptive value for primates, or at
least did in the period when we layed down this trait.

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lukifer
It's tribal cohesion, pure and simple: keep close to those like you, and fear
those not like you. I wish there was a more widespread understanding that
"racism" is just one facet of our instinctual fear of the other.

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stretchwithme
I think we can all accept that this is how we are. Its pretty consistent with
what we see.

At the same time, its in our interest to treat people as individuals.
Understanding our natural impulses can actually help us discount them when
trying to assess the actual character of the people we meet.

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WiseWeasel
A mixture of LSD, psilocybin and early exposure to PBS has been proposed to
also approximate this effect.

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ThePlague
And this is a "disorder", how?

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pook
"The most common symptoms of Williams syndrome are mental retardation, heart
defects, and unusual facial features... many cardiac problems, commonly heart
murmurs and the narrowing of major blood vessels as well as supravalvular
aortic stenosis (SVAS)... hyperacusis and phonophobia which resembles noise-
induced hearing loss, but this may be due to a malfunctioning auditory
nerve... problems with visual processing, but this is related to difficulty in
dealing with complex spatial relationships rather than to issues with depth
perception"

It is entirely in keeping with Mother Nature that in order to get what you
want, you have to make significant tradeoffs.

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jamesbressi
Fascinating find, but I wouldn't call this a disorder, rather a desired trait.
The only issue with this "syndrome" is that they cannot process social danger
signals--which I believe can be taught even though it is a fundamentally an
intuitive defense.

The trade-off? "They do not experience the jitters and inhibitions the rest of
us feel." Talk about a huge advantage.

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ryandvm
It wouldn't be an advantage. I hate to break it to you, but Mother Nature
knows her shit. We've evolved the "negative" tendencies we have for very good
reasons and most of them are still doing their job at improving your odds for
reproduction.

I suspect that (seemingly) ugly tendencies like confirmation bias,
stereotyping, vengeance, shame, etc. all increase your personal odds of
reproduction. Likely at the expense of society, but it is what it is.

I can understand how complete social trust and lack of anxiety would be
beneficial in a perfect world; alas, we do not live in one.

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wmorgan
Disagree. We humans are emphatically not optimized for the world we live in
today. We're adaptation executors, not fitness maximizers.

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/l0/adaptationexecuters_not_fitnessma...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/l0/adaptationexecuters_not_fitnessmaximizers/)

