The Race for Humanity (Part I: Race as a social construct)

by Bernardo Guerra Machado

Older it may seem, the discussion about the use of racial categorization in our species is ongoing. Such is to a great extent due to the lack of objectivity of race as a concept and the need for a holistic approach to examine it. Even if no definite answer may be provided on whether its appliance is legitimate or not, an alternative approach can be seeking to better inform about the fascinating diversity existent within our species, and the difficulties our cognitive system faces processing it. This is the race for Humanity, a series of articles in which the reader is invited to take this path and formulate an opinion even beyond that expressed by the author.

Introduction

The main problem in the debate to come starts from the very beginning: the definition of the concept of race. Here, it is proposed that race can be approached from two perspectives: as a social construct, associated with traditional delineations of animal breeds, a classification, in a great extent transmitted by teaching, based mostly on phenotypic aspects – meaning, established according to similarities of external traits – and sometimes recurring to behavioural cues as well; or following the current taxonomy’s rules, as a synonym of subspecies. This first part will consist of a psychological trip to the realm of our cognitive system and its categorisation processes. Though it is hard to tackle thoroughly race as a social construct, there are a series of questions worth raising: How is this mechanism of categorization built in our minds? Can we trust our cognitive system regarding this aspect? Are there any behavioural and psychological differences between Human groups which could help justifying a racial classification? By providing answers, it is possible to draw a statement on how seriously, or not, we should take the concepts being examined as they are elaborated in our minds.

The machinery of prejudice?

For many years, race encoding was thought to be automatic and mandatory, a primary dimension of categorization, just as sex [1].

Scheme of the several hypotheses concerning how racial categorization is encoded. It was possible to exclude that race is a primary dimension of categorization, and that it is part of a domain-general correlational system. On the other hand, convincing support was given to our coalitional psychology as being responsible for the racial encoding. Nevertheless, some kind of interaction should occur with our essentialist inference system, as we tend to ascribe essences to the perceived races. Source: Based on cited literature by cosmides et al. [3,5] and Gilwhite et al. [4].

This was partially due to the fact that researchers were not being able to reduce racial categorization through context manipulations [2]. However, it was later argued that race categorization could be merely a by-product of some cognitive mechanism. Three main hypothesis were laid on the table: that race encoding is part of a domain-general correlational system affecting our perception; that race encoding is a consequence of our essentialist inference system; and, finally, that race encoding was a side-effect of our coalitional psychology [3]. The first, fails to explain why attributing membership into a racial category through observed phenotypic features frequently ends up being a basis for making behavioural inferences, and empirical data has shown that race is not trivially processed as colour or shape [3]. Regarding the second, there is a reasonable amount of anthropological accounts supporting we perceive races as natural-kinds, to which we tend to ascribe a certain essence [4]. The final hypothesis obtained convincing empirical evidence. Kurzban et al. [5] designed a recall task, which, by manipulating basketball teams’ jersey colours as coalitional cues, significantly reduced, at last, the race effect. They concluded that social alliances should, then, be the primary target of the categorization process. From this point of view, race codification can be seen as a collateral outcome of a cognitive shortcut; part of a set of tools, which may have been selected due to our need, as an extremely social species, to elaborate a priori inferences about with whom it’s safe to interact with. Furthermore, being it, after all, a dynamic process whose function seems to be rather specific, despite including attributing essences to the perceived races, it may not be merely a vague consequence of a broad essentialist inference system.

How well do these engines work?

The bias towards faces perceived as belonging to the same race is a widely studied phenomena, which has been observed even in children with 3 months [6]. This is related with a cognitive deficit, requiring higher efforts to process faces from allegedly different races, as both eye-movement patterns and pupillometry [7], plus brain activation [8] research have shown. Nevertheless, there are accounts that this effect is ameliorated when participants are aware of the bias and elicited to overcome it [9], as well as when they are trained to individuate a wider range of faces [10] – demonstrating there’s a neural plasticity which allows us to learn to better process the Human unknown, so to say. Interestingly, eliciting a group context with people sharing the same ethnicity is enough to produce a face recognition deficit towards those belonging to the out-group [11]. It may be that we focus only on faces from individuals we feel a priori we can safely interact with, as it were a deeper search for signs of trust. Let us draw a parallel with a specific cultural trait: music from other cultural traditions tend to be judged as more cognitively demanding to process and more tense [12]. Isn’t it a common-place, when exposed to a certain music genre one is not at all familiar with, to feel that “it sounds all the same”? Stereotyping is told to work similarly: the brain response to social stimuli anticipated as being somehow potentially overwhelming [1]. Furthermore, Semyonov et al.’s [13] study in Germany provided revealing results: natives perceived the relative size of the immigrant population significantly higher than the actual size, usually the double, across several districts. And it was the agents’ estimation, not the objective size, that was positively correlated with the perceived threat from out-groups – which by its turn, related to discriminatory behaviours. This phenomenon has been called “racial innumeracy”, and there are accounts that it extends to an underestimation of the majority [14]. Therefore, on one hand, we tend to produce an artificial categorization when facing cognitively demanding judgements; on the other, it seems they become exaggeratedly salient from those we are familiar with [1]. In conclusion, the answer to this section question, as non-scientific as it may seem, would be: terribly; across many aspects.

Variation in mean IQ score across the World. Native populations refer, from the left to the right, to Greeks, Native American Indians, Kalahari Bushmen, New Zealand Maori, Micronesians and Polynesians, and Australian Aborigines. Source: Based on a review by lynn [21].

Can Humans be classified in terms of behavioural and psychological criteria?

Human groups differ behaviourally, otherwise there would be no cultural diversity. It follows that there is a potential loop, with culture shaping behaviour, which affects the brain, which by its turn impacts behaviour, and so on [15]. For example, distinct language systems may not recruit exactly the same neural networks [16], thus differently tuning the brain [17]. Additionally, Park and Huang [18] reviewed studies comparing Western and East Asian cultures, providing evidence that the latter was culturally biased to process context, recur less to categorizations, and rely more on intuitive reasoning. This resulted in behavioural differences, with contrasting eye-fixation patterns emerging across several tasks; accompanied by disparities in brain activation, brain structure, and aging. Despite admitting other factors can also play a role in these results, the authors advocate they are to a great extension due to cultural wiring of the brain. Conversely, other types of explanations have been advanced in one of the most sensitive contrasts studied: the intelligence coefficient (IQ). As represented on Figure 2, disparities in mean scores across Human populations have been detected with considerable consistency [19], and there are researchers attributing these to genetic factors [20]. Such claims tend to raise a wave of indignation and aggressiveness [21] – but, ironically, taking this stance can be considered ethnocentric in itself, because the IQ is a construct connected with one cultural conception of intelligence, by any means objectively paramount or determinant of Human dignity. The IQ scale may be valid, reliable, and applicable across Human populations [22], but it does no more than providing a score to intelligence as it is conceived by a very small fraction of Humanity . For the sake of the argument, here intelligence is proposed to be defined as the capacity to efficiently navigate in the world that surrounds us. It continues by considering the accounts Henrich [23] gathered, of European explorers getting lost in expeditions to other continents, and depending on the cumulative cultural knowledge of the native populations to survive. No test needed to be administered by the locals to conclude that these visitors, at that particular place and time point, could be easily be classified as dumb – mortally dumb. The point here is to argue that intelligence is quite

a relative and fluid concept. However, what is of real interest to the present work is to investigate if this variability is indeed governed by genetic transmission. Some critics can be pointed to such position. First, IQ scores were documented to be increasing within populations, similarly to height [22] – which may be much less a consequence of polygenic selection and inheritance as once thought [24]. In fact, despite existing reports that genes regulating our brain size are under positive selection [25], other recent studies have noted that the recent evolution of Human genome might have been mostly affected by negative selection, sweeping alleles reducing the individuals’ fitness, rather than the selection of superior novel ones [26]. Second, factors like birth order and socioeconomic status were also associated with test score [27], suggesting there may be confounding variables behind the effect; familiarity with the test, for example. Third, several psychological experiments have shown that, by removing stereotypical threat, performance in intellectual tests gets even between Americans of African and European ancestry [28]. These are good reasons to advocate that there is no safe ground to conclude that mean differences in IQ can be explained by genetic inheritance. Still, even if there were, there is a considerable intra-continent variation, which would produce categories without sense, at least in respect to the traditional racial classification (White, Black, Mongoloid, and Native American) – for example, in Europe the mean values decrease in the South from 100 until 89, very close to that of Micronesians and Polynesians; also in Asia, from the Northeast to the Southeast, there is a decay from 107 to 96 [21]. Even intra-country inconsensties have been detected, which were attributed to socioeconomic contrasts [21]. Another problem arising from using behavioural and psychological criteria to support a racial classification is that these characteristics, unlike genes, can be to a considerable extent mutable through horizontal transmission. Bicultural individuals are told to be capable of engaging into cultural frame switching [29], meaning they have disparate behavioural pathways which can be triggered according to the specific cultural cues. As an example, this has been documented to occur when distinct cultural primes were presented during aesthetic judgments [30], and personality shifts provoked by changing the language being used [31]. There’s also data showing a tendency for migrants to, across generations, approach the host society’s level on several traits, such as religiosity, collectivism, self-esteem, trust, and social closeness [32].

Then… what’s left for us to do with all this Human diversity?

Explore and appreciate it.

Conclusion

From the information provided, it becomes fair to state that there are very good reasons for not trusting our cognitive system when it starts drawing racial categories – and stereotypes in general. We even know it potentially betrays us for the sake of facilitating navigation in a dense social environment in which we are demanded to make quick judgments about whom we can safely interact with. Being conscious of the side-effects of this mechanism is already a good step to prevent letting it blind our intelligence. Overall, we have seen that the fantastic behavioural and psychological diversity exhibited by our species doesn’t seem to serve as a reliable proxy for establishing a racial classification due to being mutable, highly prone to biases, and having internal inconsistencies.

for all the references check out:

https://balkanhotspot.org/blog/”