Wired for Fear: Recognizing and Countering Implicit Bias in the Brain

This essay explores the connections between fear, implicit bias, and injustice, noting how the brain’s deeply embedded structures and processes for survival predispose us to detect threat. It further illustrates how the brain’s categorization processes collude with bias to favor ‘in-group’ members a...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Roozeboom, William D. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group 2021
In: Journal of pastoral theology
Year: 2021, Volume: 31, Issue: 2/3, Pages: 110-127
RelBib Classification:FD Contextual theology
NCA Ethics
ZA Social sciences
ZD Psychology
Further subjects:B white fragility
B facework
B Postcolonial
B debiasing
B implicit bias
B fear response
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Description
Summary:This essay explores the connections between fear, implicit bias, and injustice, noting how the brain’s deeply embedded structures and processes for survival predispose us to detect threat. It further illustrates how the brain’s categorization processes collude with bias to favor ‘in-group’ members and ‘other’ ‘out-group’ members. Taken together, these factors limit the brain’s mirror neural network’s capacities to empathize across lines of difference. While this sounds reductionistic and pessimistic, the good news is that, just like the brain is generally malleable, implicit biases can be modified through debiasing practices. In exploring these concepts, the essay examines the contributions from intercultural and postcolonial pastoral and practical theology to provide constructive frameworks for facing one another, enhancing recognition, and developing neighbor-love.
ISSN:2161-4504
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of pastoral theology
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1080/10649867.2021.1929710