Can Neuroscience Data be Used to Minimize the Effects of Stereotype Threat?
Last December 2013, the neuroscience graduate students at Emory University spearheaded an effort alongside many other sponsors to organize and implement a symposium to explore the neuroscientific basis of race and gender bias. The program, entitled “Bias in the Academy: From Neural Networks to Social Networks,” awarded the Laney Graduate School New Thinkers/New Leaders fund and support from CMBC and the Center for Ethics, aimed to provide students and faculty alike an overview of the psychological and neuroscientific research on race and gender bias and how this might be used to mitigate harmful effects of stereotype and bias in the academy. After listening to and participating in the symposium, I realized that the symposium speakers and student planners all hoped to answer a similar question regarding the nature of the brain: Is the brain “hard-wired” to categorize people into groups in a way that makes negative stereotyping inevitable or is the brain exquisitely plastic insof...
