The Art of Happiness in a Troubled World

by Dalai Lama XIV

The fundamental question here is, is there a way to get rid of prejudice? A seminal experiment by Fiske provided a striking and surprising answer to that question. In this experiment, investigators assessed both the emotional and cognitive components of prejudice in a group of subjects, using fMRI scans and cognitive testing techniques as described above. This assessment was repeated under two different conditions, with different instructions. In one part of the experiment, white subjects were asked to look at photos of black faces and judge whether the person was over twenty-one. This instruction encouraged the subjects to look at the faces on the basis of social categorization, making a quick judgment about whether they belonged in the “over twenty-one” group or the “under twenty-one” group. Like race or gender, “age group,” categorizing on the basis of “young” or “old,” is one of the socially distinct categories or groups that we instantly recognize in our culture. Viewing the faces in terms of their membership in a group discouraged looking at them as individuals, which would require more detailed analysis of the individual characteristics of that face. Under these conditions, when the white subjects assessed the black faces on the basis of “over or under twenty-one,” subjects’ racial prejudices were elicited—activating both the negative emotional bias (activating the amygdala based on fMRI) and racial stereotypes (determined by cognitive testing). In the second phase ...