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Individuals with Rare Disorder Have No Racial Biases

livescience.com

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Re: Individuals with Rare Disorder Have No Racial Biases

#11

Post by goodside »

jamesbressi wrote: post #2

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.

Simon Baron-Cohen (cousin to the comedian) has an incredible book on gender differences in psychology called "The Essential Difference", where he puts forth the theory that Williams Syndrome is a condition diametrically opposite from autism: whereas autistics exhibit hyper-masculine behavior, children with Williams Syndrome exhibit hyper-feminine behavior. As he describes it, children with WS have verbal and social abilities that far outpace their physical development, while suffering severe mental retardation in pretty much all other areas, especially spacial and quantitative reasoning.

As others have mentioned, the condition also results in physical changes including pale skin, stunted growth, and abnormal facial features. It's not something one might wish upon one's children.

Re: Individuals with Rare Disorder Have No Racial Biases

#13

Post by pook »

ThePlague wrote: post #7

And this is a "disorder", how?

"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.

Re: Individuals with Rare Disorder Have No Racial Biases

#15

Post by lutorm »

wdewind wrote: post #10
sp332 wrote: post #9

99 percent of the 40 children studied *facepalm*

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...

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.

Re: Individuals with Rare Disorder Have No Racial Biases

#16

Post by sethg »

jganetsk wrote: post #3
jamesbressi wrote: post #2

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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_syndrome The disease comes with a large number of physiological problems, and also serious problems in intelligence outside of social behavior.

...which raises the question: do these people lack the capacity for racial prejudice, or do they lack the intelligence required to determine what race a person belongs to?

The boundaries between races are, after all, determined by culture (a hundred years ago, Italians, Russians, and Jews would not have been considered “white”), and culture has to be learned. To make matters worse, Williams is associated with severe deficits in visual perception (http://www.udel.edu/PR/UDaily/2004/WSDrawingslg.jpg), so it’s possible that someone with the syndrome would have trouble even recognizing the facial characteristics that neurotypical folks associate with various races.

Re: Individuals with Rare Disorder Have No Racial Biases

#17

Post by 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.

Re: Individuals with Rare Disorder Have No Racial Biases

#18

Post by whimsy »

lutorm wrote: post #15
wdewind wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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.

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.

Re: Individuals with Rare Disorder Have No Racial Biases

#19

Post by wmorgan »

ryandvm wrote: post #8
jamesbressi wrote: post #2

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.

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 o…

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...

Re: Individuals with Rare Disorder Have No Racial Biases

#20

Post by 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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