Cypherpunks executive function.
Professor Rat.
profrv at nex.com.au
Fri May 16 22:56:33 PDT 2003
HealthScoutNews) -- People who are racist may suffer a temporary lapse in
mental capacity after interacting with people who are members of a racial
minority.
Researchers from Princeton University and Dartmouth College found that
white people with a high degree of racial basis experienced a decrease in
"executive function" after spending time talking with black people. Their
research appears in the May issue of Psychological Science.
Executive function is a key element of thought that involves the ability to
fix attention on certain, high-level mental tasks.
The study included 59 white college students. They were given a test to
assess the degree of racial bias in their thinking. The students then spent
time talking with either a black or a white person and afterwards were
given a test that measured their ability to concentrate on a challenging
mental task.
The more racially biased the students were, the worse they did on the
mental task after speaking with a black person. But racially biased
students who spoke with a white person, even if they discussed racially
sensitive issues, had no decline in mental function.
"When you have to control your behavior, it takes a lot of energy. And if
you expend energy in a social interaction, then you don't have so much left
over to do something else," researcher Nicole Shelton says in a news release..
http://kgtv-tvhealth.ip2m.com/index.cfm?pt=itemDetail&Item_ID=98939&site_cat_id=8
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