Useful inhibitions
From Dr William von Hippel Sir: In his strident article (`The multicultural thought police', 1 November), Leo McKinstry declares that PC has run amok, and concludes that scientists have joined forces with multiculturalists by defining racism as a mental illness. To support this accusation, McKinstry inaccurately describes my research as claiming to identify the brain regions that make people racist. In contrast, our research indicates that elderly people are typically more racist than young people because they can no longer inhibit unintentionally activated stereotypes, due to atrophy of the brain regions that enable the mind to inhibit irrelevant or unwanted thoughts. Thus, contrary to McKinstry's claim about brain regions that make people racist, our research suggests that certain brain regions help people prevent themselves being racist (should they choose to do so). Our recent research also suggests that these same brain regions help people prevent themselves saying and doing socially inappropriate things, and perhaps even ceaselessly ruminating over distressing events in their lives. In contrast to McKinstry's characterisation, psychologists working on these problems are not trying to silence dissenters or engage in mind-control. Rather, we seek to understand why people are the way they are, with an eye towards helping them become the way they would like to be.
William von Hippel
University of New South Wales, Australia
Previous page
