Emotional categories override objective evidence in social judgment

Evidence

As Allport noted, emotions act “like sponges. Ideas, engulfed by an overpowering emotion, are more likely to conform to the emotion than to objective evidence” (1954/1979, p. 22). Category-based emotions adhere to outgroups at fundamental, primitive levels in our brains. Recent brain-imaging studies show a social basis of irrational prejudgment, such as activation of the brain’s amygdala (vigilance alarm) during presentation of pictures of unfamiliar faces from a racial outgroup, in comparison to faces from the observers’ own group (Hart et al., 2000). In effect, the brain’s burglar alarm habituates faster to members of the ingroup. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 351

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the inherited literature on affect heuristics and motivated reasoning (Kahneman, Zajonc) in the reader’s source base. — connects to: Emotion gives psychopolitics efficient access below conscious reflection