Could stereotyping be an evolutionary byproduct?

So recently I was thinking about why people can be racist in a society, and came up with the theory that it may have been evolutionarily selected for.

I mean think about it, two animals in a species (let's say rabbits) are identical in every aspect, until they are both attacked by some other kind of animal (foxes for example) and left alive and only slightly injured.

Rabbit A decides that it must have been a one off type of thing, and accepts that not all foxes are the same, which while being true, does not help him when he is eaten by another fox a week later, after attempting some friendly animal conversation.

Rabbit B however, decides that all foxes are bad, and should be avoided at all costs, because they might attack him. Rabbit B avoids being eaten by a fox a week later, because he goes nowhere near them because he mistrusts them on principle.

Rabbit B then goes on to breed many a child, whom he teaches all his generalizing ways to, thus propagating the evolution of stereotyping.

Now replace the rabbits with monkeys evolving into humans over ages and ages, and the surviving people have an animal instinct of mistrust towards anything that looks or feels similar to anything that has threatened him before.

Could this be a byproduct of our conditioning by natural selection, or are we just a racist hateful species of our own volition?

So? What do you think?

Yes, because if you find something true of many people/things that act/seem a certain way and that is a negative factor in your life, you'd come to avoid them without further judgment upon sight.

However, that doesn't make it right to do in today's modern world: we now know better, and even if you hold stereotypes, it's best not to express them or use them to offend.

Not tiring at all Honestly it makes alot more sense than the evolutionary theory above though I could see how someone might think such. In the animal world that makes perfect sense that the mistrust and insticts of the later herbavors would have been passed down or taught to them or somehow instill genetically since not every animal in this world knew about the exsistance of each other. There would have to be a learning curve in their somewhere.

With humans though, we think on a slightly different level and learn differently, at times, than an animal might. We develope an opinion and ideas about those that look, sound, or act differently than what we personally consider normal. Thus we learn to accept it or tolerate it or we just out right hate it with no second thought or even the slightest bit of thought at all. It's more the person and the enviornment they were raised in from a small age.

Though not every person that is raised in a racist type environment comes out to hate everything, myself personally was raised in racist central. my mother and father were the worst people for it I have ever met even to this day, though myself I came out to be quite and agreeable person and I always give the person a chance I never make a judgement on race, or really any off feature. Not saying I'm perfect Nasty habit of talking to someone once and if I don't like em whispering a friend, "That dude's a real asshole." =P But each person I feel is responsible for trying to find their way rather than JUST following what they've been taught since they were young...

It's always good to experiment with cultures and people, as long as you dun get locked up or have to run like hell to stay alive give it a shot. Never know what you might like. ^.^

Sorry for the long winded post,
Voy

If humans had to wait for every to snake to bite rather than think "it's a snake; it might bite", mankind would have been dead a long time ago.

Brightly colored mushrooms and frogs, same thing. "I'm poisonous, check out my colors, yo." Sure, there are some brightly colored snakes, frogs and mushrooms that aren't deadly, but hey, I'm not touching any of them unless proven otherwise.

My, how racist of me.

Anyway, the big difference between humans and animals is that humans can think and evaluate rather than acting instinctively.

Short answer: yes. All our behaviors stem from evolution one way or the other. But that doesn't say anything about whether the said behavior is morally correct or not.

Animals(and people) fear the unfamiliar.

And to hide their fear, they ridicule these unfamiliars. Just because they don't follow the social norm. Which is pretty fucked up, imo.

Beings that are not sentient do not have the ability to teach their young anything, they simply fear what they do not understand unless it has proven to be no immediate threat to them. Like a dog realizing that a campfire can burn itself but also create warmth and if it stays far enough away it will have warmth without being burned.

It is not the same for sentient beings because, although it may still be instinct for us to fear the unknown, that can easily be overcome. Our vast recorded knowledge and population are the main reasons why there is so much racism, prejudice and a large amount of mass stereotypes in today's world.

Whenever we experience a particularly memorable event, the knowledge and experience acquired from that event is stored in the back of our minds for the rest of our lives. The brain memorizes everything from our five senses to the amount and type of chemicals produced by the brain at the time of the event, thus we actually re-experience very similar feelings that were registered at the time of the first event when we happen to come across a similar event because the brain recalls the memory to be used as a source of information and judgment.

Take 9/11 for example. Such a catastrophe would be remembered by anyone living in the States, and after acquiring the knowledge that is was done by Islamic terrorists, a large majority of people without knowledge of Islamic people (Generally most people in the U.S.A.) will recall those events every time they see someone who says they practice Islam or share similarities with the terrorists that bombed the Twin Towers and thus you have created a mass stereotype as well as mass prejudice and racism all within one major experience.

Humans are also very reliant on our sight. So it's perfectly natural for one to take the most obvious difference into consideration first when dealing with other human beings: skin colour.

We have the instinct to reproduce, to continue on our legacy as a species. What better way is there to ensure our survival than teaching our young and recording our experiences for them to acquire knowledge from? With all of the human experiences being taught, recorded and learned by other humans, it was only a matter of time until we got a clusterfuck of mass stereotypes.

It is not an evolutionary by-product, but rather is a grand part of our evolution itself and is a perfectly natural part of being a fledgling sentient species. It is not instinct though as you have theorized, rather, each stereotype is something we acquire and conform to our own tastes from the time we are born.

btw: in case this was unclear, I am not referring to a genetic byproduct of our evolution, as much as a behavioral byproduct of our evolution.

I came up with this theory in an attempt to figure out why racism is still so prevalent in today's society, despite being completely abhorrent and ignorant 99.99% of the time, and also as a way to explain why some usually intelligent people can be racist, and why I have known people who admit their racism, and concede that it is wrong, but still hold onto it.

also,

I'm not referring to individual stereotypes being Evo-byproducts, but rather the constant act of stereotyping and generalization in and of itself

We generalize things because it's easier to gauge how that will affect us. If a bright colored snake bites you, and you feel sick and ill for awhile. Then if you see another bright colored snake, you will avoid it.

Likewise, if you think strawberries taste good, you might think that eating another red berry is likely to taste good too.

Racism, on the other hand, is not usually the result of generalization. The application to the entire race might be, but the initial racism is not.

Most of it is acquired through learning passed on by parents. This does have a usefulness as we learn a lot of what we are supposed to do by mimicking our parents or caretakers. It's just that negative stuff can be acquired. So no, there is no benefit to having racism, but the process we learn to be racist does.

The initial part of it, and what helps to keep it alive is things like propaganda, hype and such. I mean look at the antisemitism that resulted in Germany. That demonstrates a very good real world example of how racism usually begins.

I already explained through inference how and why it is because of our ability to deduce as a sentient species within my post. I solidified my reasoning by adding an additional factor as to why it cannot be due to instinct in my last sentence, in case you happened to be talking about a genetic by-product.

Implications... Implications...



Implication within the quote: The brain recalls the memory so it can deduce the events that may occur in the similar situation at hand. Hence the word judgment.

Judgment: The cognitive process of reaching a decision or drawing conclusions

Deduce: To reach a conclusion by applying rules of logic to given premises



1. Memorable experience across a vast population.
2. Acquisition of knowledge that it was done by Islamic followers.
3. Deduction that, because the towers were bombed by Islamic followers, Islamic followers hate "America". This of course is just a general representation of how citizens of the United States of America would take and have taken the matter.
4. A mass stereotype is formed, racism is formed and mass prejudice is formed.



Read: It is not instinct as you have theorized. It is because we are sentient beings with the ability to experience situations and make deductions from the knowledge acquired, furthermore if it were instinct we would automatically stereotype without any logical thought, which we do not, because deduction is involved in creating a stereotype and each and every person acquires and conforms their own stereotypes, which further denies the fact that it is instinct because instinct would mean that, 100% of the time, we will feel threatened again by something we have been threatened by before.

The only reason I stated that last sentence in my post was in case you weren't talking about a behavioral by-product and a genetic one (You never know, some people are weird that way.). Other than the disagreement with the instinct part, it is completely due to our evolution.