convenient.
Even with distinctive racial traits, “stranger bias” is hardly inevitable. It seems to be merely one of two options provided by the human brain. As Perry, (2008) and Cromwell & Schultz (2003) have suggested, the sheer size of the brain, particularly in the vast regions of the cerebral cortex (a section less influenced by primal urges and more concerned with learning and integrating new associations and concepts) provides a check and balance on our most basal instincts. Indeed Freud’s theory regarding the separation of the ego from the id for impulse control might have its physiological correlate in the frontal cortex.
In that context perhaps, despite Freud, it is not race, but the human capacity to over-distinguish between objects and persons that comprises the true sociopolitical virus. In truth that process, often referred to as discrimination learning, is more of a two sided coin than a virus because when it comes to drawing distinctions, that component of mind can employed for better or for worse; for example to chart the course of history, politics and scientific discovery, leading either to progress or social devolution.
That all good and bad, productive and destructive elements in society emanate from the human mind is a tautology requiring no further elaboration. On the other hand the way in which the human mind works does invite scrutiny, because the mind/brain is a flexible structure by virtue of its genetic and functional make-up, which can lead to any number of behavioral and attitudinal possibilities. In fact, as Mercado (2008) has suggested, the human brain appears to be a kind of bimodal organ constantly shifting between discriminatory and integrative cognitive