Is There a Connection Between Racism and Cognition?

There is some interest among psychologists in the connection, if any, between cognition and racism. But it almost always is framed unidirectionally, with the question taking the form of “How does racism affect cognition?” and even then very indirectly, as in discussing how racism causes minority children to receive inadequate schooling. Even if one frames the question (as I did in a recent Google search) “How does cognition affect racism?” the results one gets back are almost all reversed, with the emphasis again being on racism as the independent (input) variable and cognition being the dependent (outcome) variable. I find this curious, and in this essay, I will opine briefly on two questions: Why are psychologists not more interested in cognition as a contributor to racism? And why do I think such a causal connection deserves exploration?

Why Are Psychologists Uninterested in Racism as an Outcome of Poor Cognition?

There are several possible answers to this question. Here are four:

1. Although intelligence tests were developed by psychologists and intelligence continues to be an important psychological construct, most psychologists (especially clinical psychologists) have little interest in or sophisticated understanding of intelligence as an aspect of cognition, beyond opining on the results of IQ tests. Without such an understanding, the possibility that cognition could cause racism makes little sense.
2. Intelligence is understood by most psychologists largely in academic terms (IQ tests were originally created by drawing items from the school curriculum) while racism speaks more to “social intelligence.” However little the average psychologist knows about academic intelligence, they know Bupkis (Yiddish for nothing) about social intelligence.
3. Psychologists (including yours truly) tend to be politically liberal; the word “‘racism” tends to automatically activate certain schemas, in which racism is seen as responsible for many bad outcomes. If you mention racism and cognition in the same sentence, most psychologists will convert that in default (affect-driven) mode to “How does racism affect people negatively?”
4. Part of this liberal orientation is avoidance of characterizing people (especially less advantaged people) negatively. This translates to a reluctance to label people (from all ethnic or socioeconomic backgrounds) as lacking intelligence.

How Might Cognition Help to Explain Racism?

I don’t think this question has been addressed much (if my non-results from a Google search are any indication) but here are a few possible answers:

1. Racists tend to be over-generalizers, as in assuming that everyone within a particular racial category shares the same negative characteristics. For example, a close relative of mine justified his racist views about Black people by highlighting certain devalued traits and claiming that everyone in the racial group shared them. My efforts to point out the tremendous overlap among different racial groups (with many African Americans far more affluent or accomplished than either of us) did not budge him from his overly rigid categorizing.
2. A related insight is that race is a socially constructed category and that, from the standpoint of DNA and brain anatomy, there are no essential differences among the races. Understanding the biological invalidity of asserting the superiority of one race over another requires a degree of cognitive sophistication and scientific knowledge possessed by few racists.
3. There is some empirical evidence indicating that racists have lower IQs (here a Google search produces some results). The (non-racist) tendency to keep in mind that group outcomes are caused by environmental (income, childrearing, health status, education, nutrition, etc.) in addition to genetic inputs, is a mode of thinking that people with higher levels of intelligence are more likely to possess.

Contribution of Affect and History

Racism has tended to be viewed as a personality domain transmitted socially by one’s family, sub-culture, and time period. There is much truth to that, as reflected in the many highly intelligent people who continue to hold onto the racist beliefs that they grew up with. However, cognition—encompassing more than just IQ—appears to play a role, as some individuals can break free from such beliefs. Greater cognitive flexibility seems to increase the likelihood of this growth. Class is often pointed out as a confounding factor, with the possibility that many uneducated working-class people adopt a racist worldview due to the “replacement” threat. But even here, many working-class people are racially tolerant, and it would be interesting to know the various factors (including school integration) that explain such tolerance. While the developmental course of racism (and its opposite) remains to be more fully explored, it would be a mistake in my opinion to avoid considering how cognition enters into the equation as an input and not just as an outcome. A more productive way of approaching this relationship might be to reframe racism as a type of foolish action” (and racial tolerance as a type of “wise action”). In such a scheme (which I term "Intelligent Action Theory"), every individual act is viewed as the product of a variety of internal (personal) and external (situational) inputs; thus; any racist utterance or behavior would automatically have to be looked at in both cognitive and non-cognitive terms.

Copyright Stephen Greenspan