Cognitive Mechanisms Underlying Discrimination

We are currently living in an age where Society recognises the negative impact of discrimination on people’s mental health. Despite awareness training programmes and dignity at work protocols, discrimination based on race, age, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religious or political beliefs, impairment, and family status, are still pervasive. Assuming that people have their good intentions, patterns of discriminatory behaviours could come from an unchecked “autopilot” driven by past behaviour or previously accepted norms. What are the cognitive processes that prevent displaying patterns of discriminatory behaviour? Why might they fail? Can we learn from the human mind to prevent discrimination in artificial intelligence?

The focus is on discrimination without malicious intent. Given the pervasiveness of discrimination, however micro, one question is whether this prevalence reflects the operations of the cognitive mind under certain conditions. For example, perceptual expertise allows a person to categorise two seemingly similar faces. Lack of perceptual expertise in distinguishing a neutral or angry face of a person from another race might lead to misclassification with escalating consequences in situations of crowd control. By applying the availability heuristic, one can imagine that people are more likely to choose their closer colleagues over more suitably skilled colleagues with whom interaction was limited. Finally, biases may come from implicitly using stereotypes about other groups in drawing conclusions about past and making predictions about future events involving members of the other group.

The goal of this Research Topic is to identify the cognitive biases that could underlie discriminatory behaviour of people, demonstrate these with empirical evidence, and develop an evidence-based roadmap to tackle these biases in the work place, in tech, and beyond. 

This Research Topic welcomes all types of manuscripts, especially research articles providing new data, review articles collating critical literature, and perspectives articles that hone on the cognitive mechanisms that explain discrimination without malicious intent.

·      Cognitive biases that underlie discriminatory behaviour

·      Perceptual expertise and the other race effect

·      Influence of perspective taking in curbing bias

·      Group dynamics and group exclusion

·      Cultural influences on decision bias

·      Tackling discrimination in AI