Almost nobody believes anymore that infants are insensate blobs. It seems both mad and evil to deny experience and feeling to a laughing, gurgling creature.
Paul BloomRead
Strong moral arguments exist for why we should often try to ignore stereotypes or override them. But we shouldn't assume they represent some irrational quirk of the unconscious mind. In fact, they're largely the consequence of the mind's attempt to make a rational decision.
Interpretation
What this quote means
We should challenge stereotypes, but recognize they stem from rational cognitive processes.
Paul Bloom's quote emphasizes the importance of critically assessing stereotypes rather than dismissing them as mere irrational biases. He suggests that while moral reasoning may drive us to overlook these stereotypes, they are not random but rather represent a cognitive strategy used by our minds to simplify complex social information and make rational choices.
Themes
StereotypesDecision-MakingCognitionMoral ArgumentsRationality
In practice
Example use cases
During a workshop on diversity and inclusion, you might use this quote to illustrate the complexity of stereotypes in decision-making.
More from Paul Bloom
All quotes →Maybe one of the most heartening findings from the psychology of pleasure is there's more to looking good than your physical appearance. If you like somebody, they look better to you. This is why spouses in happy marriages tend to think that their husband or wife looks much better than anyone else thinks that they do.
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If you look within the United States, religion seems to make you a better person. Yet atheist societies do very well - better, in many ways, than devout ones.
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I want to convince you that humans are, to some extent, natural born essentialists. What I mean by this is we don't just respond to things as we see them or feel them or hear them. Rather, our response is conditioned on our beliefs, about what they really are, what they came from, what they're made of, what their hidden nature is.
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We benefit, intellectually and personally, from the interplay between different selves, from the balance between long-term contemplation and short-term impulse. We should be wary about tipping the scales too far. The community of selves shouldn't be a democracy, but it shouldn't be a dictatorship, either.
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Enjoying fiction requires a shift in selfhood. You give up your own identity and try on the identities of other people, adopting their perspectives so as to share their experiences. This allows us to enjoy fictional events that would shock and sadden us in real life.
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