Remarkably, even though participants knew they had been randomly assigned, their brains showed the same patterns of ingroup allegiance and outgroup disregard. “Us” versus “them” does not need to be predicated on deep meaning: even arbitrary labels rapidly create bias.

antagonism can emerge from arbitrary divisions

A deeper dive into the data, however, revealed that the participants displayed more brain activity while watching the pain of fans who liked the same team they did. They showed less brain activity when watching fans of a rival team. Their brains simply responded more to their ingroup

minimum amount of information required to trigger an ingroup bia

Although many participants reported that they cared for all people equally, brain imaging revealed a different story: people care about some more than others, and their subconscious selectivity was based on nothing more than a one-word label.

Strikingly, atheists showed the same ingroup bias as religious participants, suggesting the bias is not so much about religion as it is about the degree of affiliation to a group. Labels alone can spur bias.

the more empathic a participant claimed to be, the more she was biased in favor of her ingroup.

, understand our own biases

build a better model of others

Theatre and books let people to step into the shoes of others, and with the printing press these stories spread widely.

learn and resist the tactics of dehumanisationlearn and resist the tactics of dehumanisation

, “blind” your biases

entangle group membership

When you're a young actor you like to go for characters with a bit of flair, so in many films I ended up playing the weirdos. I can assure you I'm not a psycho or a criminal or a bully.

I think how pay gets determined is pretty broad - experience, how people look, what they bring to the job. But there's no question women are paid less. Women don't ask.

I go to more open mic nights than open mikers.

Sometimes you get the best light from a burning bridge.

Over the past years, I have lectured many times on the Cuban missile crisis, most provocatively to 200 senior officers of the former Soviet army in Moscow in 1991, among them KGB generals. There, my knowledge of Penkovsky's role was thoroughly confirmed, and so was the Soviet military men's residual sense of humiliation at Khrushchev's 'blink'.

When you're in medicine - especially when you're a resident in a public hospital - you feel like you're doing your part. But not when you're a writer.

I think this is what hooks one to gardening: it is the closest one can come to being present at creation.

There must be a limit as to how much care to be given and for how long. If over a reasonable period of time then its no longer strength but being exploited.

If you don't have liberty and self-determination, you've got nothing, that's what this is what this country is built on. And this is the ultimate self-determination, when you determine how and when you're going to die when you're suffering.

Andrew Carnegie loved libraries; he knew their importance to an educated society and as anchors to our communities. And so, just as some loyal baseball fans travel to attend games at all 30 major league stadiums, over the last decade or so, I have slowly, casually, visited Carnegie libraries whenever I am on the road.

The mere fact that so many continue to rise, year after year, out of just such conditions as you may think are fatal to your advancement, ought to convince you that you also can conquer your environment.

My wife determined that my genius should prevail, and that my final success as an ornithologist should be triumphant.

Playing the lead in a film where you shoot for three months away from home is not an easy thing for me when my children are in school and my husband is running a theatre company.

Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.

The fin whale is the second largest whale species on Earth, weighing up to 80 tons.

Unless we are making progress in our nursing every year, every month, every week, take my word for it we are going back.

Obama has already rejected the bright sunlight of public knowledge, which is democracy's great disinfectant and cure.

I think of myself as a girl from Brooklyn.

We are together with the British and Americans because one should fight terror. But we are not going to pay the price for it by endangering Israel and its citizens.

If I want to work, I can. If I want to play golf, or ride my motorcycle, I can. But the rest of it is family. Sometimes you're not really needed by your family, but you're there. And my kids like to know I'm there.

The druidical claims for Stonehenge seem to belong to that bonkers-but-persistent strand of Englishness that believes there is something particularly mystical about the English themselves, who were clearly a chosen people.

Accuracy to a newspaper is what virtue is to a lady; but a newspaper can always print a retraction.

Republicans regard Dean as one of their best secret weapons, I have yet to find a Democrat who, in private chatter, doesn't think he's a problem for them.

As freely as the firmament embraces the world, or the sun pours forth impartially his beams, so mercy must encircle both friend and foe.