EVER been so irritated by sexist behaviour you felt like hitting the
perpetrator? Not such a good idea, perhaps, but it turns out that injuries can
occasionally banish some sexist beliefs.
Jordan Grafman at the National Institutes of Health near Washington DC has
found that stereotypical beliefs about the sexes reside in a specific part of
the brain called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Injuries or damage to this
area can deprive victims of some kinds of unconscious social knowledge.
The team asked 10 patients with such damage whether a word was male or female
(as in “John” or “Jane”) or…
