[vacri]

Believe it or not, some psychologists do use neuroscience. Source: I co-majored in neuroscience and psychology.

In any event, you're describing one of the root causes of the problem, but not the problem itself. It's like saying "A driver isn't responsible for making the car go forward - it's only the engine that provides the propulsion". "This bit of the brain lights up when you do X" is not the same as "Humans have this problem with X, and there are ways to get around it".

Put another way: neuroscience tells us that X happens in the brain when we see Y. Now what? This on it's own has nothing to say about something like police training.

[78666cdc]

Of course, there are entire subfields of psychology that directly and routinely engage with neuroscience. But behavioral psychology generally does not; in any case, the narrative given in the linked article speaks entirely and solely from the point of view of psychology, with no mention of neuroscience. That there are fields of psychology that fruitfully engage with neuroscience does not chance that this article does not mention neuroscientific considerations at all.

The reason that I made my comment is that the article tries to say that a deficiency in facial recognition of persons of another race is a psychological - that is, higher cognitive - effect. If it is taken as an effect of higher cognition, without a neurophysiological basis, opens up the possibility of the argument "his bias against black people made him not care enough to distinguish black people." That argument would bring open the door to arguments sociologically based biases such as being racist, when in fact there is an observed, known, studied, published, fact that the neurophysiology of the part of the brain that distinguishes faces literally cannot distinguish variations in facial features of members of a race a person hasn't been often exposed to, as a literally biological limitation that one cannot blame on sociological reasons. It has the potential to shift the conversation to a fruitless arena.