Racism is a natural human instinct
While evolutionary psychology and developmental studies document widespread tendencies toward ingroup favoritism and coalitional bias, researchers emphasize that modern prejudice and racism are heavily shaped by cultural norms, perceived threats, and social dominance orientations rather than acting as a simple, fixed biological instinct.
The retrieved literature presents a nuanced picture. Several papers (5, 6, 11) support the existence of deep-seated evolutionary and developmental tendencies toward ingroup bias and favoritism across humans and animals. However, other papers (1, 3, 7) demonstrate that outgroup hostility and hierarchical preferences are significantly mediated by perceived threat, cultural transmission, and individual psychological differences (like social dominance orientation), making the claim that racism is a straightforward 'natural instinct' contested and overly simplistic.
Jim A. C. Everett, Nadira S. Faber, Molly J. Crockett. Preferences and beliefs in ingroup favoritism. 2015. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2015.00015
Paper 5 reviews research demonstrating that ingroup favoritism—favoring members of one's own group—is well-documented and deeply rooted in social interactions.
Arnold K. Ho, Jim Sidanius, Nour Kteily, Jennifer Sheehy‐Skeffington, Felicia Pratto, Kristin E. Henkel, Rob Foels, Andrew L. Stewart. The nature of social dominance orientation: Theorizing and measuring preferences for intergroup inequality using the new SDO₇ scale.. 2015. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000033
Paper 1 demonstrates that individual preferences for group-based hierarchy (social dominance orientation) vary widely and are shaped by distinct personality and contextual factors rather than being a uniform human instinct.
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Bahar Tunçgenç, Emma Cohen. Movement Synchrony Forges Social Bonds across Group Divides. 2016. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00782
Paper 6 notes that arbitrarily defined groups can evoke disproportionately positive attitudes toward one's in-group and negative attitudes toward out-groups starting in early childhood.
Naoki Masuda, Feng Fu. Evolutionary models of in-group favoritism. 2015. https://doi.org/10.12703/p7-27
Paper 11 reviews evolutionary models showing that in-group favoritism and ethnocentrism can evolve and are shared across humans and other animals.
Peter J. Richerson, Ryan Baldini, Adrian V. Bell, Kathryn Demps, Karl Frost, Vicken Hillis, Sarah Mathew, Emily K. Newton, Nicole Naar, Lesley Newson, Cody T. Ross, Paul E. Smaldino, Timothy M. Waring, Matthew Zefferman. Cultural group selection plays an essential role in explaining human cooperation: A sketch of the evidence. 2014. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x1400106x
Paper 3 highlights that human cooperation and group structures heavily rely on cultural group selection and transmitted social norms rather than pure biological instinct.
Milan Obaidi, Jonas R. Kunst, Nour Kteily, Lotte Thomsen, James Sidanius. Living under threat: Mutual threat perception drives anti‐Muslim and anti‐Western hostility in the age of terrorism. 2018. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2362
Paper 7 shows that outgroup hostility is primarily driven by perceived symbolic and realistic intergroup threats rather than an immutable natural instinct.
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