A HYPOTHESIS REGARDING THE ORIGINS OF ETHNIC DISCRIMINATION

This article develops an explanation for ethnic discrimination based o n what can be called ''social decoding.'' It is hypothesized that huma ns have developed unique cognitive skills for discerning situations in which others will behave in a self-interested opportunistic fashion. However, these cognitive skills, like the human ability to acquire lan guage, are effectuated by environmental programming. Consequently, peo ple will be able to decode accurately only when dealing with others of similar type. From this it follows that when selecting the ''best'' c andidate from several populations each of which contain a large number of people, an individual will almost certainly end up choosing someon e from the population that she or he can more accurately decode. There fore, assuming that a common ethnic background is associated with more accurate decoding, people will appear to discriminate in favor of oth ers who are ethnically similar. Ironically, this ''discrimination'' ar ises because people cannot discriminate as accurately when dealing wit h members of a dissimilar population.