‘Neuralizing’ Injustice: How neuroscience misunderstands racism, addiction, and crime

Abstract

The science of the brain has emerged to the forefront of public thought and policy regarding many social issues, enabled by technological advancements in cognitive neuroscience and psychology. While this research presents exciting possibilities for informing social activism and policy, centering neuroscientific explanations for complex social issues often obscures social injustices not easily measurable with neuroscientific tools. Here, I discuss neuroscientific and psychological research into racism, drug addiction, and criminality that has 1) ‘over-individualized’ these issues by neglecting structural and environmental complexities,, and 2) ‘over-neuralized’ these issues by reducing them to neural phenomena, inscribing historical injustices into the ‘hardwiring’ of the brain under a veneer of scientific objectivity. Taken together, this research—on implicit racial bias, the ‘brain disease’ model of addiction, and the ‘criminal brain’—casts the brain as a moral scapegoat, allowing us to show mercy towards individuals without grappling with collective responsibility for the conditions of injustice at the heart of racism, addiction, and crime. Finally, I discuss recommendations for neuroscientific and psychological inquiry that is attentive to non-neural explanations and responsive to how the science of the brain is translated and communicated into broader society.