The Cost of ‘Professionalism’: How the Brain Internalises White, Male, Western, Middle-Class Norms

Georgina Brown (hershe)
Aug 14
3 min read

Let’s play a quick word association game. I say “professional,” you say…

Suit? Clean-cut? Polished? Neutral? Articulate? Confident? Calm?

(…and let’s be honest: White. Male. Western, Middle class.)

The concept of “professionalism” might sound neutral, but it’s not. It's neurologically charged, socially coded, and — more often than not — exclusionary.

Profession(alism) is a Performance

The idea of “professionalism” isn’t a universal truth. It’s a culturally constructed script, reinforced over decades, often built on a very narrow template of behaviour, dress, language, and emotional expression — rooted in white, Western, male, middle-class norms.

Your brain learns this template early. Through mirror neurons, you absorb what’s rewarded, who gets listened to, who’s in charge. These neurons fire when we observe others and simulate their experience — which is how we learn social codes without ever being explicitly taught them.

So when you walk into a job interview or leadership meeting and don’t fit that template — your brain knows. And often, it makes you shrink, mask, or overcompensate.

The Amygdala Knows You’re Different

Your amygdala, the brain’s threat detection centre, picks up on social cues. If you're constantly in spaces where you're the "only" — only woman, only Black person, only working-class accent — the amygdala flags it.

This leads to:

Increased cortisol (stress)
Reduced working memory (you forget the brilliant point you were about to make)
Hypervigilance (monitoring your tone, posture, language, presence)

This is called “minority stress,” and it’s real. It impacts decision-making, collaboration, and wellbeing. (See research by Meyer, 2003; Sue et al., 2007.)

Meanwhile, those who fit the template experience the absence of threat — which is why the culture feels “natural” to them. It’s not better. It’s just familiar.

Minority Stress

Whose Neural Pathways Get Rewarded?

Brains are shaped by feedback loops. If you’ve always been affirmed for your communication style, your tone, your confidence — those circuits get stronger. Your dopaminergic system lights up when you “perform professionalism” the right way.

But what if you didn’t grow up in that culture?
What if your accent is seen as “rough”?
Your emotions interpreted as “too much”
?Your silence mistaken for “passivity” rather than “processing”?

Then your brain learns to mask, mimic, or mute itself. And that is cognitively exhausting.

Real Talk: The Price of Assimilation

Assimilation isn’t free. It costs:

Cognitive load
Identity erosion
Innovation (because difference gets edited out before it’s voiced)

People from minoritised groups often feel they have to code-switch, suppress their natural communication, and "perform" professionalism just to be safe — never mind to succeed.

That’s not inclusion. That’s a neurological survival strategy.

So What Do We Do About It?

This isn’t about “lowering standards.” It’s about redefining them.

It’s about understanding that professionalism should be about ethics, competence, and kindness — not accent, clothing, or how many big words you can drop into a Zoom call.

Here’s how we shift the neural defaults:

NeuroNudges for De-Coding Professionalism

Reflect on the “ideal colleague” image in your head. Where did it come from? Whose behaviour gets praised most?
Celebrate diverse expressions of professionalism. Emotional leadership, humility, honesty, vulnerability — all signal trust and are neurologically bonding.
Design for difference. Don’t make everyone adapt to the loudest or most polished voice. Make space for varied processing, speaking, thinking.
Train with neuroscience. NIMM builds awareness of how your brain has learned — and how it can unlearn. Inclusion isn't about compliance. It’s about rewiring.

This Is Why NIMM Exists

The NeuroInclusive Maturity Model helps organisations reprogram what they define as “professional.”It goes deeper than tick-box DEI — into the actual cognitive scaffolding of bias, threat response, identity, and learning.

You want equity?You need new neurons, not just new policies.