The Hierarchy of Discrimination: What the Brain Sees First

Georgina Brown (hershe)
Jul 21
3 min read

Let’s get straight to it: your brain is making decisions about people before you've even said “hello.” And it’s doing so at lightning speed, faster than you can consciously catch. But here's the kicker: not all differences are treated equally by the brain.

There’s a silent algorithm at play, one that prioritises the visually obvious over the cognitively revealed.

In inclusion work, we often treat all bias as created equal. But from a neuroscience point of view? It isn’t. And pretending otherwise may be costing us meaningful progress.

Snap Judgments, Hardwired

Your brain is a pattern-recognition machine. It was built to spot threats quickly and efficiently. Visual cues, like skin colour, gender expression, body shape, and age, are processed within milliseconds in the fusiform gyrus and amygdala, two regions that light up faster than a tweet goes viral.

A study by Ito & Bartholow (2009) showed that race-based categorisation occurs within 200 milliseconds of seeing someone. That’s before conscious thought even joins the chat. The amygdala, our trusty fear-response HQ, becomes more active when people view faces of a different race, particularly in individuals with high implicit bias (Cunningham et al., 2004).

Translation: what’s seen first, gets judged first, and often more harshly.

Visual Difference = Greater Bias Exposure?

This fast-lane processing is why visible characteristics, especially race, are more likely to trigger immediate bias. These biases operate beneath awareness and control, meaning even the most ‘well-meaning’ brains can show discriminatory activity without intending to.

In contrast, faith, sexual orientation, neurodivergence, or disability (unless visible) don’t get the same first-impression processing. They enter the scene later, through names, behaviours, symbols, or disclosures, giving the brain more time, and occasionally more context, to reappraise.

This doesn’t mean those identities face less discrimination overall. But it does suggest that the type of discrimination differs in its neural origin and its intensity at first contact.

The Neuroscience Hierarchy of First Impressions

While all prejudice is wrong, neuroscience research reveals a kind of “perception hierarchy”:

Trait	Detection Speed	Bias Intensity (Initial)
Race / Ethnicity	100–200ms	High
Gender / Age	200–300ms	High
Physical Disability	250–400ms	High
Faith (if visible)	400–800ms	Medium
LGBTQ+ Identity	1s+ (post-interaction)	Variable
Neurodivergence	1s+ (post-interaction)	Variable

(Source: Bartholow et al., 2006; Freeman & Ambady, 2011; Ratner et al., 2021)

The Diane Abbott Debate: Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud?

So, when Diane Abbott commented that "prejudice against people with a visible difference, like being Black, is not the same as prejudice against people with a religious or cultural identity", the backlash was swift and unforgiving. She was accused of undermining other forms of discrimination, particularly antisemitism, and suspended from the Labour Party.

Let’s be clear: her words, as published, were clumsy and minimising, especially in a context where Jewish communities face rising antisemitism. But if we strip it down to the neuroscience, her central claim, that visible difference can provoke more immediate bias, isn’t wrong. It’s provable.

The discomfort lies not in the science, but in how we publicly balance the pain and legitimacy of all forms of discrimination.

Diane Abbott MP: Straight Talking. Honest Politics.

Why This Matters for Inclusion Work

EDI efforts often flatten oppression into tidy categories, treating all bias as if it enters the brain through the same door. But it doesn’t. Inclusion strategies that ignore what the brain sees first risk underestimating the deeper neural coding of race-based bias.

We need layered approaches, ones that address the immediacy of visual bias, while also tackling the systemic, learned, and cognitive biases that emerge later.

This is where intersectionality meets neurobiology. Someone might face instant racial bias, only to later encounter additional prejudice based on their faith, gender identity, or neurotype. It's cumulative, not competitive.

Final Thought:

Bias Begins with the Brain, But Doesn’t End There

Recognising a hierarchy of discrimination from a neuroscience lens doesn’t excuse any form of bias. It helps us understand its root mechanics, so we can dismantle them more effectively.

If we want to rewire culture, we must first understand how the culture got wired into our brains.

Let’s stop pretending the brain doesn’t discriminate. It does. But with the right tools, training, and truth-telling, we can change what it does next.