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I know the feeling. Where I live (in East Germany), there are now a lot more immigrants/refugees from the Middle East and Africa then there used to be a few yea

I know the feeling. Where I live (in East Germany), there are now a lot more immigrants/refugees from the Middle East and Africa then there used to be a few years ago. I noticed that when I'm sitting in the tram next to a group of immigrants, my lizard brain evokes a feeling of unease because it's an unfamiliar situation (I don't know any people from this ethnic group in person, I don't understand their language(s), and so on), and I have to make a deliberate effort to override that. Not that I tolerate it, but I can see why people tend to be resentful against foreigners on a psychological level.

dudul 9y ago
> I don't understand their language(s) I remember reading an article a few years ago explaining how one's brain tends to react somewhat negatively when hearing somebody speaking a language they don't understand. It's actually "normal" (as in "good luck fighting thousands of years of evolution") to feel unease when around people speaking a language you don't understand. Funnily, the paper was also mentioning that the same thing happens when hearing somebody talk over the phone. The fact that you can only hear 1/2 of the conversation somehow triggers some defense mechanism in your brain.