Race in Neuroscience Textbooks

How psychology textbooks define and discuss race has received minimal attention. For example, prior research investigating introductory psychology textbooks has indicated that race was only defined around 40% of the time, and of those that did so, only roughly 25% were correct (i.e., social construct). The field of neuroscience has yet to address this issue. This paper investigates how neuroscience textbooks define and discuss race as a concept. The two main questions are (i) how is race defined? and (ii) how are racial differences involving intelligence discussed? Thirty textbooks from 1990 to 2019 were investigated via content analysis. Out of these 30 texts none defined race, whilst only one text (5%) discussed intelligence differences in relation to race, which made unclear conclusions as to why such differences exist. These results show a significant gap in neuroscience textbooks compared to domains such as introductory psychology texts. It is plausible issues around sensitivity, WEIRD psychology or textbook topical coverage could be contributing factors. Further investigations addressing such possible explanations are required.