Danish science journalist Lone Frank says one prejudice about her is deeply irritating: the assumption that she neither understands nor cares about culture. She discusses prejudice in a new episode of the DR podcast Verdens navle, published September 23, 2026.
According to DR, Frank talks about her own prejudices with historian Peter Ørbæk in the P1 series Verdens navle. Frank hosts the program and works as a science journalist at Weekendavisen. She holds a PhD in neurobiology.
The prejudice that irritates her most concerns her own field, she tells DR. People place her in a box where she can only handle natural science. Frank notes that she reads fiction almost every day and has written about fiction in Weekendavisen several times.
She also meets positive prejudices, DR reports. One is that she, as a Jutlander, is hardworking, serious and trustworthy. Frank, who was born in Aarhus, says that description is accurate.
Frank readily admits she holds many prejudices about others. She says she does not believe she can meet anyone without forming assumptions about who they are.
Why the brain generalizes
Holding prejudices is generally seen as morally wrong, Frank explains in the podcast. Yet nobody is free of them. She describes generalization as a necessary cognitive function.
The brain is above all a prediction machine, she says. It must quickly assess a situation and decide what to do. Automatic generalizations make decisions faster and easier.
Per Frank, evolutionary psychology adds another layer. Early humans needed to know which group they belonged to and who they were allied against. That need to secure resources and survive led people to sort others into categories.
Ørbæk says he often hears prejudices about North Zealand, where he is from, involving fast cars, cocaine and rich parents. He can still laugh at them. He points out that many people living in Denmark who do not look ethnically Danish face far deeper prejudice, and that many also live with prejudice about their sexuality.
How a prejudice changes
Frank tells DR that prejudices can change. She cites a 2014 experiment by anthropologist John Tooby and psychologist Leda Cosmides, both prominent figures in evolutionary psychology. People with different skin colors were set to cooperate, and the tendency to categorize by skin color decreased.
That matches her own experience, she says. Genuine contact is required, meeting people and seeing that they are basically the same as oneself. The same experiment found that prejudices about gender were harder to shift, possibly because sex differences are more deeply built in.
Frank stresses a distinction in the DR podcast. Automatic generalizations may happen, she says, but people carry a moral obligation. Every time you meet a person, you must look at that person as an individual.
The episode also covers prejudices between rural and urban Denmark, including the so-called hillbilly myth, DR notes.
