1. Social Neuroscience Stereotyping & Prejudice Race & Emotion
Brenda Kopari
Jamie Renspe
Mind & Body Connection
June 8th, 2007

2. The Social Neuroscience of Stereotyping and Prejudice Ito et al, 2006
How social category information is perceived?
How this information, in conjunction with stereotypes, influences behavior?

3. Stereotyping
If we categorize an individual as belonging to a particular social group, stereotypical beliefs and prejudicial reactions associated with the entire group can become activated
This information can influence how we respond to an individual

4. Brenda:
What do you think about these people?

5. Brenda:
What characteristics define these people?

6. Is stereotype activation decreased at lower levels of analysis?
Encoding of category membership is attenuated; blocking activation of stereotypes and prejudice
Category membership is encoded, but activation of stereotypes and prejudice is attenuated
Category membership is encoded and stereotypes and prejudice are activated, but their application is attenuated

7. Prior methods of research
Participants viewed pictures of black and white males and females
Identify as introverted or extroverted
Indicated what vegetables the people in the pictures would like

8. Findings of Prior Research
Increasing the visual complexity slowed down the process of racial and gender stereotyping
Directing participants’ attention to other social cues does not inhibit racial and gender perceptions

11. Current Study Part I
How does race influence the detection of weapons in a first person shooter game?
Participants viewed white or black men holding a gun or an insignificant object
Told to shoot armed targets and not shoot unarmed targets

13. Findings Consistent bias against blacks
More accurate and faster in shooting armed blacks compared to armed whites
Faster and more accurate in not shooting unarmed whites compared to unarmed blacks
Unarmed blacks were more likely to be erroneously shot than unarmed whites

16. Findings Continued
Shooting a person who is not associated with violence (white) generated the greatest conflict
Shooting someone stereotypically associated with violence (black) was not more problematic than not shooting him
Shooting a black person did not create conflict regardless of their arms

18. Current Study Part II
Increased time allowance for response of the video game study

19. Findings
Participants were faster to shoot armed blacks compared to armed whites
They were faster to NOT shoot unarmed whites compared to unarmed blacks

20. Discussion Questions Out of the three white people how many had guns?
Out of the two black people how many had guns?
Do you think stereotyping and prejudice are of your own free will?
Automatic response?

21. Race & Emotion
To understand others successfully you need to recognize how they feel
Tone of voice
Facial expressions

22. Racial or Cultural Experience
Social experience can moderate how well one can recognize emotions
Differences are possibly why difficulties arise during interracial interactions

23. Origins of Emotion Recognition
Evidence that being able to express and recognize emotions in peoples faces has evolutionary roots, it is shared across cultures, and has dedicated neural machinery

24. Origins of Emotion Recognition
Innate human ability to express and recognize emotions in a person’s face
Know if positive or negative expression
Innate
For example, children who are blind and deaf still communicate their emotions with similar facial expressions as other children (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1970)
Also, people from other cultures can recognize facial expressions at above chance levels of accuracy (Ekman, 1992)

25. Role of Brain: The Limbic System
Amygdala
Perception, detection and recognition of fearful facial expressions
Medial Frontal Gyri
Recognizing angry expressions
Basal Ganglia
Engaged during recognition of happy expressions

26. Role of Brain
How do these regions of the brain interact during emotion recognition?
Neural processes associated with recognition of emotions occur early
For example, perceiving fear in facial expressions modulates neural responses in frontocentral regions at about 120msec (Eimer & Holmes, 2002)

27. Social Experience Influences the Process of Emotion Recognition
Face
Social information like age, gender and race influence how you see yourself and how others see you
Again, you can recognize emotions in faces from all cultures fairly accurately, but you recognize emotions most accurately with members of the same cultural group
Possibly because different levels of familiarity
know own culture more

28. Race and the Brain Previous Research
Examine neutral (no emotion) faces of different races
Both race and emotion likely to influence neural and behavioral responses
N. Ambady et al. conducted fMRIs and ERPs
Showed the impact of race on emotional processing
Influence of emotional expression on evaluation of in-group and out-group members

30. Prior Research Does race affect brain processes during emotion recognition?
Chiao et al. (2004)
fMRI in 8 Caucasians (4 men, 4 women)
Explicitly identified fear, anger and neutral expressions in faces of Caucasians, Asian-Americans and African Americans (both men and women)
Each facial expression shown for 750 msec
Responded within 2500 msec
Prediction: Would recognize all expressions, but most accurate at recognizing faces of the same race

31. Findings All expressions recognized at better than chance levels
Caucasians recognized neutral faces better than fearful and angry faces
Also better at recognizing emotions (fear and anger) in Caucasian and Asian Americans more so than African Americans
Neural regions specifically involved in fear and anger show differences in signal change depending on the race of the person expressing the emotion

33. Findings Neuroimaging
Greater amygdala activity in response to Caucasian and Asian American faces
Caucasian expressions of anger elicited increased signal change in medial front cortex

35. Hypothesis
Race of facial target would influence basic structural face processing about 170 msec after stimulus onset
Can observe this in the amplitude of the Vertex Positive Potential (VPP)
Emotional expression being processed would affect the extent to which race influenced neural processing
Self-report exposure to races
Most exposure to Caucasians
Least to African Americans

36. Findings
Detected angry expressions most accurately in African Americans and Caucasians
Recognized fear most accurately in Caucasians
Neutral faces recognized equally across the races

38. Findings continued VPP amplitude sensitive to race and emotion of face
Greater for African American faces regardless of emotion being expressed
Neuroimaging and ERP data suggest that race affects brain processes involved in recognizing fear and anger
Regions important in recognition of fear and anger show modulation of signal change based on the race of expressor
Not all out-group faces processed alike
Why?

39. The emotional expression of a racially salient target influences processing of different out-group members at not only the behavioral but also the physiological level

40. Studied
Cortical and behavioral responses of high and low prejudiced individuals to in-group and out-group emotional stimuli
Employed an active evaluation task
Participants were asked to make a socially relevant judgment regarding in-group and out-group members
Do I want to work with this person?

41. Findings
High and low prejudiced individuals are differently influenced by the affective relevance of in-group and out-group members
Affective nature of target stimuli may be especially salient for low prejudiced individuals
Low prejudiced individuals showed an increased contingent negative variation (CNV) to angry out-group stimuli and in anticipation of angry faces
Supports idea that individuals monitor automatic reactions to negative stereotypes elicited by out-group stimuli

42. High Prejudice Groups
Showed decrease in CNV in anticipation of angry Black targets compared with all other targets
Showed enhanced CNV in anticipation of happy White faces
Extra effort to make individuating responses when required to evaluate in-group stimuli
Supports ideas that those high in prejudice have less of a motivation or need to monitor prejudice responses
Absence of effort to suppress prejudice

43. Findings
CNV amplitudes illustrate low prejudiced individuals show greater cortical activity to angry Black targets
Evidence raced based information may trigger a societally constrained conceptual representation of race but also the manifestation of prejudice depends on how individuals process this information

44. Findings
Facial expressions of emotion affect both neural and behavioral responses to in-group and out-group faces

45. Discussion What emotions are these people portraying?
Would you want to work with this person?

51. Discussion
Can you control your reactions to different faces and races?
Even though there are equal opportunity employers, do you think that the people hiring can suppress their prejudices?
High versus Low Prejudiced People