The Social Neuroscience of Race-and Status-Based Prejudice

Those who are high in external motivation to respond without prejudice tend to focus on non-racial attributes when describing others (Norton, Sommers, Apfelbaum, Pura, & Ariely, 2006). This fMRI study examined the neural processing of race and an alternative yet stereotypically relevant attribute (viz., socioeconomic status: SES) as a function of the perceiver’s external motivation to respond without prejudice (EMS). Sixty-one White participants privately formed impressions of Black and White faces ascribed with high or low SES. Analyses focused on regions supporting race- and status-based reward/salience (NAcc), evaluation (VMPFC), and threat/relevance (amygdala). Consistent with previous findings from the literature on status-based evaluation, we observed greater neural responses to high-status (vs. low-status) targets in all regions of interest when participants were relatively low in EMS. In contrast, we observed the opposite pattern when participants were relatively high in EMS. Notably, all effects were independent of target race. In summary, White perceivers’ race-related motivations similarly altered their neural responses to the SES of Black and White targets. Specifically, the findings suggest that EMS may attenuate the positive value and/or salience of high status in a mixed-race context. Findings are discussed in the context of the stereotypic relationship between race and SES.

Previous behavioral and neuroimaging work indicates that individuals who are externally motivated to respond without racial prejudice tend not to spontaneously regulate their prejudice and prefer to focus on nonracial attributes when evaluating others. This fMRI multivariate analysis used partial least squares analysis to examine the distributed neural processing of race and a relevant but ostensibly nonracial attribute (i.e., socioeconomic status) as a function of the perceiver's external motivation. Sixty-one white male participants (Homo sapiens) privately formed impressions of black and white male faces ascribed with high or low status. Across all conditions, greater external motivation was associated with reduced coactivation of brain regions believed to support emotion regulation (rostral anterior cingulate cortex), introspection (middle cingulate), and social cognition (temporal pole, medial prefrontal cortex). The reduced involvement of this network irrespective of target race and status suggests that external motivation is related to the participant's overall approach to impression formation in an interracial context. The findings highlight the importance of examining network coactivation in understanding the role of external motivation in impression formation, among other interracial social processes.

Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 2008

This article reviews social neuroscience research on the experience of stigma from the target's perspective. More specifically, we discuss several research programs that employ electroencephalography, event-related potentials, or functional magnetic resonance imaging methods to examine neural correlates of stereotype and social identity threat. We present neuroimaging studies that show brain activation related to the experience of being stereotyped and ERP studies that shed light on the cognitive processes underlying social identity processes. Among these are two projects from our own lab. The first project reveals the important role of the neurocognitive conflict-detection system in stereotype threat effects, especially as it pertains to stereotype threat `spillover'. The second project examines the role of automatic ingroup evaluations as a neural mediator between social identity threats and compensatory ingroup bias. We conclude with a discussion of the benefits, limitati...

Social Cognitive …, 2006

Human Brain Mapping, 2009

We often form impressions of others based on superficial information, such as a mere glimpse of their face. Given the opportunity to get to know someone, however, our judgments are allowed to become more individuated. The neural origins of these two types of social judgment remain unknown. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to dissociate the neural mechanisms underlying superficial and individuated judgments. Given behavioral evidence demonstrating impairments in individuating others outside one's racial group, we additionally examined whether these neural mechanisms are race-selective. Superficial judgments recruited the amygdala. Individuated judgments engaged a cortical network implicated in mentalizing and theory of mind. One component of this mentalizing network showed selectivity to individuated judgments, but exclusively for targets of one's own race. The findings reveal the distinct-and race-selective-neural bases of our everyday superficial and individuated judgments of others. Hum Brain Mapp 31:150-159,

Inferring the relative rank (i.e., status) of others is essential to navigating social hierarchies. A survey of the expanding social psychological and neuroscience literatures on status reveals a diversity of focuses (e.g., perceiver vs. agent), operationalizations (e.g., status as dominance vs. wealth), and methodologies (e.g., behavioral, neuroscientific). Accommodating this burgeoning literature on status in person perception, the present review offers a novel social neuroscientific framework that integrates existing work with theoretical clarity. This framework distinguishes between five key concepts: (1) strategic pathways to status acquisition for agents; (2) status antecedents (i.e., perceptual and knowledge-based cues that confer status rank); (3) status dimensions (i.e., domains in which an individual may be ranked, such as wealth); (4) status level (i.e., one’s rank along a given dimension); and (5) the relative importance of a given status dimension, dependent on perceiver and context characteristics. Against the backdrop of this framework, we review multiple dimensions of status in the non-human and human primate literatures. We then review the behavioral and neuroscientific literatures on the consequences of perceived status for attention and evaluation. Finally, after proposing a social neuroscience framework, we highlight innovative directions for future social status research in social psychology and neuroscience.

Recent evidence suggests that our perception of other people is literally, and not just figuratively influenced by knowledge about the social categories to which they belong [1,2]. As a result, even the perceived brightness of a person’s skin is said to be automatically biased by knowledge about their presumed racial group [1]. Here, for the first time, we examine the claim that such biases are automatic: do they operate quickly, are we aware of them, and can they be overcome by higher-level cognitive states? These questions play key roles in both the moral issue of where responsibility for prejudice lies – with the individual, or the society, for instance – and the practical issue of how bias, prejudice, and discrimination can be reduced in the real world. Participants compared the luminance of pairs of faces, and we independently manipulated actual luminance, and the presence of African or European morphological features. We found from participants’ mouse cursor movements that the...