Class 21 Flashcards
Why link neuroscience and intergroup relations?
(when neuroscience tends to be SUPER expensive)
What is NOT the goal of neuroscience?
Not just “what part of the brain lights up here”
Not just localization
What IS neuroscience research about?
categorizing racially ambiguous targets has been shown to lead to greater activity in the dorsolateral anterior cingulate cortex. Why would we care about that?
- Connecting info like this to connect it more broadly to what we know about the brain
- And connect to intergroup relations
How does Neuroscience work with timing?
Looks at how your brain works between responses
Ex. Even the IAT, or very fast self-report, still requires some time for completing
a behavioral response (e.g., pressing a computer key
Neuroscience approaches can then bypass these delays and reveal the true time course of various processes
Explain how timing was studied on the social categorization of gender and race?
White participants passively viewed images of male and female Black and White people.
Some categorized the images based on
gender, others categorized based on race.
ERPs (event-related potentials) were also
tracked during the judgment process.
ERPs revealed differences in processing of
race within 100 milliseconds and based on
gender within 200 milliseconds
(we process race a little faster then gender)
Explain how timing was studied on the social categorization of gender and race?
What is the TAKEAWAY?
You can see evidence people are paying attention to these social identities extremely quickly
It take 500 milliseconds to produce a behaviour
(so these 500 milliseconds would be a black box if you don’t use neuroscience)
Explain how timing was studied on the social categorization of gender and race?
What can we conclude from this neuroscience finding? (3 things)
- Social categorization is fast and therefore likely automatic.
- Has larger implications for thinking about how such processes could or could not ever be consciously controlled.
- Social categorization may occur so quickly that finding a way to stop the process is unrealistic, better to focus on how to lessen any potentially negative implications of automatic categorization
How else can we use neruoscience?
social neuroscience can use the larger literature in cognitive neuroscience to show
connections between various psychological processes.
- This information can advance theory and lead to new insights into how such
processes operate
ex. Put ppl in brainscans and do reading, memory tasks, long term memory
- If you do intergroup relations tasks, and similar areas are lighting up, you can infer there is a shared underlying process
Example: Leveraging Cognitive Neuroscience Literature
What is Neruosynth.org
Can type in a brain area and it tells you all other tasks / studies that elicit brain activity in the same area
When detecting white / black targets, we see differences in the N200 component when using EEG analyses.
Where else do we see N200 component?
You also see N200 in dorsal anterior cingulate cortex with categorization generally (ex. is this a duck)
(response selection and conflict processes)
Ppl take their ability to categorize non social objects and bring it over to the task where they categorize white and black faces
Might reflect response conflict
What is response conflict?
You aren’t sure the correct category decision, and you have to actively pay attention to resolve the conflict
Just as intergroup neuroscience can show connections between different types of psychological processes, it can also be informative by taking the reverse approach.
How can neuroscience tease apart processes that appear to be similar?
(One study looked at differences in how the brain treats the process of intergroup stereotypes versus intergroup prejudice)
On each trial, White participants saw two faces that were either both
Black, both White, or one Black and one White (though analyses only
focused on the White-Black trials).
- In some blocks, they made a:
stereotypical judgment (“Which person is more athletic?”) and
in other blocks they made a
prejudicial judgment (“Which person would you want to have as a friend?”)
Findings of study:
(One study looked at differences in how the brain treats the process of intergroup stereotypes versus intergroup prejudice)
Stereotypical judgements used diff brain areas then prejudicial judgements
What happened in this study’s part 2: IAT
(One study looked at differences in how the brain treats the process of intergroup stereotypes versus intergroup prejudice)
- One IAT was about attitudes: measuring the ease with which Black and White faces could be paired with positive versus negative words.
- The other IAT was about stereotypes: measuring the ease with which Black and White faces could be paired with words related to ‘mental’ (educated, smart, genius) versus words related to ‘physical’ (athletic, agile)
What happened in this study’s part 2: IAT
FINDINGS
- One brain region, (the lateral orbitofrontal cortex), was consistently more
activated during friendship trials than trait trials.- Trials that were about prejudice were more in this one)
- A different region, (the anterior medial prefrontal cortex), was consistently
more activated during trait trials than friendship trials- More activated with stereotypes then with prejudice
What is prejudice?
Associations with positivity or negativity
What are stereotypes?
Associations with a construct / stereotype
(ex. hard working)
How did the left temporal pole show up on IATs?
differentially associated with the two IAT scores depending on the
judgment that participants were making.
- During ‘friendship’ (prejudice) trials, activation in the left temporal pole was more associated with evaluative IAT scores (good-bad).
(the more u used it the more they could correlate it with ur score)
- During ‘athletic’ (stereotype) trials, activation in the left temporal pole was more associated with stereotype IAT scores (mental-physical).
This brain area might be important to use these associations to give judgement.
- Guides ur associations to make this decision
(ITS FLEXIBLE TO HELP U MAKE DIFF CHOICES) (DOMAIN GENERAL) (APPLY ASSOCIATIONS TO CURRENT JUDEGMENT)
A final benefit to using neuroscience approaches is that it can…
- Get around social desirability concerns
- it can be used as a way of resolving competing predictions or perspectives that would not be able to be resolved using other methods
What is phenomenon they called “racial paralysis”?
where people high in motivation to not appear prejudiced work hard to avoid cross-racial comparisons
(work hard to make sure you don’t make judgment / evaluation that suggests prejudice)
What methods did they use to study “racial paralysis”?
What did they find?
Same options as previous study (friend vs who’s athletic)
participants were also given an option to indicate that they had “no gut feeling” and could opt out of making the judgment
participants were more likely to ”opt out” of trials involving faces of different races, particularly when making judgments related to stereotypical traits (intelligent, hardworking, etc.)
What is the question that remains from the opt out study?
what drives this opt-out behavior. Is it about a lack of cross-race familiarity (don’t have cross race friends) (ignorance)? Or is it more to do with efforts to regulate prejudice?
Why is it hard to ask participants straight up why they did something?
They might lie to you or themselves about reasons behind their behaviour
How was neuroscience used to resolve debates? ( phenomenon they called “racial paralysis” & Opting Out)
fMRI study where participants completed the same task found greater activation in the DLPFC (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) for cross-race over same-race trials (even when participants ”opted out”).
- But this was particularly true for when judgments were stereotype-relevant traits
(honest, intelligent, reliable) versus stereotype-irrelevant traits (curious, strict,
have a brother)
