Behavioral and neural evidence for an evaluative bias against other people's mundane interracial encounters. Issue 12 (28th January 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Wang, Yin; Schubert, Thomas W; Quadflieg, Susanne
• Is Part Of: Social cognitive and affective neuroscience. Volume 14:Issue 12(2019)
• Page Start: 1329
• Page End: 1339
• Publication Date: 2020-01-28
• Subjects: impression formation -- person perception -- prejudice -- racial diversity -- dyad perception; Neurosciences -- Periodicals; Cognitive neuroscience -- Periodicals; Neuropsychology -- Periodicals; 612.8205
• DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsaa005
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1749-5016

Abstract

Abstract: Evaluating other people's social encounters from a third-person perspective is an ubiquitous activity of daily life. Yet little is known about how these evaluations are affected by racial bias. To overcome this empirical lacuna, two experiments were conducted. The first experiment used evaluative priming to show that both Black ( n = 44) and White Americans ( n = 44) assess the same mundane encounters (e.g. two people chatting) less favorably when they involve a Black and a White individual rather than two Black or two White individuals. The second experiment used functional magnetic resonance imaging to demonstrate that both Black ( n = 46) and White Americans ( n = 42) respond with reduced social reward processing (i.e. lower activity in the ventral striatum) and enhanced mentalizing (e.g. higher activity in the bilateral temporal–parietal junction) toward so-called cross-race relative to same-race encounters. By combining unobtrusive measures from social psychology and social neuroscience, this work demonstrates that racial bias can affect impression formation even at the level of the dyad.