The social neuroscience of race-based and status-based prejudice

Abstract

The largely independent neuroscience literatures on race and status show increasingly that both constructs shape how we evaluate others. Following an overview and comparison of both literatures, we suggest that apparent differences in the brain regions supporting race-based and status-based evaluations may tap into distinct components of a common evaluative network. For example, perceiver motivations and/or category cues (e.g., perceptual vs. knowledge-based) can differ depending on whether one is processing race and/or status, ultimately recruiting distinct mechanisms within this common evaluative network. We emphasize the generalizability of this social neuroscience framework for dimensions beyond race and status and highlight how this framework raises new questions in the study of prejudice-reduction interventions.

Motivation Modulates Brain Networks in Response to Faces Varying in Race and Status: A Multivariate Approach

“…In our original univariate analyses ( Mattan et al, 2018a ), we found that EMS modulated responses to SES in the bilateral nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), consistent with the literature on status-based evaluations ( Mattan et al, 2017 , 2018b ). Notably, high-EMS participants showed neural response patterns to SES that were difficult to reconcile with the largely positive evaluations of high SES (when considered independently of other dimensions) observed in the behavioral ( Fiske, 2010 ; Varnum, 2013 ) and neuroimaging ( Mattan et al, 2017 , 2018b ) literature.…”

“…Previous neuroimaging work has implicated the frontal control network (including the ACC) in the regulation of prejudice in paradigms ranging from race-irrelevant spatial location tasks ( Richeson et al, 2003 ; Cunningham et al, 2004 ) to race-related fear learning ( Dunsmoor et al, 2016 ) and measures of implicit bias ( Beer et al, 2008 ; Fourie et al, 2014 ). In recent reviews, the ACC [i.e., dorsal ACC (dACC)] is typically considered to reflect monitoring for conflicts between internal desires to be egalitarian and an undesirable propensity for stereotypic or prejudiced responses ( Kubota et al, 2012 ; Amodio, 2014 ; Kubota and Ito, 2016 ; Mattan et al, 2018b ). It bears mentioning that cingulate activity in the present analysis was localized to the rACC and the MCC.…”

“…In other words, EMS could increase or decrease the overall coactivation between brain regions irrespective of face race or SES, implying that EMS influences how participants approach the task overall. Although the data-driven nature of PLS analysis obviates the need to formalize a priori ROIs, we anticipated that any latent variables would likely implicate regions involved in person evaluation (VMPFC; Cloutier et al, 2012 ; Mende-Siedlecki et al, 2013a ; Cloutier and Gyurovski, 2014 ; Mattan et al, 2017 , 2018b ) and the regulation of prejudice (e.g., cingulate cortex, lateral prefrontal cortex; Kubota et al, 2012 ; Amodio, 2014 ; Mattan et al, 2018b ).…”

Insights From fMRI Studies Into Ingroup Bias

“…There is increasing neuroscientific evidence that people process information from ingroup and outgroup members in a different way (for reviews see: Ito and Bartholow, 2009 ; Cikara et al, 2011b ; Kubota et al, 2012 ; Eres and Molenberghs, 2013 ; Molenberghs, 2013 ; Amodio, 2014 ; Cikara and Van Bavel, 2014 ; Han, 2018 ; Mattan et al, 2018 ). Biases toward outgroup members affect perceptions, attitudes and behaviors.…”

Editorial overview: New advances in social neuroscience: from neural computations to social structures

“…And thus an understanding of neural mechanism is incomplete without an appreciation of its range of social function. Indeed, the neural processes underlying social perception, cognition, and emotion are modulated by group membership and status cues (Vollberg & Cikara, 2018;Mattan, Wei, Cloutier, & Kubota, 2018), and the brain is attuned to the structure social networks and the way information moves through them (Weaverdyck & Parkinson, 2018;Baek & Falk, 2018). Many aspects of social cognition, such as empathy, are no longer considered automatic processes that unfold with subject specific intensity, but rather processes that people selectively approach or avoid based on motivation in a social context (Weisz & Zaki, 2018).…”