William Joyce
Chemotherapy for PC
Contact: Sue Knapp
[email protected]
603-646-3661
Dartmouth College
HANOVER, N.H. - A new Dartmouth study reveals that interracial contact has
a profound impact on a person's attention and performance. The researchers
found new evidence using brain imaging that white individuals attempt to
control racial bias when exposed to black individuals, and that this act
of suppressing bias exhausts mental resources.
Published in the online edition of Nature Neuroscience on Nov. 16, the
study combines the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI),
which measures brain activity, with other behavioral tests common to
research in social and cognitive psychology to determine how white
individuals respond to black individuals.
"We were surprised to find that brain activity in response to faces of
black individuals predicted how research participants performed on
cognitive tasks after actual interracial interactions," says Jennifer
Richeson, Assistant Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences, the
lead author on the paper. "To my knowledge, this is the first study to use
brain imaging data in tandem with more standard behavioral data to test a
social psychological theory."
Their findings suggest that harboring racial bias, however unintentional,
makes negotiating interracial interactions more cognitively demanding.
Similar to the depletion of a muscle after intensive exercise, the data
suggest that the demands of the interracial interaction result in reduced
capacity to engage in subsequent cognitive tasks, say the researchers.
For the study, thirty white individuals were measured for racial bias,
which involved a computer test to record the ease with which individuals
associate white American and black American racial groups with positive
and negative concepts. Racial bias is measured by a pattern in which
individuals take longer to associate the white Americans with negative
concepts and black Americans with positive concepts. The study
participants then interacted with either a black or a white individual,
and afterward they were asked to complete an unrelated cognitive task in
which they had to inhibit instinctual responses. In a separate fMRI
session, these individuals were presented with photographs of unfamiliar
black male and white male faces, and the activity of brain regions thought
to be critical to cognitive control was assessed.
"We found that white people with higher scores on the racial bias measure
experienced greater neural activity in response to the photographs of
black males," says Richeson. "This heightened activity was in the right
dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, an area in the front of the brain that has
been linked to the control of thoughts and behaviors. Plus, these same
individuals performed worse on the cognitive test after an actual
interaction with a black male, suggesting that they may have been depleted
of the necessary resources to complete the task."
According to Richeson, most people find it unacceptable to behave in
prejudiced ways during interracial interactions and make an effort to
avoid doing so, regardless of their level of racial bias. A different
research project by Richeson and her colleagues suggested that these
efforts could leave individuals temporarily depleted of the resources
needed to perform optimally on certain cognitive tasks. This new study by
Richeson provides striking evidence that supports the idea that
interracial contact temporarily impairs cognitive task performance.
These results suggest, according to the researchers, that harboring racial
bias in an increasingly diverse society may be bad for one's cognitive
performance.
Other authors on the paper include Abigail A. Baird, Assistant Professor
of Psychological and Brain Sciences; Heather Gordon, Ph.D. student in
Psychological and Brain Sciences; Todd F. Heatherton, the Champion
International Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Director
of the Center for Social Brain Sciences at Dartmouth; Carrie Wyland, Ph.D.
student in Psychological and Brain Sciences; Sophie Trawalter, Ph.D.
student in Psychological and Brain Sciences; and J. Nicole Shelton,
Assistant Professor of Psychology at Princeton University.
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation and the
Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth College.
[email protected]
603-646-3661
Dartmouth College
HANOVER, N.H. - A new Dartmouth study reveals that interracial contact has
a profound impact on a person's attention and performance. The researchers
found new evidence using brain imaging that white individuals attempt to
control racial bias when exposed to black individuals, and that this act
of suppressing bias exhausts mental resources.
Published in the online edition of Nature Neuroscience on Nov. 16, the
study combines the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI),
which measures brain activity, with other behavioral tests common to
research in social and cognitive psychology to determine how white
individuals respond to black individuals.
"We were surprised to find that brain activity in response to faces of
black individuals predicted how research participants performed on
cognitive tasks after actual interracial interactions," says Jennifer
Richeson, Assistant Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences, the
lead author on the paper. "To my knowledge, this is the first study to use
brain imaging data in tandem with more standard behavioral data to test a
social psychological theory."
Their findings suggest that harboring racial bias, however unintentional,
makes negotiating interracial interactions more cognitively demanding.
Similar to the depletion of a muscle after intensive exercise, the data
suggest that the demands of the interracial interaction result in reduced
capacity to engage in subsequent cognitive tasks, say the researchers.
For the study, thirty white individuals were measured for racial bias,
which involved a computer test to record the ease with which individuals
associate white American and black American racial groups with positive
and negative concepts. Racial bias is measured by a pattern in which
individuals take longer to associate the white Americans with negative
concepts and black Americans with positive concepts. The study
participants then interacted with either a black or a white individual,
and afterward they were asked to complete an unrelated cognitive task in
which they had to inhibit instinctual responses. In a separate fMRI
session, these individuals were presented with photographs of unfamiliar
black male and white male faces, and the activity of brain regions thought
to be critical to cognitive control was assessed.
"We found that white people with higher scores on the racial bias measure
experienced greater neural activity in response to the photographs of
black males," says Richeson. "This heightened activity was in the right
dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, an area in the front of the brain that has
been linked to the control of thoughts and behaviors. Plus, these same
individuals performed worse on the cognitive test after an actual
interaction with a black male, suggesting that they may have been depleted
of the necessary resources to complete the task."
According to Richeson, most people find it unacceptable to behave in
prejudiced ways during interracial interactions and make an effort to
avoid doing so, regardless of their level of racial bias. A different
research project by Richeson and her colleagues suggested that these
efforts could leave individuals temporarily depleted of the resources
needed to perform optimally on certain cognitive tasks. This new study by
Richeson provides striking evidence that supports the idea that
interracial contact temporarily impairs cognitive task performance.
These results suggest, according to the researchers, that harboring racial
bias in an increasingly diverse society may be bad for one's cognitive
performance.
Other authors on the paper include Abigail A. Baird, Assistant Professor
of Psychological and Brain Sciences; Heather Gordon, Ph.D. student in
Psychological and Brain Sciences; Todd F. Heatherton, the Champion
International Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Director
of the Center for Social Brain Sciences at Dartmouth; Carrie Wyland, Ph.D.
student in Psychological and Brain Sciences; Sophie Trawalter, Ph.D.
student in Psychological and Brain Sciences; and J. Nicole Shelton,
Assistant Professor of Psychology at Princeton University.
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation and the
Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth College.
