Testing the impact and malleability of neural biases in outgroup deindividuation

测试神经偏差对外群体去个性化的影响和可塑性

• 批准号: 2017267
• 负责人: Brent Hughes
• 金额: $ 49.47万
• 依托单位: University of California-Riverside
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-08-01 至 2024-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2017267&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Testing; impact; malleability; neural; biases

People tend to see members of their own racial groups as individuals but consider members of other racial groups as interchangeable and indistinct, a phenomenon known as deindividuation. Deindividuation facilitates group-based discrimination and increases social inequality. For example, White eyewitnesses misidentify Black individuals as perpetrators at a much higher rate than White, which results in a larger proportion of wrongful convictions among Black individuals. This research tests the limits and malleability of how low-level perceptual and neurocognitive mechanisms habituate more quickly to other-race individuals as repeated instances of the same broad category, but habituate less to own-race targets, leading to better identification for ingroup members. In particular, this research tests these processes across different affective states to test how fear influences face identification processes. It also tests how threat and affiliation cues influence identification processes. Understanding how the brain “sees” racial outgroup members is important to help mitigate race-based disparities and outcomes in the United States. This research uses behavioral, physiological and neuroimaging experiments to examine the consequences of perceptual biases involved in person perception processes. Research shows that there is coarser neural tuning of face selective processing for outgroup faces compared to ingroup faces. This results in poorer recognition for racial outgroups than ingroups. This research tests these perceptual biases, their flexibility, and whether they can be eliminated. One series of studies examines whether deindividuating racial outgroup members in perception can lead people to generalize fear across a wide range of outgroup members. Specifically, this research tests the degree to which experiencing an aversive event paired with one outgroup member elicits a similar fear response to other individuals who look more or less similar to that target. Another series of studies examines the extent to which the brain habituates to groups of Black or White faces, testing whether biases in perception are fixed, or flexible depending on emotion or superordinate group membership. A final study combines these approaches to test whether interventions that combat group biases can prevent the spread of fear across outgroup members. This research has direct relevance for the formation of prejudice and discrimination, and can eventually address eye-witness processes.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

人们倾向于将自己种族群体的成员视为个体，但将其他种族群体的成员视为可互换和模糊的，这种现象被称为去个体化。去个性化助长了基于群体的歧视，加剧了社会不平等。例如，白色目击者误认黑人为犯罪者的比率比白色高得多，这导致黑人个人中错误定罪的比例更大。这项研究测试了低水平的感知和神经认知机制如何更快地适应其他种族个体作为同一大类的重复实例的限制和可塑性，但对自己的种族目标适应较少，从而更好地识别内组成员。特别是，这项研究测试了这些过程在不同的情感状态，以测试恐惧如何影响面孔识别过程。它还测试了威胁和从属线索如何影响识别过程。了解大脑如何“看到”种族外群体成员对于帮助减轻美国种族差异和结果非常重要。本研究采用行为、生理和神经影像学实验来研究知觉偏差对个体知觉过程的影响。研究表明，与内群体面孔相比，外群体面孔的面孔选择性加工有更粗的神经调节。这导致对外种族群体的识别比内种族群体差。这项研究测试了这些感知偏差，它们的灵活性，以及它们是否可以被消除。一系列的研究考察了在感知中去个性化的种族外群体成员是否会导致人们将恐惧泛化到广泛的外群体成员身上。具体来说，这项研究测试了与一个外群体成员配对的厌恶事件对其他看起来或多或少与该目标相似的人产生类似恐惧反应的程度。另一系列研究考察了大脑对黑人或白色面孔群体的适应程度，测试感知偏差是固定的，还是取决于情绪或上级群体成员的灵活性。最后一项研究结合了这些方法，以测试对抗群体偏见的干预措施是否可以防止恐惧在外群体成员中传播。这项研究与偏见和歧视的形成直接相关，最终可以解决目击过程。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

项目成果

Stereotypes disrupt probabilistic category learning.

刻板印象破坏了概率类别学习。

• DOI: 10.1037/xge0001335
• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
• 作者: Derreumaux, Yrian;Elder, Jacob;Suri, Gaurav;Ben-Zeev, Avi;Quimby, Thelonious;Hughes, Brent L.
• 通讯作者: Hughes, Brent L.