Clarifying the Role of Inflammation in Social Prejudice

社会生活的一个事实是，人们认为他们社会环境中的一些人是他们自己的群体(“内部群体”)的成员，而另一些人是其他群体(“外部群体”)的成员。这种分类往往会导致社会偏见，包括对外部群体的偏见和歧视。根据性别、残疾、种族、民族或血统等人类变异性的维度，人们将其他人归类为外群成员。这些分类产生的偏见最终可能导致仇恨犯罪和其他消极形式的社会互动。经过几十年的理论发展和社会科学和行为科学的研究，人们已经很好地理解了与高度偏见相关的个体差异和情景因素。人们对可能导致这种偏见的神经生物学过程知之甚少。这个项目调查了免疫系统活动在人们如何处理和回应社会信息中的作用。当人们生病或对威胁做出反应时，免疫系统活动的增加是很常见的。这是身体抵抗感染的方式。然而，它的后果可能远远超出生理层面，影响人们对他人的思考和感受。其中一个实际含义与“出勤主义”--生病时工作的做法--有关。这在公司和医疗环境中很常见，可能会对高风险的决策和对他人的评估产生不利影响。该项目将社会心理学和心理神经免疫学结合起来，研究免疫系统激活如何改变人们在社会环境中感知他人的方式。它关注的是社会认知过程，这些过程可能会导致对来自其他文化群体的人做出更多负面评价。作为疫苗注射的结果，一种实验方法被用于操纵免疫系统的活动。从长远来看，疫苗有助于提高免疫力。但在最初的24小时内，人们的身体对疫苗的反应是全身炎症反应。据推测，这种普遍的炎症反应将与对来自不同文化背景的人的更多社会偏见有关。这项研究还测试了可能支持这一效应的特定社会认知过程，例如更大的内部偏爱和/或外部群体贬低，改变了对谁属于内部群体而不是外部群体的看法，更有可能应用刻板印象，以及增加了启发式处理。该项目阐明了一个重要的生物过程如何导致社会偏见，并有助于为与病假相关的更广泛的社会政策提供信息。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

A fact of social life is that people consider some individuals in their social environments to be members of their own group (the “ingroup”) and others to be members of other groups (the “outgroups”). Often, this categorization results in social biases, including prejudice and discrimination toward outgroups. People categorize others as outgroup members along such dimensions of human variability as gender, disability, race, ethnicity, or ancestry. Biases stemming from these categorizations may ultimately contribute to hate crimes and other negative forms of social interaction. Decades of theory development and research in the social and behavioral sciences have produced a good understanding of the individual differences and situational factors associated with heightened biases. Much less is known about neurobiological processes that may underlie such biases. This project investigates the role of immune system activity in how people process and respond to social information. An increase in immune system activity is common when people are ill or responding to threat. It is the body’s way of fighting infection. Yet, its consequences may extend far beyond the physiological, impacting the way people think and feel about others. One practical implication relates to the practice of “presenteeism” – the practice of working while sick. This is common in corporate and medical settings, and may adversely affect high-stakes decision making and evaluations of others.This project combines social psychology with psychoneuroimmunology to examine how immune system activation may change the way people perceive others in their social environments. It focuses on social cognitive processes that may contribute to more negative evaluations of people from other cultural groups. An experimental approach is used to manipulate immune system activity as a result of a vaccine injection. Vaccines help develop immunity in the long-run. But within the first twenty-four hours people’s bodies respond to the vaccine with a general inflammatory response. It is hypothesized that this general inflammatory response will be associated with more social bias against people from cultural backgrounds other than one’s own. The research also tests specific social cognitive processes that may underpin this effect, such as greater ingroup favoritism and/or outgroup derogation, altered perception of who belongs to one’s ingroup versus the outgroup, greater likelihood of stereotype application, and increased heuristic processing. The project clarifies how an important biological process can lead to social prejudice, and helps to inform broader societal policies associated with sick leave.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.