Clarifying the Role of Inflammation in Social Prejudice

社会生活的一个事实是，人们认为社会环境中的一些人是他们自己群体的成员（“内群体”），而另一些人是其他群体的成员（“外群体”）。通常，这种分类会导致社会偏见，包括对外部群体的偏见和歧视。人们根据性别、残疾、种族、民族或祖先等人类可变性维度将他人归类为外群体成员。这些分类产生的偏见可能最终导致仇恨犯罪和其他消极形式的社会互动。社会和行为科学领域几十年的理论发展和研究已经对个体差异和与偏见加剧相关的情境因素有了很好的理解。对于这些偏见背后的神经生物学过程，我们所知甚少。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。这是身体对抗感染的方式。然而，其后果可能远远超出了生理层面，影响了人们对他人的思考和感受。一个实际的影响与“出勤主义”的实践有关——带病工作的做法。这在企业和医疗环境中很常见，可能会对高风险决策和对他人的评估产生不利影响。这个项目结合了社会心理学和心理神经免疫学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，这可能会导致对来自其他文化群体的人产生更多的负面评价。一种实验方法被用来操纵免疫系统的活动，作为疫苗注射的结果。从长远来看，疫苗有助于增强免疫力。但在最初的24小时内，人们的身体对疫苗的反应是普遍的炎症反应。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。该研究还测试了可能支持这种效应的特定社会认知过程，例如更大的内群体偏袒和/或外群体贬损，改变了对谁属于内群体与外群体的看法，更大的刻板印象应用可能性，以及增加的启发式处理。该项目阐明了一个重要的生物过程是如何导致社会偏见的，并有助于为与病假相关的更广泛的社会政策提供信息。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并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，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.