Empathy constrained: Prejudice predicts reduced mental simulation of actions during observation of outgroups

On the neural networks of self and other bias and their role in emergent social interactions

Extensive research has documented the brain networks that play an integral role in bias, or the alteration and filtration of information processing in a manner that fundamentally favors an individual. The roots of bias, whether self- or other-oriented, are a complex constellation of neural and psychological processes that start at the most fundamental levels of sensory processing. From the millisecond information is received in the brain it is filtered at various levels and through various brain networks in relation to extant intrinsic activity to provide individuals with a perception of reality that complements and satisfies the conscious perceptions they have for themselves and the cultures in which they were reared. The products of these interactions, in turn, are dynamically altered by the introduction of others, be they friends or strangers who are similar or different in socially meaningful ways. While much is known about the various ways that basic biases alter specific aspects of neural function to support various forms of bias, the breadth and scope of the phenomenon remains entirely unclear. The purpose of this review is to examine the brain networks that shape (i.e., bias) the self-concept and how interactions with similar (ingroup) compared to dissimilar (outgroup) others alter these network (and subsequent interpersonal) interactions in fundamental ways. Throughout, focus is placed on an emerging understanding of the brain as a complex system, which suggests that many of these network interactions likely occur on a non-linear scale that blurs the lines between network hierarchies.

Selective Action Prediction in Infancy Depending on Linguistic Cues: An EEG and Eyetracker Study

Humans' capacity to predict actions and to socially categorize individuals is at the basis of social cognition. Such capacities emerge in early infancy. By 6 months of age, infants predict others' reaching actions considering others' epistemic state. At a similar age, infants are biased to attend to and interact with more familiar individuals, considering adult-like social categories such as the language people speak. We report that these two core processes are interrelated early on in infancy. In a belief-based action prediction task, 6-month-old infants (males and females) presented with a native speaker generated online predictions about the agent's actions, as revealed by the activation of participants' sensorimotor areas before the agent's movement. However, infants who were presented with a foreign speaker did not recruit their motor system before the agent's action. The eyetracker analysis provided further evidence that linguistic group familiarity influences how infants predict others' actions, as only infants presented with a native speaker modified their attention to the stimuli as a function of the agent's forthcoming behavior. The current findings suggest that infants' emerging capacity to predict others' actions is modulated by social cues, such as others' linguistic group. A facilitation to predict and encode the actions of native speakers relative to foreign speakers may explain, in part, why infants preferentially attend to, imitate, and learn from the actions of native speakers.

White Americans' blame attributions and empathy towards Black victims of police violence: How pejorative stereotypes 'engulf the field'

We examined the dynamics of minority-directed police violence by considering how our White participants' empathy for Black victims may be influenced by critical intragroup differences related to racial stereotyping. Although the role of stereotyping in reactions to Black Americans accused of crime is well-established, we explore the influence of pejorative Black stereotypes on reactions to Black victims of police violence. Specifically, we investigated the roles of individual differences in the endorsement of the Black criminal stereotype among White observers and manipulated the crime-unrelated stereotypicality (i.e. stereotypical, counterstereotypical) of Black victims of police violence. White US MTurk participants read about a White policeman shooting a Black man (Study 1, n = 140) or sexually assaulting a Black woman (Study 2, n = 166). Across both studies, strong stereotype endorsers reported relatively low empathy for stereotypical victims, mediated by greater blame towards those victims. This finding demonstrates the relevance of heretofore untested motivated reasoning processes in the outgroup empathy deficits literature. Weak stereotype endorsers showed relatively high empathy and low victim blame regardless of Black victim stereotypicality, indicating limited sensitivity to outgroup member suffering is not inevitable. We consider the practical implications of the findings for policing and for citizenship education.

Favoritism or bias? Cooperation and competition under different intergroup relationships: evidence from EEG hyperscanning

Cooperation and competition are the most common forms of social interaction in various social relationships. Intergroup relationships have been posited to influence individuals' interpersonal interactions significantly. Using electroencephalography hyperscanning, this study aimed to establish whether intergroup relationships influence interpersonal cooperation and competition and the underlying neural mechanisms. According to the results, the in-group Coop-index is better than the out-group, whereas the out-group Comp-index is stronger than the in-group. The in-group functional connectivity between the frontal-central region and the right temporoparietal junction in the β band was stronger in competition than cooperation. The out-group functional connectivity between the frontal-central region and the left temporoparietal junction in the α band was stronger in cooperation than competition. In both cooperation and competition, the in-group exhibited higher interbrain synchronization between the prefrontal cortex and parietal region in the θ band, as well as between the frontal-central region and frontal-central region in the α band, compared to the out-group. The intrabrain phase-locking value in both the α and β bands can effectively predict performance in competition tasks. Interbrain phase-locking value in both the α and θ bands can be effectively predicted in a performance cooperation task. This study offers neuroscientific evidence for in-group favoritism and out-group bias at an interpersonal level.

Neural dynamics of vicarious physical pain processing reflect impaired empathy toward sexually objectified versus non-sexually objectified women

Sexually objectified women are perceived as dehumanized. This may affect the behavioral and neural responses underlying the observer's empathic reactions for their physical pain, although this hypothesis still lacks empirical support. In the present study, we measured the electrophysiological activity of 30 participants (14 females and 16 males), in an empathy for physical pain paradigm in which pictures of sexualized and non-sexualized women were presented in painful and non-painful situations. The behavioral results revealed that sexualized women were evaluated as experiencing less pain than non-sexualized women. Neural evidence corroborated this finding showing that the perception of vicarious physical pain is lacking for sexualized women in both event-related potentials (ERPs) and brain oscillation domains. Specifically, the P2 component and the event-related synchronization/desynchronization (ERS/ERD) on the mu frequency band differed between painful and non-painful stimulation exclusively when women were not sexualized. Our results provide the first evidence that the neurophysiological responses to the vicarious experience of physical pain are dampened or even absent for sexualized women. These findings expand our understanding of the neurophysiological signatures of empathic processes and highlight the detrimental effect of a sexual-objectification bias in everyday contexts.

Relationships between the race implicit association test and other measures of implicit and explicit social cognition

Background

The race-based Implicit Association Test (IAT) was proposed to measure individual differences in implicit racial bias subsumed within social cognition. In recent years, researchers have debated the theoretical tenets underpinning the IAT, questioning whether performance on this task: (1) measures implicit attitudes that operate automatically outside of conscious awareness; (2) reflects individual differences in social cognition; and (3) can predict social behavior. One way to better address these research questions is to assess whether the race-IAT correlates with other implicit processes that are subsumed within social cognition.

Aims

The current study assessed whether the race-IAT was related to other commonly used individual difference measures of implicit (and explicit) social cognition. Experiment 1 assessed whether dissociable patterns of performance on the race-IAT were related to measures of implicit imitative tendencies, emotion recognition and perspective taking toward White task actors, as well as explicit measures of trait and state affective empathy and racial bias. Overcoming limitations of task conceptual correspondence, Experiment 2 assessed whether these latter tasks were sensitive in detecting racial biases by using both White and Black task actors and again examined their relationships with the race-IAT.

Method

In two lab-based experiments, 226 and 237 participants completed the race-IAT followed by an extensive battery of social cognition measures.

Results

Across both experiments, pro-White/anti-Black bias on the race-IAT was positively related to a pro-White bias on explicit measures of positive affective empathy. However, relationships between the race-IAT and implicit imitative tendencies, perspective taking, emotion recognition, and explicit trait and negative state affective empathy were statistically equivalent.

Conclusion

The race-IAT was consistently related to explicit measures of positive state affective empathy but not to other individual difference measures of implicit social cognition. These findings are discussed with regards to the theoretical underpinnings of the race-IAT as an individual difference measure of implicit social cognition, as well as alternative explanations relating to the reliability of social cognition measures and the various combinations of general-purpose (social and non-social) executive processes that underpin performance on these tasks.

Empathy for a Black Woman Victim of Police Sexual Violence: The Roles of Crime-Related Stress and Stereotype Attributions

Police sexual violence has been ranked as the second most common form of misconduct among police officers. Moreover, there is evidence that Black women are at heightened risk of being victims of such police violence. A report titled Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women has brought international attention to the minimal empirical focus on such police violence toward Black women. To address this lacuna in the literature, using an incident of police sexual assault of a woman, we assessed whether victim's race and participants' level of crime-related stress (i.e., stress due to crime victimization) would influence empathic responding toward the victim. Prolific participants (N = 411) first completed a measure of crime-related stress. They then read an article describing a White police officer's sexual assault of a Black or White woman. Next, participants completed a racial stereotype-related measure (i.e., Black women's higher sexual proclivity) and a stereotype-unrelated measure (i.e., perceived victim untrustworthiness), and reported their victim-directed empathic responding. At high stress levels, participants reported less empathy for the Black (relative to White) victim. At low stress levels, there was greater Black victim-directed empathy. The race effects on empathy were mediated by heightened attribution of Black women-related stereotypical beliefs to the Black victim at high stress levels and by diminished attribution at low stress levels. In sum, we addressed the lacuna in the literature on police sexual violence against Black women while providing evidence that stress can play a critical role in the occurrence of the oft-cited outgroup-directed empathy deficit.

Neural empathic response to disability: An ERP study of prejudice

While social neuroscience has already provided evidence for a deficit of affective empathy in racial prejudice, little is known about other less visible social categories when considered as an outgroup. We studied the process of empathy through event-related brain potentials (ERPs). We focused on the group "people with disabilities" as they are the target of a large amount of prejudice. Twenty-six participants performed a pain decision task. The mean amplitudes of N1, P2, N2-N3 and P3 components were recorded. Our results are consistent with previous work on prejudice, showing that the pain detection is modulated by group membership (with disabilities vs. without disabilities) on N2-N3, suggesting a better neural decoding of pain vs. non-pain in the without-disability condition. Critically, no effect of early sensory components (N1, P2) was found, and P3 was not moderated by disability. These findings indicate a different time course of empathic responses depending on the condition, suggesting that people with disabilities trigger specific empathic responses. Our results contribute to disentangling perceptual processes from affective empathy reactions.

Teachers' contributions to the school climate and using empathy at work: implications from qualitative research in two European countries

This research aimed to reveal the factors that, based on their experiences, teachers consider important in their contribution to a positive school climate and in their relationship with students when it comes to using empathy. Teachers from two European countries-Latvia (n = 83) and Lithuania (n = 69)-participated in the research. Data were collected through focus group-based interviews and analyzed using latent qualitative content analysis. The results revealed the teachers' shared understanding of the importance of communication and professional development. However, only Lithuanian teachers emphasized strengthening institutional values and other more collectivistic aspects; the answers of Latvian teachers were specific and suggested more of an individualistic attitude, like allocating personal responsibility to use appropriate instructional strategies. This study draws attention to contextual and cultural factors of teachers' work and actualizes their educational needs.

From tablet to table: How augmented reality influences food desirability

Augmented reality (AR) technology has generated enormous industry investment and buzz, with the food and beverage sector quickly embracing this technology in an effort to enhance the customer experience. However, academic research has only just begun to empirically explore how and why this technology might influence consumer judgements and behaviors in such contexts. Across two field studies involving consequential behavior and two controlled laboratory studies, we find that AR's unique ability to visually superimpose objects onto a real-time environment increases consumers' ability to mentally simulate consuming a pictured food, which in turn increases their desire and purchase likelihood of the food item. Further, we find the increased mental simulation produced by AR is itself preceded and driven by an increased sense of personal relevance of the food items.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11747-022-00919-x.

Dialogue intervention for youth amidst intractable conflict attenuates neural prejudice response and promotes adults' peacemaking

Humans' dependence on group living has led to the formation of tenacious, often nonconscious negative perceptions of other social groups, a phenomenon termed "intergroup bias" that sustains one of the world's most imminent problem: intergroup conflicts. Adolescents' participation in intergroup conflicts has been continuously on the rise, rendering the need to devise interventions that can mitigate some of their deleterious effects on youth an urgent societal priority. Framed within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and targeting youth, we implemented a dialogue-enhancing intervention for adolescents (16 to 18 years) reared amidst intractable conflict that builds on social synchrony and the neurobiology of affiliation. Implementing a randomized controlled trial design, before and after the 8-week intervention adolescents underwent magnetoencephalography to assess a neural marker of implicit prejudice and interviewed on their attitudes toward the conflict. Adolescents who received the intervention showed attenuation of the neural prejudice response, as indexed by sustained occipital alpha that was significantly reduced at post-intervention and adopted attitudes of peacemaking. Change in the neural prejudice response predicted attitudes of compromise and support in peacebuilding 7 years later, when young adults can already engage in active civil duties and responsibilities. These results underscore adolescence as a window of opportunity for enhancing inter-group dialogue and demonstrate the long-term associations between the neural evaluation of prejudice and self-reported measures of proclivity for compromise and peace in the context of an intractable century-long conflict.

The Dual Effect of COVID-19 on Intergroup Conflict in the Korean Peninsula

The coronavirus pandemic has fundamentally shifted the way human beings interact, both as individuals and groups, in the face of such a widespread outbreak. This paper seeks to investigate the effects of COVID-19 on intergroup emotions and attitudes within an intractable intergroup conflict, specifically, through the lens of the Korean conflict. Using a two-wave, cross-sectional design, this study was able to track the profound psychological changes in intergroup emotions and attitudes both prior to the pandemic and during its onslaught. Results of these two wave representative samples show that South Korean citizens demonstrated higher levels of fear of their neighbors in North Korea after the outbreak of COVID-19 than before. In turn, this led to increased societal support of hostile government policies towards North Koreans. Conversely, the same participants exhibited higher levels of empathy towards North Koreans during the pandemic, which led to a higher willingness to collaborate with their outgroup. This dual effect on intergroup emotions within intractable conflicts brings forth new avenues from which societies may be able to restrain the destructive influence of the COVID-19 threat on intergroup relations - as well as harvesting its constructive potential for reconciling warring intergroup relations.

Sexualized Music Videos Desensitize Fijian Women to Intimate Partner Violence Suffering: The Mediating Role of Culpability Attributions

Although there is growing evidence that receiving positive emotional support (e.g., empathy) facilitates improved mental health outcomes among intimate partner violence (IPV) victims, there has been minimal exploration of factors that might undermine the likelihood of such supportive responses. The current study addressed this issue by examining whether exposure to sexualized music videos would affect IPV victim-directed empathic responding of third-party respondents. In a three-condition design, 243 female Fijian university students viewed sexualized, nonsexualized, or neutral music videos. They then read about a male-to-female IPV incident involving a university student victim who focused heavily on academic success and rated aspiration-related culpability and empathic responding for the victim. Relative to those who viewed neutral and nonsexualized videos, those who viewed the sexualized video reported less victim-directed empathy. Moreover, the impact of video type on empathy was mediated by aspiration-related culpability (i.e., the perception that the victim studied too much). The present research examined, in an understudied, patriarchal population (Fijian women) with an extremely high rate of IPV, how exposure to sexualized music videos can contribute to both greater blame and greater desensitization to the suffering of an IPV victim. The importance of studying third-party responders (bystanders) is that they may represent a fundamental resource for the victim, or by contrast, if they fail to respond empathically, they would be unsupportive to a victim. This provides some directions for facilitating social controls and decreasing social tolerance for harmful patriarchal beliefs and gender-based violence in the Pacific Region of the world.

Resonance as a Design Strategy for AI and Social Robots

Resonance, a powerful and pervasive phenomenon, appears to play a major role in human interactions. This article investigates the relationship between the physical mechanism of resonance and the human experience of resonance, and considers possibilities for enhancing the experience of resonance within human-robot interactions. We first introduce resonance as a widespread cultural and scientific metaphor. Then, we review the nature of "sympathetic resonance" as a physical mechanism. Following this introduction, the remainder of the article is organized in two parts. In part one, we review the role of resonance (including synchronization and rhythmic entrainment) in human cognition and social interactions. Then, in part two, we review resonance-related phenomena in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). These two reviews serve as ground for the introduction of a design strategy and combinatorial design space for shaping resonant interactions with robots and AI. We conclude by posing hypotheses and research questions for future empirical studies and discuss a range of ethical and aesthetic issues associated with resonance in human-robot interactions.

Electrophysiological Correlates of Social Decision-making: An EEG Investigation of a Modified Ultimatum Game

Cooperation behaviors during social decision-making have been shown to be sensitive to manipulations of context. However, it remains unclear how aspects of context in dynamic social interactions, such as observed nonverbal behaviors, may modulate cooperation decisions and the associated neural mechanisms. In this study, participants responded to offers from proposers to split $10 in an Ultimatum Game following observation of proposer approach (friendly) or avoidance (nonfriendly) behaviors, displayed by dynamic whole-body animated avatars, or following a nonsocial interaction control condition. As expected, behavioral results showed that participants tended to have greater acceptance rates for unfair offers following observed nonverbal social interactions with proposers compared with control, suggesting an enhancing effect of social interactions on cooperative decisions. ERP results showed greater N1 and N2 responses at the beginning of social interaction conditions compared with control, and greater sustained and late positivity responses for observed approach and avoidance proposer behaviors compared with control. Event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP) results showed differential sensitivity within theta, alpha, and beta bands during observation of social interactions and offers that was associated with subsequent decision behaviors. Together, these results point to the impact of proposers' nonverbal behaviors on subsequent cooperation decisions at both behavioral and neural levels. The ERP and ERSP findings suggest modulated attention, monitoring, and processing of biological motion during the observed nonverbal social interactions, influencing the participants' responses to offers. These findings shed light on electrophysiological correlates of response to observed social interactions that predict subsequent social decisions.

Neural Rhythmic Underpinnings of Intergroup Bias: Implications for Peace-Building Attitudes and Dialogue

Intergroup bias is a ubiquitous socio-cognitive phenomenon that, while sustaining human dependence on group living, often leads to prejudice, inequity, and violence; yet, its neural underpinnings remain unclear. Framed within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and targeting youth, this study utilized magnetoencephalography to describe intrinsic neural oscillatory processes that represent the intergroup bias and may link with engagement in peacemaking in order to shed further light on the neural mechanisms underpinning intergroup conflict. Across the oscillatory spectrum, from very low to very high frequency bands, the only rhythm found to underlie the intergroup bias was the alpha rhythm. Alpha was continuously activated across the task and integrated a rapid perceptual component in occipital cortex with a top-down cognitive-control component in medial cingulate cortex. These components were distinctly associated with real-life intergroup dialog style and expressed attitudes that promote active engagement in peacemaking. Our findings suggest that the cortical alpha rhythm plays a crucial role in sustaining intergroup bias and address its impact on concrete intergroup experiences. Results highlight the need to provide opportunities for active peace-building dialog to youth reared amidst intractable conflicts.

Citizens of the world: National stereotypes do not affect empathic response in the presence of individuating information

Stereotyping is defined as generalising an attribute to a whole group and overlooking individual differences. In this study, we investigated whether Iranians' stereotypes of nations affected their empathy for the citizens of those nations. First, in a pilot study we explored common national stereotypes by using the stereotype content model (SCM) based on which six countries with different perceived warmth and competence scores were selected as nationalities of the protagonists of the vignettes in our experiment. In the next phase, 21 participants were asked to rate the degree of sadness associated with each vignette in an fMRI scanner. The results showed no significant differences in brain activity while participants were exposed to scenarios in which negative events befell people from different nations. This may be due to the individuation of victims by providing personal information about them.

End in view: Joint end-state comfort depends on gaze and extraversion

This study investigated how humans adapt to a partner's movement in a joint pick-and-place task and examined the role of gaze behavior and personality traits in adapting to a partner. Two participants sitting side-by-side transported a cup from one end of a table to the other. The participant sitting on the left (the agent) moved the cup to an intermediate position from where the participant sitting on the right (the partner) transported it to a goal position with varying orientations. Hand, finger, cup movements and gaze behavior were recorded synchronously via motion tracking and portable eye tracking devices. Results showed interindividual differences in the extent of the agents' motor adaptation to the joint action goal, which were accompanied by differences in gaze patterns. The longer agents directed their gaze to a cue indicating the goal orientation, the more they adapted the rotation of the cup's handle when placing it at the intermediate position. Personality trait assessment showed that higher extraverted tendencies to strive for social potency went along with more adaptation to the joint goal. These results indicate that agents who consider their partner's end-state comfort use their gaze to gather more information about the joint action goal compared to agents who do not. Moreover, the disposition to enjoy leadership and make decisions in interpersonal situations seems to play a role in determining who adapts to a partner's task in joint action.

Antidiscrimination Interventions, Political Ads on Transgender Rights, and Public Opinion: Results From Two Survey Experiments on Adults in the United States

Political advertisements can shift attitudes and behaviors to become more exclusionary toward social out-groups. However, people who engage in an antidiscrimination exercise in the context of an experiment may respond differently to such ads. What interventions might foster inclusive attitudes in the presence of political communications about social policy issues like transgender rights? We examined two scalable antidiscrimination exercises commonly used in applied settings: describing a personal narrative of discrimination and perspective-taking. We then showed people political ads that are favorable or opposed to transgender rights to determine whether those interventions moderate how receptive people are to the messages. Relying on two demographically representative survey experiments of adults in the United States (study 1 N = 1,291; study 2 N = 1,587), we found that personal recollections of discriminatory experiences did not reduce exclusionary attitudes, but perspective-taking had some effects, particularly among those who fully complied with the exercise. However, both studies revealed potential backfire effects; recalling a discriminatory experience induced negative attitudes among a subset of the participants, and participants who refused to perspective-take when prompted also held more negative attitudes. Importantly, political ads favorable toward transgender rights consistently resulted in more positive attitudes toward transgender people. Future work needs to carefully examine heterogeneous responses and resistance to antidiscrimination interventions and examine what particular aspects of the political ads induced the attitude change.

What modulates the Mirror Neuron System during action observation?: Multiple factors involving the action, the actor, the observer, the relationship between actor and observer, and the context

Seeing an agent perform an action typically triggers a motor simulation of that action in the observer's Mirror Neuron System (MNS). Over the past few years, it has become increasingly clear that during action observation the patterns and strengths of responses in the MNS are modulated by multiple factors. The first aim of this paper is therefore to provide the most comprehensive survey to date of these factors. To that end, 22 distinct factors are described, broken down into the following sets: six involving the action; two involving the actor; nine involving the observer; four involving the relationship between actor and observer; and one involving the context. The second aim is to consider the implications of these findings for four prominent theoretical models of the MNS: the Direct Matching Model; the Predictive Coding Model; the Value-Driven Model; and the Associative Model. These assessments suggest that although each model is supported by a wide range of findings, each one is also challenged by other findings and relatively unaffected by still others. Hence, there is now a pressing need for a richer, more inclusive model that is better able to account for all of the modulatory factors that have been identified so far.

Recognizing humanity: dehumanization predicts neural mirroring and empathic accuracy in face-to-face interactions

Dehumanization is the failure to recognize the cognitive and emotional complexities of the people around us. While its presence has been well documented in horrific acts of violence, it is also theorized to play a role in everyday life. We measured its presence and effects in face-to-face dyadic interactions between strangers and found that not only was there variance in the extent to which they perceived one another as human, but this variance predicted neural processing and behavior. Specifically, participants showed stronger neural mirroring, indexed by electroencephalography (EEG) mu-suppression, in response to partners they evaluated as more human, suggesting their brains neurally simulated those targets' actions more. Participants were also marginally more empathically accurate about the emotions of partners deemed more human and performed better with them on a cooperative task. These results suggest that there are indeed differences in our recognition of the humanity of people we meet-demonstrated for the first time in a real, face-to-face interaction-and that this mundane variation affects our ability to neurally simulate, cooperate and empathize.

Competence-based social status and implicit preference modulate the ability to coordinate during a joint grasping task

Studies indicate that social status influences people's social perceptions. Less information is available about whether induced social status influences dyadic coordination during motor interactions. To explore this issue, we designed a study in which two confederates obtained high or low competence-based status by playing a game together with the participant, while the participant always occupied the middle position of the hierarchy. Following this status-inducing phase, participants were engaged in a joint grasping task with the high- and low-status confederates in different sessions while behavioural (i.e., interpersonal asynchrony and movement start time) indexes were measured. Participants' performance in the task (i.e., level of interpersonal asynchrony) when interacting with the low-status partner was modulated by their preference for him. The lower participants' preference for a low- relative to a high-status confederate, the worse participants' performance when interacting with the low-status confederate. Our results show that participants' performance during motor interactions changes according to the social status of the interaction partner.

Characterizing the Action-Observation Network Through Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy: A Review

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a neuroimaging technique that has undergone tremendous growth over the last decade due to methodological advantages over other measures of brain activation. The action-observation network (AON), a system of brain structures proposed to have “mirroring” abilities (e.g., active when an individual completes an action or when they observe another complete that action), has been studied in humans through neural measures such as fMRI and electroencephalogram (EEG); however, limitations of these methods are problematic for AON paradigms. For this reason, fNIRS is proposed as a solution to investigating the AON in humans. The present review article briefly summarizes previous neural findings in the AON and examines the state of AON research using fNIRS in adults. A total of 14 fNIRS articles are discussed, paying particular attention to methodological choices and considerations while summarizing the general findings to aid in developing better protocols to study the AON through fNIRS. Additionally, future directions of this work are discussed, specifically in relation to researching AON development and potential multimodal imaging applications.

Neighborhood racial demographics predict infants' neural responses to people of different races

Early in life, greater exposure to diverse people can change the tendency to prefer one's own social group. For instance, infants from racially diverse environments show less preference for their own-race (ingroup) over other-race (outgroup) faces than infants from racially homogeneous environments. Yet how social environment changes ingroup versus outgroup demarcation in infancy remains unclear. A commonly held assumption is that early emerging ingroup preference is based on an affective process: feeling more comfortable with familiar ingroup than unfamiliar outgroup members. However, other processes may also underlie ingroup preference: Infants may attend more to ingroup than outgroup members and/or mirror the actions of ingroup over outgroup individuals. By aggregating 7- to 12-month-old infants' electroencephalography (EEG) activity across three studies, we disambiguate these different processes in the EEG oscillations of preverbal infants according to social environment. White infants from more racially diverse neighborhoods exhibited greater frontal theta oscillation (an index of top-down attention) and more mu rhythm desynchronization (an index of motor system activation and potentially neural mirroring) to racial outgroup individuals than White infants from less racially diverse neighborhoods. Neighborhood racial demographics did not relate to White infants' frontal alpha asymmetry (a measure of approach-withdrawal motivation) toward racial outgroup individuals. Racial minority infants showed no effects of neighborhood racial demographics in their neural responses to racial outgroup individuals. These results indicate that neural mechanisms that may underlie social bias and prejudices are related to neighborhood racial demographics in the first year of life.

Exploring the Effect of Cooperation in Reducing Implicit Racial Bias and Its Relationship With Dispositional Empathy and Political Attitudes

Previous research using immersive virtual reality (VR) has shown that after a short period of embodiment by White people in a Black virtual body, their implicit racial bias against Black people diminishes. Here we tested the effects of some socio-cognitive variables that could contribute to enhancing or reducing the implicit racial bias. The first aim of the study was to assess the beneficial effects of cooperation within a VR scenario, the second aim was to provide preliminary testing of the hypothesis that empathy and political attitudes could contribute to implicit bias about race, while the third aim was to explore the relationship between political attitudes and empathy. We had (Caucasian) participants embodied in a Black virtual body and engaged either in a cooperative (Coop group) or in a non-cooperative (Neutral group) activity with a confederate experimenter embodying another Black avatar. Before and after VR, we measured participants’ implicit racial bias by means of Implicit Association Test (IAT) and their perceived closeness toward the confederate experimenter. Before VR we also assessed participants’ political attitudes and empathy traits. Results revealed that, as compared to the Neutral group, the Coop group showed lower IAT scores after the social interaction. Interestingly, in the Neutral but not the Coop group the perceived closeness toward the confederate experimenter was associated with the initial racial bias: the more the participants reduced their distance, the more they reduced their IAT score. Moreover, reported traits of empathy and political attitudes significantly explained the variance observed in the initial implicit bias, with perspective-taking, empathic concern, and personal distress being significant predictors of the IAT scores. Finally, there was a relationship between political attitudes and empathy: the more participants considered themselves as left-wing voters, the higher their perspective-taking and empathic concern scores. We discuss these findings within the neuroscientific and social cognition field and encourage scholars from different domains to further explore whether and under which conditions a given manipulation for reducing racial bias could be efficiently transposed in VR.

The Social Neuroscience of Prejudice

The social neuroscience approach to prejudice investigates the psychology of intergroup bias by integrating models and methods of neuroscience with the social psychology of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination. Here, we review major contemporary lines of inquiry, including current accounts of group-based categorization; formation and updating of prejudice and stereotypes; effects of prejudice on perception, emotion, and decision making; and the self-regulation of prejudice. In each section, we discuss key social neuroscience findings, consider interpretational challenges and connections with the behavioral literature, and highlight how they advance psychological theories of prejudice. We conclude by discussing the next-generation questions that will continue to guide the social neuroscience approach toward addressing major societal issues of prejudice and discrimination.

Is the Putative Mirror Neuron System Associated with Empathy? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Theoretical perspectives suggest that the mirror neuron system (MNS) is an important neurobiological contributor to empathy, yet empirical support is mixed. Here, we adopt a summary model for empathy, consisting of motor, emotional, and cognitive components of empathy. This review provides an overview of existing empirical studies investigating the relationship between putative MNS activity and empathy in healthy populations. 52 studies were identified that investigated the association between the MNS and at least one domain of empathy, representing data from 1044 participants. Our results suggest that emotional and cognitive empathy are moderately correlated with MNS activity, however, these domains were mixed and varied across techniques used to acquire MNS activity (TMS, EEG, and fMRI). Few studies investigated motor empathy, and of those, no significant relationships were revealed. Overall, results provide preliminary evidence for a relationship between MNS activity and empathy. However, our findings highlight methodological variability in study design as an important factor in understanding this relationship. We discuss limitations regarding these methodological variations and important implications for clinical and community translations, as well as suggestions for future research.

Personality traits are directly associated with anti-black prejudice in the United States

Modern psychological theories postulate that individual differences in prejudice are determined by social and ideological attitudes instead of personality. For example, the dual-process motivational (DPM) model argues that personality does not directly associate with prejudice when controlling for the attitudinal variables that capture the authoritarian-conservatism motivation and the dominance motivation. Previous studies testing the DPM model largely relied on convenience samples and/or European samples, and have produced inconsistent results. Here we examined the extent to which anti-black prejudice was associated with the Big Five personality traits and social and ideological attitudes (authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, political party affiliation) in two large probability samples of the general population (N1 = 3,132; N2 = 2,483) from the American National Election Studies (ANES). We performed structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the causal assumptions between the latent variables and used survey weights to generate estimates that were representative of the population. Different from prior theories, across both datasets we found that two personality traits, agreeableness and conscientiousness, were directly associated with anti-black prejudice when controlling for authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and political party affiliation. We also found that a substantial part of the associations between personality traits and anti-black prejudice were mediated through those social and ideological attitudes, which might serve as candidates for prejudice-reduction interventions in the real world.

Do dominant group members have different emotional responses to observing dominant-on-dominant versus dominant-on-disadvantaged ostracism? Some evidence for heightened reactivity to potentially discriminatory ingroup behavior

The importance of social connection to well-being is underscored by individuals’ reactivity to events highlighting the potential for rejection and exclusion, which extends even to observing the social exclusion of others (“vicarious ostracism”). Because responses to vicarious ostracism depend at least in part on empathy with the target, and individuals tend to empathize less readily with outgroup than ingroup members, the question arises as to whether there is a boundary condition on vicarious ostracism effects whereby individuals are relatively immune to observing ingroup-on-outgroup ostracism. Of particular interest is the case where members of a dominant ethnic group observe fellow ingroup members ostracize a member of a disadvantaged ethnic minority group, as here there is a compelling potential alternative: Perceived violation of contemporary social norms condemning prejudice and discrimination might instead lead dominant group members to be especially upset by “dominant-on-disadvantaged” ostracism. Accordingly, the present research examines, across four studies and 4413 participants, individuals’ affective reactions to observing dominant-on-disadvantaged versus dominant-on-dominant ostracism. In each study, dominant group members (White/Europeans) observed dominant group members include or ostracize a fellow dominant group member or a disadvantaged ethnic minority group member (a Black individual) in an online Cyberball game. Results revealed that dominant group members felt more guilt, anger, and sadness after observing severe ostracism of a disadvantaged as opposed to dominant group member. Although no direct effects emerged on behavioral outcomes, exploratory analyses suggested that observing ostracism of a disadvantaged (versus dominant) group member had indirect effects on behavior via increased feelings of anger. These results suggest that observing ostracism may be a sufficiently potent and relatable experience that when it occurs across group boundaries it awakens individuals’ sensitivity to injustice and discrimination.

Social perceptions of warmth and competence influence behavioral intentions and neural processing

Perceptions of the primary social dimensions, warmth and competence, determine how we view and relate to social targets. To discern how warmth and competence might affect neural processing and its downstream behavioral consequences, we manipulated impressions of targets' warmth and competence and then measured intentions toward the target and motor resonance, a neural process previously linked to social processing. While EEG was recorded, 66 participants watched videos of people performing a simple motor activity and completed a measure of hypothetical intentions to help or harm. Both perceptions of warmth and competence predicted an increase in helping intentions. Moreover, participants showed the least motor resonance with high competence-medium warmth targets, suggesting the importance of both social dimensions in driving neural simulation of targets' actions. Perceptions of a person's warmth and competence can affect not only how others might intend to treat them, but also how they might process their basic experiences on a neural level.

Mu-Suppression as an Indicator of Empathic Processes in Lesbian, Gay, and Heterosexual Adults

Self-reported empathy differs with gender and sexual orientation. The current study investigated whether mu-suppression, reflecting brain activity especially related to state empathy, also is modulated by gender and sexual orientation. Pictures of painful and non-painful actions were presented to 20 lesbians, 20 gay men, 20 heterosexual men and 20 heterosexual women, while EEG was recorded. Individual peak frequencies of mu-activity (electrodes C3, C4) were detected within the 6-11 Hz band for each participant, and mu-suppression indices were calculated. Further, verbal indicators of state empathy (pain ratings) and compassion were assessed. Only heterosexual individuals showed the typical pattern of enhanced mu-suppression in response to painful relative to non-painful pictures. Lesbian women and gay men did not show a differential mu-response. Moreover, they felt less compassion compared to heterosexual individuals. In line with this finding, the more compassion the participants reported, the stronger the mu-suppression in response to painful relative to non-painful pictures was. Pain ratings did not vary with sexual orientation. The lesser compassion reported by lesbian women and gay men is discussed as a mediator of their non-differential mu-suppression response. It is hypothesized that this pattern might relate to gay men and lesbian women tending to perceive the anonymous depicted actors as outgroup members, hence showing less compassion and reduced mu-suppression. As empathy is often related to negative feelings (empathic stress), a clear distinction between individuals to empathize with versus individuals not to emphasize with may well be an adaptive feature in same-sex oriented individuals.

Children's mu suppression is sensitive to witnessing others' social victimization

Empathy has been a key focus of social, developmental, and affective neuroscience for some time. However, research using neural measures to study empathy in response to social victimization is sparse, particularly for young children. In the present study, 58 children's (White, non-Hispanic; five to nine years old) mu suppression was measured using electroencephalogram methods (EEG) as they viewed video scenarios depicting social injustices toward White and Black children. We found evidence of increased mu suppression in response to social victimization; however, contrary to well-documented findings of ingroup racial bias in empathic responses among adults, we found no evidence of racial bias in mu suppression in young children. Implications of these findings for neuroscience research on empathy and the development of ingroup bias are discussed.

Attentional saliency and ingroup biases: From society to the brain

There is ample evidence demonstrating intergroup biases on cognition and emotion. However, it remains unclear how exactly group identification influences these processes, with issues of context sensitivity and goal dependence remaining open to scrutiny. Providing a range of interdisciplinary material, the current review attempts to inform understanding of these issues. Specifically, we provide evidence revealing that individuals show enhanced attention for stimuli associated with an ingroup compared to an outgroup. At the attentional level, such biases can be explained by the assignment of different levels of saliency to ingroup versus outgroup targets. Critically, however, salience assignment is not fixed but varies as a function of context and goal-directed behavior. We suggest that the network in the brain previously associated with social and emotional saliency and attention - notably the anterior insula, posterior superior temporal sulcus, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex - underpins these effects. Moreover, although attention typically favors ingroup targets, outgroup members can be prioritized on occasion. The implications of this viewpoint and future lines of investigation are considered.

Physical and observational practices of unusual actions prime action verb processing

Numerous studies have highlighted a strong relationship between language and sensorimotor processes, showing, for example, that perceiving an action influences subsequent language processing. Moreover, previous studies have demonstrated that the context in which actions are perceived is crucial to enable this action-language relationship. In particular, action verb processing is facilitated when an action is perceived in its usual context (e.g., someone watering a plant) but not in an unusual context (e.g., someone watering a computer). This difference could be explained in terms of experience; because people always practice actions in accordance with the context, they have no (visual or motor) experience related to the unusual context. The aim of the present study was to test this assumption by assessing and comparing the effect of physical practice and observational learning on the action-language relationship. The results of two experiments showed a facilitation effect of both training methods. Whereas usual actions systematically prime action verb processing, the link between action and language appears for unusual actions only after training by practicing (experiment 1, physical practice) or observing (experiment 2, observational learning). Overall, these findings support the role of experience in the activation of sensorimotor representations during action verb processing.

In Two Minds: Similarity, Threat, and Prejudice Contribute to Worse Mindreading of Outgroups Compared With an Ingroup

We examined Turkish participants’ mindreading accuracy toward ingroup versus outgroup targets. Three hundred and fifty-four Turkish participants were randomly assigned to one of three target groups: Turkish, Syrian, or Norwegian. The mindreading accuracy for these targets was measured along with the perceived cultural similarity of the target to the ingroup, as well as prejudice and threat perception. Participants evidenced higher mindreading accuracy toward Turkish targets compared with Syrian and Norwegian targets. Mindreading accuracy for the Syrian and Norwegian targets did not differ, but lower perceived similarity to the Turkish ingroup significantly predicted lower mentalizing for Syrian and Norwegians. In the Syrian target group, lower perceived similarity interacted with lower education and higher prejudice, resulting in a further reduction in mindreading. For Norwegian targets, lower similarity impaired mindreading through an interaction with higher threat perception. Results indicate that even when mentalizing capacity is mature, intergroup factors are linked with the deployment of mindreading.

Electrophysiological Correlates of Racial In-group Bias in Observing Nonverbal Social Encounters

Despite evidence identifying the role of group membership in social cognition, the neural mechanisms associated with the perception and evaluation of nonverbal behaviors displayed by in-group versus out-group members remain unclear. Here, 42 white participants underwent electroencephalographic recording while observing social encounters involving dynamic displays of nonverbal behaviors by racial in-group and out-group avatar characters. Dynamic behaviors included approach and avoidance poses and expressions, followed by the participants' ratings of the avatars displaying them. Behaviorally, participants showed longer RTs when evaluating in-group approach behavior compared with other behaviors, possibly suggesting increased interest and attention devoted to processing positive social encounters with their in-group members. Analyses of ERPs revealed differential sensitivity of the N450 and late positivity components to social cues, with the former showing initial sensitivity to the presence of a humanoid avatar character at the beginning of social encounters and the latter showing sensitivity to dynamic nonverbal behaviors displayed by the avatars. Moreover, time-frequency analysis of electroencephalography data also identified suppression of beta-range power linked to the observation of dynamic nonverbal behaviors. Notably, the magnitude of these responses was modulated by the degree of behavioral racial in-group bias. This suggests that differential neural sensitivity to nonverbal cues while observing social encounters is associated with subsequent in-group bias manifested in the evaluation of such encounters. Collectively, these findings shed light on the mechanisms of racial in-group bias in social cognition and have implications for understanding factors related to successful interactions with individuals from diverse racial backgrounds.

The enemy's gaze: Immersive virtual environments enhance peace promoting attitudes and emotions in violent intergroup conflicts

Perspective-taking is essential for improving intergroup relations. However, it is difficult to implement, especially in violent conflicts. Given that immersive virtual reality (VR) can simulate various points of view (POV), we examined whether it can lead to beneficial outcomes by promoting outgroup perspective-taking, even in armed conflicts. In two studies, Jewish-Israelis watched a 360° VR scene depicting an Israeli-Palestinian confrontation from different POVs–outgroup’s, ingroup’s while imagining outgroup perspective or ingroup’s without imagined perspective-taking. Participants immersed in the outgroup’s POV, but not those who imagined the outgroup’s perspective, perceived the Palestinians more positively than those immersed in the ingroup’s POV. Moreover, participants in the outgroup’s POV perceived the Palestinian population in general more favorably and judged a real-life ingroup transgression more strictly than those in the ingroup’s POV, even five months after VR intervention. Results suggest that VR can promote conflict resolution by enabling effective perspective-taking.

Clarifying the relationship between trait empathy and action-based resonance indexed by EEG mu-rhythm suppression

Sensorimotor resonance, the vicarious activation of the sensory motor system during observation of another's actions, is thought to contribute to important social functions including empathy. Previous research has shown that sensorimotor resonance, as measured by suppression of the electrophysiological (EEG) mu rhythm, is predicted by trait empathy, but findings are inconsistent. Here we report data from a high-powered study (N = 252) to clarify the relationship between sensorimotor resonance as indexed by mu suppression during action observation and trait empathy as measured by the well-established Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI). Our initial pre-registered analyses at central electrode locations indicate that sensorimotor resonance is unrelated to general trait empathy or its sub-facets, however, these effects could not be isolated from attention-related occipital alpha. An additional non-registered analysis using Independent Component Analysis (ICA) to look at the isolated central mu-component clarified the relationship. Results confirmed the lack of a relationship between the mu-component and the perspective taking, personal distress, or fantasy facets of the IRI, but suggest a possible association with empathic concern such that greater resonance is associated with greater empathic concern. These results question the previously assumed relationship between trait empathy and sensorimotor resonance and highlight the need to investigate experience sharing tendencies in the context of simulation-based resonance.

Neural Correlates of Group Bias During Natural Viewing

Individuals from different social groups interpret the world in different ways. This study explores the neural basis of these group differences using a paradigm that simulates natural viewing conditions. Our aim was to determine if group differences could be found in sensory regions involved in the perception of the world or were evident in higher-level regions that are important for the interpretation of sensory information. We measured brain responses from 2 groups of football supporters, while they watched a video of matches between their teams. The time-course of response was then compared between individuals supporting the same (within-group) or the different (between-group) team. We found high intersubject correlations in low-level and high-level regions of the visual brain. However, these regions of the brain did not show any group differences. Regions that showed higher correlations for individuals from the same group were found in a network of frontal and subcortical brain regions. The interplay between these regions suggests a range of cognitive processes from motor control to social cognition and reward are important in the establishment of social groups. These results suggest that group differences are primarily reflected in regions involved in the evaluation and interpretation of the sensory input.

Putting Yourself in the Skin of In- or Out-Group Members: No Effect of Implicit Biases on Egocentric Mental Transformation

Previous studies suggest that visual encoding of ethnicity of in-group/out-group members might influence empathy and sensorimotor sharing. Here, we investigated whether mental perspective taking, presumably a precursor of empathy, is also influenced by in-group/out-group perception and the implicit attitudes toward it. We used an embodied egocentric visual-perspective taking task, the full body rotation task (FBR), in which participants were asked to mentally rotate themselves into the position of dark- or light-skinned bodies. FBR was contrasted to a pure sensorimotor task, the hand laterality task (HLT), in which participants were asked to mentally rotate their hand to the posture of seen light- or dark-skinned hands, which does not require mental simulation of another person's perspective. We expected the FBR but not the HLT to be influenced by the skin color of the stimuli and by the individual implicit biases toward out-group members. Contrary to this hypothesis, we found that neither skin color nor implicit biases modulated reaction times (RTs) in either task. The data thus suggest that unlike other empathy tasks, skin color does not influence visuospatial perspective taking.

Does watching Han Solo or C-3PO similarly influence our language processing?

Several studies have demonstrated that perceiving an action influences the subsequent processing of action verbs. However, which characteristics of the perceived action are truly determinant to enable this influence is still unknown. The current study investigated the role of the agent executing an action in this action-language relationship. Participants performed a semantic decision task after seeing a video of a human or a robot performing an action. The results of the first study showed that perceiving a human being executing an action as well as perceiving a robot facilitate subsequent language processing, suggesting that the humanness (The term "humanness" is used as meaning "belonging to human race" and not to refer to a personal quality) of the agent is not crucial in the link between action and language. However, this experiment was conducted with Japanese people who are very familiar with robots; thus, an alternative explanation could be that it is the unfamiliarity with the agent that could perturb the action-language relationship. To assess this hypothesis, we carried out two additional experiments with French participants. The results of the second study showed that, unlike the observation of a human agent, the observation of a robot did not influence language processing. Finally, the results of the third study showed that, after a familiarization phase, French participants too were influenced by the observation of a robot. Overall, the outcomes of these studies indicate that, more than the humanness of the agent, it is the familiarity which we have with this agent that is crucial in the action-language relationship.