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Handley G, Kubota JT, Cloutier J. Reading the mind in the eyes of Black and White people: Interracial contact and perceived race affects brain activity when inferring mental states. Neuroimage 2023; 269:119910. [PMID: 36724844 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.119910] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/01/2022] [Revised: 01/25/2023] [Accepted: 01/28/2023] [Indexed: 01/30/2023] Open
Abstract
Inferring others' mental states, or mentalizing, is a critical social cognitive ability that underlies humans' remarkable capacity for complex social interactions. Recent work suggests that interracial contact shapes the recruitment of brain regions involved in mentalizing during impression formation. However, it remains unclear how a target's perceived racial group and a perceiver's previous contact with that racial group shapes mental state inferences. In this study, we examined brain activity in regions of interest associated with mentalizing and race perception among self-identified White perceivers who varied in lifetime contact while they inferred secondary emotions from perceived White eyes and perceived Black eyes (i.e., the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test). The interaction between lifetime contact and perceived target race predicted activity in the superior temporal sulcus (STS), a region consistently implicated in mental state inferences from perceptual cues, tracking eye gaze, and biological motion. Low and average contact White perceivers showed more left STS activity when inferring mental states from perceived White eyes than perceived Black eyes, whereas high contact White perceivers showed similar left STS activity regardless of perceived target race. These results indicate that interracial contact decreases racial biases in the recruitment of regions involved in mentalizing when inferring mental states from perceptual cues.
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Affiliation(s)
- Grace Handley
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, United States of America.
| | - Jennifer T Kubota
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, United States of America; Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, United States of America
| | - Jasmin Cloutier
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, United States of America
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Wu Q, Peng K, Xie Y, Lai Y, Liu X, Zhao Z. An ingroup disadvantage in recognizing micro-expressions. Front Psychol 2022; 13:1050068. [PMID: 36507018 PMCID: PMC9732534 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1050068] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/21/2022] [Accepted: 11/08/2022] [Indexed: 11/27/2022] Open
Abstract
Micro-expression is a fleeting facial expression of emotion that usually occurs in high-stake situations and reveals the true emotion that a person tries to conceal. Due to its unique nature, recognizing micro-expression has great applications for fields like law enforcement, medical treatment, and national security. However, the psychological mechanism of micro-expression recognition is still poorly understood. In the present research, we sought to expand upon previous research to investigate whether the group membership of the expresser influences the recognition process of micro-expressions. By conducting two behavioral studies, we found that contrary to the widespread ingroup advantage found in macro-expression recognition, there was a robust ingroup disadvantage in micro-expression recognition instead. Specifically, in Study 1A and 1B, we found that participants were more accurate at recognizing the intense and subtle micro-expressions of their racial outgroups than those micro-expressions of their racial ingroups, and neither the training experience nor the duration of micro-expressions moderated this ingroup disadvantage. In Study 2A and 2B, we further found that mere social categorization alone was sufficient to elicit the ingroup disadvantage for the recognition of intense and subtle micro-expressions, and such an effect was also unaffected by the duration of micro-expressions. These results suggest that individuals spontaneously employ the social category information of others to recognize micro-expressions, and the ingroup disadvantage in micro-expression stems partly from motivated differential processing of ingroup micro-expressions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Qi Wu
- Department of Psychology, School of Educational Science, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China,Cognition and Human Behavior Key Laboratory of Hunan Province, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China,*Correspondence: Qi Wu,
| | - Kunling Peng
- Department of Psychology, School of Educational Science, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China,Cognition and Human Behavior Key Laboratory of Hunan Province, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China
| | - Yanni Xie
- Department of Psychology, School of Educational Science, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China,Cognition and Human Behavior Key Laboratory of Hunan Province, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China
| | - Yeying Lai
- Department of Psychology, School of Educational Science, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China,Cognition and Human Behavior Key Laboratory of Hunan Province, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China
| | - Xuanchen Liu
- Department of Psychology, School of Educational Science, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China,Cognition and Human Behavior Key Laboratory of Hunan Province, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China
| | - Ziwei Zhao
- Department of Psychology, School of Educational Science, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China,Cognition and Human Behavior Key Laboratory of Hunan Province, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China
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Kubota JT, Dang TP, Mattan BD, Barth DM, Handley G, Cloutier J. Social justice neuroscience, a valuable and complex endeavor: Authors' reply to commentaries on "Perceiving social injustice during arrests of Black and White civilians by White police officers: An fMRI investigation". Neuroimage 2022; 255:119155. [PMID: 35354094 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119155] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/06/2022] [Accepted: 03/26/2022] [Indexed: 10/18/2022] Open
Abstract
In commentaries about our article, "Perceiving social injustice during arrests of Black and White civilians by White police officers: An fMRI investigation" (Dang et al., 2022), Harris (2022), Niv and Kardosh (2022), and Purdie-Greenway and Spagna (2022) made suggestions to increase the generalizability of future research on this topic and cautioned about misinterpretation of the obtained findings. We agree with their assessments, noting that this emerging program of research should be extended to different populations and stimuli. We conclude with a general discussion of the benefits and challenges associated with multidisciplinary research and share our thoughts about engaging in social justice neuroscience.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jennifer T Kubota
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA; Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA.
| | - Tzipporah P Dang
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA
| | | | - Denise M Barth
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA
| | - Grace Handley
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA
| | - Jasmin Cloutier
- Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA
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