6 - Groups Identity

idea that there is some little man inside the brain that makes up the neural basis of the self

the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC)

• hearing one’s own name
• arbitrary associations to self (attention and memory tasks)
• attending to one’s own emotional response relative to that of a person in a photo

• sense of agency (free will, sense f being in control of one’s own actions)
• sense of embodiment (existing within one’s own body)

• personal memories
• personality traits
• motivation (maintain self esteem)

• group membership (ethnic, national, etc)
• share beliefs, skills, and rituals

• prediction of action consequences
• used event related brain potentials (LRP)
• found that the intention to act was noted before the movement onset
• there is a curve leading up to the intention time before the subject even decides they want to act

• subjects view visual depiction of their body
• back is stroked with a stick
• the higher the bar, the stronger the out of body experience
• asynchronous timing - not as strong out of body experience

• measured current political attitudes in 1973 and again in 1982 they were asked to recall attitudes but they were skewed towards current beliefs
• people tend to remember the past in terms of their current knowledge and beliefs

those who identify strongly with an in-group are worse at remembering acts of historical violence by their in-group

self-enhancing memories are judged to feel more recent than memories that reflect badly on oneself

• two arbitrary groups (prisoners and guards)
• different behavior emerged, us vs them mentality
• replicated the sin europe and ground pretty consistent results

• a collection of indiv interacting with one another
• collection of ppl who join together to achieve a goal
• collection of indie who influence each other

a collection of different group memberships (nationality, race, political allegiances)

• asian women view their math ability more favorably when ethnic identity is highlighted, relative to when gender is highlighted
• priming ethnic identity increases math performance
• priming gender identity decreases it

white women show evidence of a more negative attitude towards Black women when race is highlighted vs when gender is highlighted

• gender
• race
• age
• automatic and obligatory, they spontaneously trigger stereotypes, attitudes and behavioral tendencies

• perceiving members of a given category as possessing various common attributes
• efficient way of organizing and storing info about people in long-term memory
• but also a source of bias and generalization

• if we stereotype an object, we remember facts related to it but when stereotyping female, we think of attributes we have learned over time that may not always be correct
• if you make male face a little more feminine, people gravitate towards feminine related stereotype (caring) before choosing male one (aggressive)

negative attitudes, emotions, or behaviors to members of a group on the basis of their membership in that group

• cognitive
• emotional

• amygdala
• insula
• striatum
• ventral mPFC
• OFC

• dorsal mPFC
• lateral temporal lobe
• IFG
• ATL

• in group is more likely to resemble self than outgrip
• people are more motivated to maintain a favorable self-concept

• charity donations before a hurricane were significantly less than after a hurricane
• especially if name of hurricane matches their own

• reward regions like striatum are activated when you see subjectively positive outcomes (when other team fails or your team wins)
• pain regions like ACC are activated when you see subjectively negative outcomes (when your team fails or other team wins)

• chinese students shows in group bias to smiling, happy chinese faces
• this predicted the extent to which they friended more in group vs out group members on Facebook

may reflect either perceptual expertise or tendency to process other races categorically

• found that people track group/team more than race, so race encoding can be erased but not gender because we will always track that
• found that people were keeping track of team membership more because they would mistake statements made by a person with another person from the same team

• people are assigned to a group, tiger or leopard
• have to categorize people by race or team memberships
• greater fusiform and amygdala activation to novel in-group members
• no difference in activation based on race

• there is a positivity bias when perceiving in group members emotions
• group membership influenced how you interpreted that face (happy, angry, etc) bc in-group members seemed more happy/positive

• switch the original associations (from white/good to white/bad) and the response should be slower if you harbor the implicit association
• critical measure is the difference in reaction time between the two

• implicit - 6yr old kids see pro white anti black bias, stays the same at 10 yrs and throughout
• explicit - ask them what kids they prefer to play with, they indicate they have no preference at first, but over time they learn the norms and reduce their intergroup attitudes

amygdala activity with viewing black faces correlates with IAT measure

• for quick responses, see higher activity in amygdala
• for longer exposure, see higher activity in ACC or prefrontal cortex
• researchers argued that if given more time, we deliberately try to control and get rid of our biases — which is why amygdala activity goes away at longer exposure

• when you have perceptual task, you see higher activity to black faces than white faces in amygdala
• in verbal task, you don’t see higher activity to black faces, but see higher activity in RVLPFC (right ventral lateral prefrontal cortex)
• amygdala activity and prefrontal cortex activity is negatively correlated (when one is more active, other is not)

startle response greater for black faces than asian or white faces (not out group per se)

• there was mPFC activity for high warmth/high competence people (pride), high warmth/low competence people (pity), and low warmth, high competence people (envy)
• but lose mPFC activity for low/low people (disgust) because they are so dehumanized we don’t even consider the contents of their mind

• external - “i attempt to appear non-prejudiced towards black people in order to avoid disapproval from others”
• internal - “I attempt to act in non-prejudiced ways towards black people because it is personally important to me”
• people with internal motivators have lower IAT scores and lower startle responses to black faces

• face perception
• recognizing race/group memberships
• cross race effect (remember faces of own group than other group)

• involved in monitoring for potential bias
• conflict monitoring

• regulating racial bias
• involved in inhibition
• can dampen/down regulate amygdala’s activation

need meaning positive contact with racial outgroup members to increase IAT scores and be less prejudiced

• look at a face
• observe facial features
• look into social categories
• think about stereotypes, attitudes, goals
• all of this affects behavior

• top down = context/knowledge driven, look at general concept and then get to specifics, rely on expectations
• bottom up = stimulus driven, get general idea from specific input

• when given a range of faces, more likely for people to categorize racially ambiguous guy in the suit as white
• but the racially ambiguous guy in low status clothes is seen as black man

people with high levels of implicit race bias will ascribe more anger to black faces

high-prejudice perceivers had internal visual representations of Morococcans as more untrustworthy and criminal

• faces automatically trigger stereotype knowledge in ATL
• black/male closer together
• female/happy
• asian/female

• when primed with black face, have more errors categorizing tool (usually as a gun)
• when primed with white face, have more errors categorizing as a tool instead of gun

they become stereotypically biased