Cardiac afferent activity modulates the expression of racial stereotypes

Ruben T Azevedo,Sarah N Garfinkel,Manos Tsakiris,Hugo D Critchley

doi:10.1038/ncomms13854

Abstract

Negative racial stereotypes tend to associate Black people with threat. This often leads to the misidentification of harmless objects as weapons held by a Black individual. Yet, little is known about how bodily states impact the expression of racial stereotyping. By tapping into the phasic activation of arterial baroreceptors, known to be associated with changes in the neural processing of fearful stimuli, we show activation of race-threat stereotypes synchronized with the cardiovascular cycle. Across two established tasks, stimuli depicting Black or White individuals were presented to coincide with either the cardiac systole or diastole. Results show increased race-driven misidentification of weapons during systole, when baroreceptor afferent firing is maximal, relative to diastole. Importantly, a third study examining the positive Black-athletic stereotypical association fails to demonstrate similar modulations by cardiac cycle. We identify a body–brain interaction wherein interoceptive cues can modulate threat appraisal and racially biased behaviour in context-dependent ways.

Highlights

Negative racial stereotypes tend to associate Black people with threat
On the basis of the known effects of cardiac cycle in fear processing[17,26], we expected that racial stimuli presented at systole, compared with those presented at diastole, would be associated with greater racial bias when activating threat-related stereotypes (Studies 1 and 2) but not when associated with positive racial stereotypes (Study 3)
Because face perception activates semantic knowledge associated with each group category, the presence of racial bias is typically reflected by improved identification of handguns and reduced identification of tools when preceded by Black primes compared with White primes[5,9]

Summary

Introduction

Negative racial stereotypes tend to associate Black people with threat. This often leads to the misidentification of harmless objects as weapons held by a Black individual. This showed that afferent cardiac activity influences the expression of racial bias, as demonstrated by the significant three-way interaction prime (Black/White) Â object (tool/weapon) Â cardiac cycle (systole/diastole) on a repeated measures ANOVA (n 1⁄4 30) on accuracy rates, F(1,29) 1⁄4 36.58, Po0.001, Z2 1⁄4 0.56.

Results

Conclusion