Chapter 18 - The Neural Mechanisms of Prejudice Intervention

Abstract

Prejudice is a negative attitude toward a person based on their group membership. These typically unjustified evaluations affect a person's emotions and behavior, sometimes leading to discrimination. Our chapter focuses on the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to inform our understanding of prejudice expression and interventions. We first review the meaning of prejudice—how social scientists define and measure it as a psychological phenomenon. We then provide an overview of a neural network comprised of brain areas involved in emotion processing and regulation that neuroscientists have consistently implicated in prejudice. We conclude with an optimistic outlook. Despite the fact that neural regions are reliably associated with prejudice exhibition, successful interventions have been developed that shape race processing and attenuate prejudice.