Abstract
Experiencing tactile facial stimulation while seeing synchronous stimuli on the face of another individual induces “enfacement,” i.e., the subjective illusory experience of ownership of the other's face (explicit measure) and the attribution of the others' facial features to one's own face (implicit measure). Here we expanded previous knowledge by investigating if the tendency to include the other into one's own representation is influenced by positive or negative interpersonal attitudes derived either from consolidated socio-cultural stereotypes or from newly acquired, short-term individual interactions with a specific person. To this aim, we tested in Caucasian white participants the enfacement with a white and a black confederate, before and after an experimental procedure inducing a positive or negative perception of each of them. The results show that the subjective experience of enfacement with in- and out-group others before and after the manipulation is similar. The bias in attributing other's facial features to one's own face after synchronous stroking was, instead, dependent on whether the other person was positively perceived, independently of his/her ethnicity. Thus, we show that realistic positive face-to-face interactions are more effective than consolidated racial biases in influencing the strength of self-attribution of another persons' facial features in the context of multisensory illusions. Results suggest that positive interpersonal interactions might powerfully change the plasticity of self-other representations.
Highlights
The sense of bodily self is based on the integration of congruent spatio-temporal multisensory information (Tsakiris, 2010) and is thought to be fundamental for higher forms of self-identity and consciousness (Gallagher, 2000).Recent research has shown that the bodily self is much more malleable than usually assumed since relatively simple interpersonal synchronous multisensory stimulation can blur perceptual self-other boundaries
Modulations of implicit racial biases as due to the interpersonal manipulation were tested with a 2 × 2 [Interpersonal Manipulation and Time] ANOVA performed on the Implicit Association Test (IAT) scores
At a subtler, implicit level, the self-other merging depends on positive interpersonal perception derived from individual-based interactions
Summary
The sense of bodily self is based on the integration of congruent spatio-temporal multisensory information (Tsakiris, 2010) and is thought to be fundamental for higher forms of self-identity and consciousness (Gallagher, 2000).Recent research has shown that the bodily self is much more malleable than usually assumed since relatively simple interpersonal synchronous multisensory stimulation can blur perceptual self-other boundaries. After experiencing tactile stimulation on the body while observing similar synchronous stimuli on the same body part of another individual, participants self attribute the observed body parts (e.g., rubber hand illusion) (Botvinick and Cohen, 1998) or even the full body (Lenggenhager et al, 2007; Petkova and Ehrsson, 2008) Such illusory embodiment is accompanied by physiological changes in the actual body, such as lowered body temperature (Moseley et al, 2008; Salomon et al, 2013), altered immunological responses (Barnsley et al, 2011), variations in tactile and pain thresholds (Hänsel et al, 2011). Increasing evidence shows that the illusory embodiment of a full body or a single body part might even alter attitudes toward others, such as implicit racial biases (Farmer et al, 2012; Peck et al, 2013)
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