Abstract
Despite evidence for the role of group membership in the neural correlates of social cognition, the mechanisms associated with processing non-verbal behaviors displayed by racially ingroup vs. outgroup members remain unclear. Here, 20 Caucasian participants underwent fMRI recording while observing social encounters with ingroup and outgroup characters displaying dynamic and static non-verbal behaviors. Dynamic behaviors included approach and avoidance behaviors, preceded or not by a handshake; both dynamic and static behaviors were followed by participants’ ratings. Behaviorally, participants showed bias toward their ingroup members, demonstrated by faster/slower reaction times for evaluating ingroup static/approach behaviors, respectively. At the neural level, despite overall similar responses in the action observation network to ingroup and outgroup encounters, the medial prefrontal cortex showed dissociable activation, possibly reflecting spontaneous processing of ingroup static behaviors and positive evaluations of ingroup approach behaviors. The anterior cingulate and superior frontal cortices also showed sensitivity to race, reflected in coordinated and reduced activation for observing ingroup static behaviors. Finally, the posterior superior temporal sulcus showed uniquely increased activity to observing ingroup handshakes. These findings shed light on the mechanisms of racial ingroup bias in observing social encounters, and have implications for understanding factors related to successful interactions with individuals from diverse backgrounds.
Highlights
Dramatic changes in the racial and ethnic composition of the United States have made social interactions with diverse social groups ubiquitous elements of everyday life (Cárdenas et al, 2011)
Positive Impact of Approach Behaviors and Handshakes on Ratings of Social Encounters As expected, overall competence and interest ratings were highest for social encounters involving approach (M = 3.65, SD = 0.46), followed by avoidance (M = 2.63, SD = 0.52) and by static (M = 1.56, SD = 0.75) displays of non-verbal behaviors, as confirmed by a 3 (Behavior) × 2 (Host Race) ANOVA yielding a significant main effect of Behavior: F(2,38) = 80.09, p < 0.001, η2p = 0.81 (Figure 2A)
Evidence provided by behavioral assessments reveals ingroup bias as reflected in faster/slower reaction time (RT) when evaluating ingroup static/approach behaviors, respectively
Summary
Dramatic changes in the racial and ethnic composition of the United States have made social interactions with diverse social groups ubiquitous elements of everyday life (Cárdenas et al, 2011). An essential component of these interactions, with a critical influence on drawing inferences about others, is represented by non-verbal behaviors (Murphy, 2012), the perception of which can be significantly influenced by whether or not one shares racial/ethnic identities with the others (ingroup vs outgroup, respectively) (Elfenbein and Ambady, 2002; Adams et al, 2010). Neural mechanisms associated with observing different kinds of non-verbal behaviors displayed by ingroup vs outgroup members in a defined social context remain relatively unclear. The present study addressed this important issue by using a novel experimental paradigm (Sung et al, 2011; Dolcos et al, 2012; Katsumi et al, 2017), in which participants observed and evaluated a series of non-verbal social encounters with racially ingroup and outgroup characters in a business context
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