Reading the mind in the eyes of Black and White people: Interracial contact and perceived race affects brain activity when inferring mental states

Abstract

Inferring others’ mental states, or mentalizing, is a critical social cognitive ability that underlies humans’ remarkable capacity for complex social interactions. Recent work suggests that interracial contact shapes the recruitment of brain regions involved in mentalizing during impression formation. However, it remains unclear how a target's perceived racial group and a perceiver's previous contact with that racial group shapes mental state inferences. In this study, we examined brain activity in regions of interest associated with mentalizing and race perception among self-identified White perceivers who varied in lifetime contact while they inferred secondary emotions from perceived White eyes and perceived Black eyes (i.e., the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test). The interaction between lifetime contact and perceived target race predicted activity in the superior temporal sulcus (STS), a region consistently implicated in mental state inferences from perceptual cues, tracking eye gaze, and biological motion. Low and average contact White perceivers showed more left STS activity when inferring mental states from perceived White eyes than perceived Black eyes, whereas high contact White perceivers showed similar left STS activity regardless of perceived target race. These results indicate that interracial contact decreases racial biases in the recruitment of regions involved in mentalizing when inferring mental states from perceptual cues.