Abstract
Learning from other individuals (e.g. social learning) is subjected to biases affecting whom to learn from. Consistent with research in animals, showing similarity-based learning biases and a general tendency to display pro-social responses to in-group individuals, we recently demonstrated that social learning of both fear and safety was enhanced when information was transmitted between same-race individuals. Here, we addressed how two different social group categories jointly affect the transmission of fears by investigating the interplay between racial and supporter group membership. We demonstrate that supporter group membership differentially influenced learning from a racial in-group vs. racial out-group individual. Thus, conditioned skin conductance responses in the same-race condition were significantly higher when fear was transmitted by an in-group (same team) vs. an out-group (rival team) individual, and were related to supporter team identification. However, supporter group membership did not influence learning from a racial out-group demonstrator, suggesting that the presence of an alternative alliance does not necessary reduce the influence of racial biases on social fear learning.
Highlights
Learning from other individuals is subjected to biases affecting whom to learn from
We found that supporter group membership had a significant effect on conditioned response (CR) in the group that learned from a racial in-group demonstrator, Stimulus × Supporter group interaction F(1,45) = 9.50, p = 0.004, ηp2 = 0.17
There was a difference in CRs when learning from an in-group or out-group supporter, t(45) = 3.08, p = 0.004, 95% CI for the difference between groups = [0.30–1.44], Cohen’s d = 0.90, and follow-up paired samples t-test confirmed that only participants that had observed a demonstrator they believed was a supporter from their own team showed a significant CR (In-group Supporter = t(22) = 3.95, p = 0.001, 95%CI = [0.38–1.23], Out-group supporter: t(23) = 0.35, p = 0.73, 95% CI = [−0.48–0.34]
Summary
Learning from other individuals (e.g. social learning) is subjected to biases affecting whom to learn from. Transmission of both fear and safety information was recently shown to be enhanced between individuals belonging to the same (in-group) as compared to different (out-group) racial groups[9], as measured by conditioned autonomic responses. These findings are in line with research suggesting that race acts a default dimension of person perception and categorization[10,11,12]. No study has addressed if coalitional affiliations can reduce racial biases that govern observational fear learning This is important given that learning from others represents a fundamental route through which humans use past experience to adapt to their environment. We used a standard index of conditioned response (CR) in humans: Skin conductance response (SCR), which reflects the phasic increase in physiological arousal in response to threat
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