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Brains & Social Behavior, led by Anne Murphy (Biology), is concerned with how the nervous system produces social behaviors and how it responds to interactions between animals.
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Seed Grants

Principle Investigators: Eric Vanman / David Washburn
Title: Functional Neuronimaging of Executive Functioning in Social Prejudice

Abstract:
Our long-term goal is to investigate the neural basis of prejudiced responses so that we can better understand their antecedents and consequences.  The overall objectives for this project are to study prejudiced responses to both naturally occurring and artificially created social groups using continuous measures of emotion-related peripheral physiological activity and functional neuroimaging, and to relate these responses to cognitive (i.e., executive) functioning.

We have three specific aims:

(A) Investigate somatic markers for both naturally occurring and artificially created social groups using psychophysiological measures.  We plan to create temporary, arbitrary groups in the laboratory.  On subsequent visits to the laboratory, research subjects will either interact with or view members of their own group or the other.  The artificial groups will be composed of racially diverse team members, so that responses to natural social categories can be studied as well.  We expect that the physiological changes we observe for either the natural or artificial groups will be comparable, but will differ with respect to stereotypes, beliefs, and behaviors, due to differences in learning history.

(B) Explore the neural substrates of the somatic markers using functional neuroimaging . Based on recent work in neurology on the somatic basis of decision-making and in neuroscience on the neural substrates of prejudiced reactions, we expect the proposed research to lead to the development of a more comprehensive neuroscience model of social categorization and prejudice.

(C ) Examine the role of executive functioning in the self-regulation of prejudiced responses. Recent research in Nature Neuroscience has tentatively demonstrated that prejudiced individuals drain their executive functioning resources in the presence of an outgroup member.  We plan to elaborate on this promising research by using a battery of tests that measure cognitive functioning in a more diverse sample and relate these measures to some of the neural substrates identified by fMRI.