[Peace-discuss] unconscious racism a meaningful concept after all

[patton paul]

When Al Kagan raised the issue of unconcious racism, I shared Carl
Estabrook's deep skepticism that this was a meaningful concept.  However,
as this article explains, unconcious racism can apparently be measured by
both behavioral and neural imaging tests.  The science described may need
to be taken with a grain of salt, but it indicates that the issue of
unconcious racism is a meaningful one that can be, and is, being explored
scientifically.
-Paul P.

Bias taxes brain, research finds
Dartmouth scientists look at effects of racism
By Gareth Cook, Globe Staff, 11/17/2003

To the litany of arguments against prejudice, scientists are now adding a
new one: Racism can make you stupid.


That is the message of an unusual and striking new series of experiments
conducted at Dartmouth College, with the help of brain-imaging equipment
and a crew of undergraduate volunteers.

According to the findings, the more biased people are, the more their
brain power is taxed by contact with someone of another race, as they
struggle not to say or do anything offensive. The effect is so strong, the
team found, that even a five-minute conversation with a black person left
some of the white subjects unable to perform well on a test of cognitive
ability.

"Just having a prejudice makes you stupider," said John Gabrieli, a
professor of psychology at Stanford University who was not involved in the
research. "It is really interesting."

Researchers cannot yet predict how racial bias as measured in the lab will
translate into overt racist attitudes or actions. But the new
brain-imaging work, reported in today's edition of the journal Nature
Neuroscience, represents the most detailed look yet at the way racial
biases function in the brain.

The work also paints a dispiriting portrait of the state of the nation's
race relations, the lead researcher said, even among the well-educated,
well-meaning Dartmouth undergraduates whom the scientists studied.

"I think people are getting caught in this trap where they are trying not
to do the wrong thing, rather than trying to act natural," said Jennifer
A. Richeson, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at
Dartmouth College. "Somehow we have to get past this awkward phase."

Richeson and her colleagues began by recruiting a group of white Dartmouth
undergraduates and asked them to perform an "Implicit Association Test," a
test that is widely used to measure unconscious racial bias. The subject
is given a screen and two buttons. First, the subject is asked to push the
button on the left if the word that appears on the screen is a positive
word, like beauty, or a common first name for a white person, such as
Nancy. Otherwise, they are instructed to push the button on the right.

After a session, the test is changed slightly, and the names given are
those more common for a black person, such as Tyrone. The greater the
difference between the reaction times in the two sessions, the more the
person has trouble associating black names with positive concepts.

Next the team had each of the students speak briefly with a black
experimenter and then perform a test of cognitive ability called the
Stroop test. They showed that the higher a bias score the student had in
the IAT test, the worse they did on the Stroop test after speaking with
the black experimenter.

To uncover what was behind this effect, the team used a functional
magnetic resonance imager, which is able to peer inside the brain and
measure the level of activity in different areas.

Each student was then shown a series of photographs, some of white males
and some of black males. The more biased a student was, the more the team
saw a certain area of their brain activate, an area associated with
"executive control," conscious efforts to direct thinking. This, Richeson
said, is a sign the brain is struggling not to think inappropriate
thoughts.

Based on the findings, the team suggested that when a biased person
interacts with someone of another race, even briefly, it exhausts the part
of the brain in charge of executive control, leaving it temporarily unable
to perform as well on the Stroop test and, presumably, other tasks.

The report is the first time that researchers have shown a connection
between racial bias and the parts of the brain responsible for higher
functions, according to several neuroscientists who were not involved in
the research.

It is part of a nascent movement to study the neurological basis of social
phenomena, in particular racism. One study, by Elizabeth A. Phelps at New
York University, found that biased people are more likely to have greater
activity in their amygdala, a portion of the brain associated with
negative emotions like fear, when shown the picture of a black person they
don't know.

Another, conducted by Stanford's Gabrieli and other scientists, showed
that the brains of white people process white and black faces differently
from the moment they see them.

Gareth Cook can be reached at cook at globe.com.

 Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.