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Student Summer Research: Studying the Power of Prejudice
Summer 2005
With a $10,000 grant from the National Science Foundation's SOMAS (Support of Mentors and their Students in the Neurosciences) Program—one of only six awarded this year—Washington College senior Fei'i Atualevao, a behavioral neuroscience major from American Samoa, and Professor Katherine Cameron have teamed up to study the powerful influence of stereotypes on the human mind.
Fei'i's summer research focuses on the neural basis of gender stereotypes. She will use lessons learned from this research to run her own study of the neural basis of racial stereotypes this fall as part of her senior research project."
"We look at the time it takes subjects to button-press using the same response hand under conditions in which the stimuli fit traditional gender stereotypes compared to when they don't," Professor Cameron explains. "Faster responses in the first condition indicate that the brain has rapidly and automatically activated gender stereotypes, and the brainwave activity will show the timing and brain areas involved."
Click to enlarge photos.
Senior Jonathan Fallica, a biology major from Waldorf, Maryland, has volunteered to be one of the test subjects.
The results of the project will be presented at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Washington, DC.
"I've always been interested in how the brain works," says Fei'i, who plans to attend medical school with the goal of becoming a neurosurgeon.
A little dab'll do ya. Green "Signa Gel" provides a good conductor so that electrical activity from Jon's active neurons is transmitted to the electrodes.
To measure the subject's implicit responses, Fei'i attaches electrodes that will pick up Jon's brainwave activity while he categorizes visual stimuli presented on the computer screen by making rapid button-press responses with his two index fingers.
"Being a minority, I am also interested in the phenomena of racism and racial stereotyping. My research tests the hypothesis that individuals tend to have positive views of their own racial background, in both implicit and explicit responses. But research has shown that this is not always the case. The power of prejudice is such that members of racial minorities can unconsciously adopt negative stereotypes about their own race, too. Measuring implicit brainwave responses should help us discern that."
"We don't know how much our unconscious biases about social groups influence our conscious behavior," says Professor Cameron.
"Through our research, we can measure both the implicit, or unconscious, and explicit, or conscious, ways that stereotypical attitudes are expressed. By recording brainwaves in undergraduates, we find that gender stereotypes are expressed rapidly and unconsciously. In social situations or on explicit questionnaires, subjects can adjust their own responses. In other words, you can consciously conceal your biases in certain situations, but your brainwaves can't hide them."
Fei'i and Professor Cameron measure Jon's head to accurately position the electrode cap before attaching 32 recording electrodes to his scalp and face.
Jon's implicit and explicit responses to gender stereotypes are recorded via a simple computer program that asks subjects to classify a series of male/female first names and masculine/feminine stereotypical traits, such as "strong" or "emotional." The speed of Jon's button-press responses, as well as his brainwave activity, will reveal any gender biases.
Brainwave activity to visual stimuli during the gender stereotypes task showed significant changes over prefrontal cortex (black waveforms, see black arrows) in subjects whose behavioral responses revealed unconscious gender biases compared to unbiased subjects (red waveforms).
"This data supports a proposed role of the prefrontal cortex in rapidly associating stereotype information and in guiding our social behavior," Professor Cameron notes. "Patients who suffer strokes or other damage to prefrontal brain areas often drastically alter their personalities and behave socially inappropriately—cursing, taking off their clothes, or becoming aggressive."
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