Neuroscience Evidence Related to Biases and Physiological Processes

Podcast Feedback and Uploads

Great job on uploading podcasts; 30 out of 40 were uploaded by 9:30 AM.
Action Required for Script-Only Group:
- One group uploaded a script without audio or video.
- Please create an audio recording of the script.
- AI tools can be used to generate natural-sounding speech from the script with voices, ums, etc.
- Email the audio to the instructor instead of re-uploading to Moodle.
Action Required for Naming Convention:
- One group didn't use the correct naming convention for their animated video podcast.
- Verify if your group made a video podcast with animation, and ensure the name is correct.
- Email the instructor using the correct naming format.
Uploaded podcasts will be available on Moodle for comments.
Encourage everyone to listen to 3-4 podcasts and leave feedback, focusing on how well you understand the content.
The goal is to practice talking about science in an understandable way without technical jargon, so feedback is focused on understanding.
Podcasts will be uploaded late tonight or early tomorrow.
The upload link has been extended to midnight to facilitate the audio group, but emailing the audio is also fine.
Podcasts will be featured on the redesigned Psychology and Language Sciences website.
A mass email will be sent to everyone who took the module when the podcasts are online.

Neuroscience Evidence Related to Biases

This week covers neuroscience evidence of biases (perceiver perspective) and the physiological impact of experiencing bias (target perspective).
The neuroscience will focus on brain activity in people displaying biases, prejudices, and stereotypes.
Physiological processes will focus on the impact of experiencing bias on bodily physiology.

Neuroscience: Perceiver Perspective

Focus on group-based perception, prejudices, and dehumanisation.
These are the primary areas with neuroscience research on bias, which exploded 15-20 years ago.
The classic studies from 15 years ago remain relevant with continued corroboration.

Group Perception

The minimal groups paradigm is a framework for studying group-based biases.
Minimal Group Paradigm:
- Individuals are randomly assigned to groups with no social or cultural impact.
- Example: People guess the number of dots on a screen, then get split into overestimators and underestimators.
- Groups can also be based on arbitrary assignments or preferences (cat vs. dog lovers).
Remarkably, people adopt these group identities and discriminate against outgroup members.
The motivation is to promote the in-group rather than hate the outgroup.
Being placed in a group changes psychology to favour that group.
In-group favoritism is displayed even in arbitrary groups.
fMRI studies demonstrate this effect using minimal groups (tigers vs. leopards) and real-world groups (racial groups).
Participants identify whether a person belongs to their in-group or outgroup.
The amygdala is sensitive to group differences, responding more to outgroup members.
This occurs regardless of whether the group is real or arbitrary.
The mere act of being placed in a group activates group-based biases; this contributes to group-based biases globally.

Amygdala

The amygdala's response is observed even when looking at an arbitrary outgroup member.
Other research explores in-groups and outgroups using minimal groups, replicating classic social psychology experiments.
Participants perform a resource allocation task.
Participants allocate money to in-group or out-group members.

Resource Allocation Task

Participants look at a matrix of numbers representing payouts for in-group and outgroup members.
Matrices vary, including allocations to two in-group members, two outgroup members, or mixed trials involving one in-group and one outgroup member.
Participants chose a column impacting both individuals, creating scenarios where giving more to the in-group member may affect what the out-group member receives.
The classic finding is in-group favoritism, where people maximize resources for in-group members, regardless of outgroup outcomes.
This paradigm has been tested with pet owners, showing in-group preference for dogs of the same breed.

Brain Activity

Activity in the social cognition brain network (default mode network) increases during mixed-trial allocations.
The social cognition network and default mode network supports thinking about others' minds.
During mixed trials where both in-group and outgroup members are affected more, people think about the minds of the individuals involved.
Brain imaging literature on groups shows amygdala activation to outgroups and greater engagement of the default mode network, or social cognition, when both in-groups and outgroups are considered.
Earlier findings related to social cognition tend to replicate more reliably than findings related to anterior insula and middle frontal gyrus.

Prejudice Literature

To understand prejudice, neuroimaging work focuses on racial prejudices, particularly in the United States.
- Race is a social construct with no biological or genetic basis but has important social meaning.
White participants looking at Black individuals elicits a greater amygdala response for outgroup members relative to in-group members.
Brain activity correlates with IAT scores; the larger the difference the higher activity in the amygdala, correlates with a startle eye blink response.
- Tiny electrodes on eye muscles measure fear or anxiety responses via the startle eye blink, which is the reflex startle response when you hear a bang.
The stronger the eye closure, the greater the response.
Startle eye blink used in phobia research to measure fear conditioning.

Explicit Bias

Amygdala response correlates with the startle eye blink, but not with responses on the modern racism scale (explicit bias).
Amygdala response may index fear or anxiety.
- Prejudice or bias reactions driven by the amygdala are potentially rooted in anxiety or fear.

Amygdala: The Brain Region

The amygdala is a complex, almond-shaped brain region and acts as a survival mechanism.
It is a subcortical structure that functions as a burglar alarm, firing when there is emotionally salient stimuli in the environment.
The amygdala is interconnected and influences everything from sensory processing to higher-order cognitive structures.
This brain structure is preserved across the animal kingdom because it is a basic survival mechanism.
Intercalated (ICT) cells within the amygdala have the function of never forgetting.
Amygdala underlies fear conditioning, where negative stimulus associated with something previously neutral creates a fear response.
Extinguishing the fear response can be difficult due to ICT cells that don't lose the negative association.

Observations

Amygdala learns from direct and observational experiences, influencing activity by cultural narratives and perceived dangers.
Amygdala is highly connected to the striatum, the primary reward structure, and the hippocampus, where long-term memories form.
This creates an intimate relationship between learning, memory, reward, and fear conditioning.
Amygdala learns from narratives and stories, not just from seeing things.
It learns from everything because its purpose is to keep one alive.

Shooter Bias

The shooter paradigm has shown if the amygdala can influence basic sensory processing, it influences what one sees.
The amygdala increases threat perception in a state of anxiety or fear, which is advantageous for survival.
If you incorrectly perceive a potential threat you would rather be wrong about a threat and prepare accordingly than underestimate the potential dangers.
Causes false alarms in social contexts, such as police officers shooting unarmed individuals.

Gabor Patches

Experiments show participants Gabor patches (grey and black diagonal lines) in different locations.
Gabor patches influence parts of the early visual system because of their orientation.
V1 processes basic visual information and is sensitive to orientation.
Priming one area with fear increases the sensitivity of V1 to detecting the patch, indicating a potentially threatening environment.

Role of Priming

Because the amygdala influences basic visual processing, it plays a powerful role prejudice and bias.
It rationalizes fears by having strong reciprocal connections to the prefrontal cortex.

Amygdala Regulation

Understanding amygdala connectivity aids in developing bias intervention approaches.
The amygdala, near the fusiform gyrus and fusiform face area (FFA), influences FFA function.
The FFA is specialized for expertise, triggering when exposed to something one is considered an expert on, such as face perception.
This proximity explains the other race-effect, where people struggle to distinguish individuals of different races.
The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (with the anterior cingulate/ACC and prefrontal cortex/PFC) regulates the amygdala.
- The PFC lacks a direct projection to the amygdala, but the ACC does.
Combating bias relies on awareness, leveraging neocortical abilities to moderate amygdala responses.
An amygdala can directly influence the ventromedial prefrontal cortex which can influence control over the amygdala response.
Multiple neocortical pathways regulate amygdala responses, making reactions based on it not inevitable.
Regulation takes time due to direct inputs from primary sensory areas to the amygdala; the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is not as fast of a system.
Limited cognitive capacity restricts regulatory effectiveness, particularly under cognitive burden or time pressure.

Striatum: Reward Mechanism

The amygdala is near the striatum, which is the primary reward mechanism, and associated with dopamine.
The striatum, similar to the amygdala, learns to respond to stimuli that predict reward, due to the classic Pavlovian conditioning.
It is considered an appetitive system, while the amygdala is the aversive system, and both are important for survival.

Reward Value

Reward does not function the same way to punishment as positive conditioning is harder to extinguish than negative conditioning.
The reward system sits next to the amygdala and is influenced by it.
The value of others is vital to discuss when looking at the effects of prejudice, which the amygdala can negatively affect.
Decision-making depends on the striatum assigning value to stimuli and predicting outcomes.
- Value is a social construct, not inherent in any stimulus.
Subjective value depends on the context and predictions about what might occur.
Predictions about what might have happened also affect value.

Brain Elasticity

Automaticity, one could think of intervention approaches by focusing on value for specific groups.
Value updates constantly, making bias intervention possible by creating positive experiences with a discriminated group.

Moderators

Researchers are using the goals that people have when in-group and outgroup faces are presented.
People were shown faces with or without dots and were asked to locate the dot on the face- Visual search task.
Categorical- Is this person male or female?
Preference Inference- Does this person prefer a certain vegetable?

Amygdala Responses

In a Vegetable preference task, Social Categories become ineffectual and presumably an amygdala response isn't triggered.
Participants are using information other than a social category.
The manipulation sidelining bias, makes social categories irrelevant, potentially lowering amygdala response.
The amygdala's response is dependent on the goals in a particular situation.
Thinking about preferences dampens the amygdala response without higher-order neocortical regulation.
Presents another way of regulating bias responses since its the sidelining approach, it doesn't get going in the first place.
Bias is not inevitable.

Dehumanization

Dehumanization is failing to consider another person's mind or feelings.
There are mechanisms one has when interacting with another human being.
Perceptual Mechanisms- Visual perception, auditory perception, etc.
Inference Process- Lets you know what's going on inside someone's head via social cognition.
Humans has an idea of an inner group.

In-Group History

Human concept may have emerged from the in-group concept in early hunter-gatherer groups where encounters with outgroups were rare.
Human society expanded, social constructs govern interaction, and the term human is potentially shorthand for in-group.
There is the ability to regulate getting inside heads of human beings.
Encounters spontaneously cause thinking about thoughts and preferences.
Recently, this has been challenged because evidence shows people don't always think about the minds of other people, they sometimes dehumanize other people.
Dehumanization is a more subtle definition than calling someone rats, but more a value definition.
- When something is classified as dehumanized as traditionally, one does not engage with their social cognition network.

Components

There is the social cognition network, also referred to as the Default Mode Network, where activation patterns occur.
Thoughts are about the minds of other people.
The default mode network comprises several neocortical structures, including the medial prefrontal cortex, the temporal parietal junction, the superior temporal sulcus, and parts of the temporal lobe.
These are activated by merely showing people pictures.
First studies of dehumanization put people in social setting like low social standings and illicit disgust.
These dimensions can have differentiated emotional responses.

Studies

Studies tested the reactions to stimulus who elicited disgust vs stimulus who elicited warmth, those are the stimuli that elicits the most results.
The people aren't considering the minds of the traditionally dehumanized targets, at least in the way they're doing it for all of these other groups.
Dehumanization response is really being driven by the extent to which one is willing to consider another person's mind.
Three reasons to dehumanized someone are that one is regulating empathic responses, that one wants to do a better job at hand, and one is trying to regulated moral emotions.

EEG Data

EEG data records electrical signals coming from the brain.
250 milliseconds after stimulus, the differences in reading starts to shut down processing those people so it doesn't automatically see it
It's not just brain data, but studies that ask people to describe a day in the life they are describing that person, people are using a lot less mental state when describing people, and it's there is where we tend to see dehumanization.

New Perspective

If one asked a patient their preferences, what homeless people like to eat (Apples or Oranges), forces them to think about them more and tends to elicit a different brain response.
As opposed to looking them as drug users or outcasts, they are thought as people with preferences.
The manipulation has to be precise so they can also categorize a person like age.
Individualization has two effect: re-humanize a person really easily by considering preferences and it turns off the mFCC with activation.
A soup kitchen can do just the same because after they are just normal people.

Dehumanization and Prejudice Brain Data

Take participants to a soup kitchen, scanning their brains looking at people before and after.
Most participants walk out the soup kitchen and say wow they are people.
Take people to soup kitchen where you chat with them for under 10 minutes. For this study, you watch a video about homelessness stats.
The behavior data shows people spend more time in the soup kitchen because it fun
For the most part the majority spend to many minutes.
If one looks at brain activity in comparison to other people, they are completely dehumanized target.
With all these people there is interaction. Contact hypothesis suggests talking to people changes prejudice response.

Sexual Objectification

Sexual Objectification is where the first researcher studied women after men sexualized them during the Harvey Weinstein situation.
Men view people as sexual objects and deactivate those processes, similar to dehumanization.
- During tracking studies, sexist men look at womens bodies instead of womens faces during objectification.
Men view the women as meat, piece by piece, rather than human.
When they show both men and women to both genders, images, it causes similar processes in both
- The point is, it's based on the state of dress( or undress) not to gender with processes with same basic results
  Then these tests are conducted using EEG, to monitor brain functions during Sexual activity.
- Those tests are performed with caps that read EEG.
  In this case we see ERPs, or evoked responses potentials that responds with the same Polarity to event.
The electrode sees a negative change near .2 milliseconds showing the stimulus is from a face
The face the brain pervasively looks, is the holistic style.
Also when one process bodies it is also in the same perceptive method, which is a mirror.
Shows sexually non clothed folks and also to sex non-clothed, and they find and record any face action stimulus.
Those wearing normal suits are not responding. By the brain.
Non-sexual folk’s brains have shown to respond, with brains working holistically. But with the inverse of a body they not responding. So if the upright, nothing happens

Intergroup Types

By synthesizing the different brain functions, that allows for many intergroup types.
It can explain implicit variables from bias processing and the mechanisms of this brain for the regulatory side too. By which, the prejudice can be exited.
Social Categorization occurs from prejudice, amygdala responses are ameliorated by specific Goals, dehumanization has cognitive responses in which failure to engage, this Inference is related to social cognition that will also be ameliorated goals.
Overall these processes will happen regardless of gender during intercourse/sexual intercourse

Bias: Perceiver Perspective Review

Social categorization occurs rapidly.
Prejudice is an affective response.
Amygdala which is dependent, and can be ameliorated by social goals.
Dehumanization is failure to engage.
Inference processing requires cognitive processes.
* Can also be ameliorated by social goals.

Physiological Processes: Target Perspective

What impact does that have on bodily physiology?
Through different types of scenarios, a new explanation has came to be.
A bio, psycho, social, and the impact on targets physiology, while also taking on consideration its potential solutions.
Target perspectives has negative view. So they go through this perspective looking for potential solutions.
This has informed from an biopsychosocial perspective.

Responses to Threatening Stimuli

Threatening stimuli for people can affect them on maladaptive processes that can lead a physiological to be chronic and heart illnesses.
There also process who can be adaptive but what allows people to navigate social solutions, these all effect heart performances.
Most models developed in 1990 because researchers didn't have brain scan instruments.
The Heart responses can be measured with heatbeat
With VCO ventricular contraction there is an decrease in volume in where you here it before the heat pumps the blood out.
For P, Q, R, S, T all can make up contractility.
Cardiac output shows blood comes how of heart per time.
The restriction within these systems, which is how hard heat has to pull blood through narrow pipes.
Both of these systems can bring adaptive process while another maladaptive.
Adaptive
Activating the same axis, sympathetic medullary axis that raises the cardiac, increases VCO by, cardiac, while cardiac restriction is low
Maladaptive process
What does to pituitary of cortical axis that increases the constriction and its performance.