The Neural Basis of Stereotypic Thinking

Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

Psychological scientists currently know little about how it is that one person infers the mental states of others even though successful social interaction requires that we be capable of inferring the content of another person's mind, an ability known as "mentalizing." This research involves the continued integration of theoretical questions from social psychology with the methods and tools of cognitive neuroscience. The first objective is to apply the methods of cognitive neuroscience to examine how perceivers mentalize about other people who differ from them along the "Big Three" dimensions of age, race, and sex. Researchers have suggested that two different routes to mentalizing may exist. First, perceivers may sometimes be able to "simulate" another person's mental states by imagining themselves in the same situation and assuming that others would share the same thoughts and feelings that they experience themselves. However, this simulationist strategy is only appropriate when the other person is sufficiently similar to self that he or she would indeed experience the same mental states as oneself. If the other person is dissimilar to the self (e.g., when someone has very different opinions or a very different cultural background0 perceivers frequently rely upon "precompiled" social knowledge in the form of stereotypes. Recently, researchers have used brain imaging techniques (e.g., fMRI) to suggest that a particular brain region : the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) : may show a tradeoff between mentalizing based on simulation and mentalizing based on stereotyping. The current project investigates the nature of this "division of labor" in the MPFC. In addition, this research examines the changes produced by several strategies for reducing stereotyping, as well as the dynamics associated with learning about the similarity (or dissimilarity) of another person to oneself. By illuminating the brain basis of social cognition, it represents a first step towards understanding the social dysfunctions evidenced by patients with disorders such as autism, conduct disorder, or sociopathy. The research also has the potential to contribute to societal attempts at reducing intergroup bias by suggesting new forms of education and public policy based on an enhanced understanding of the neural basis of stereotyping.