Doctoral Dissertation Research: Explaining Public Opposition to Government Assistance Programs

University Of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln NE

Investigators

Abstract

General Summary A great deal of research in political science and psychology shows that racial prejudice is a substantial component of race-based policy opposition. Some work suggests that prejudice is most likely to play a role when racial appeals are subtle and covert. Other work contends that people use higher-level cognitive processes to inhibit prejudiced instincts and abide by egalitarian social norms when race is explicit. In other words, when people are encouraged to think more about racial policies, they should be able to recognize and restrain the racial biases that might otherwise influence their opinions. This study test the contention that higher-level cognitive processes reduce the role of prejudice against the research hypothesis that higher-level cognitive processes may in some instances reinforce and even exacerbate the role of prejudice because of conscious motivations to reject egalitarian norms. Technical Summary Building on work in social neuroscience, this project uses functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to directly observe the neural mechanisms by which prejudice influences policy attitudes. A 2 (race: White vs. Black) x 2 (conscious awareness: implicit/non-conscious racial primes vs. explicit/conscious primes) within-subjects experiment is used to examine the impact of racial biases on support for various government assistance programs when the race of the programs' recipients is consciously versus subconsciously known. The PI hypothesizes that racial biases will be stronger when race is implicit, and that this relationship is mediated by increased activity in the amygdala and right insula and decreased activity in the prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex. However, the PI expects that racial biases will exist when race is explicit. If the key to diminishing the role of prejudice is to get people to think more about race, these biases will be due to a lack of controlled processing even when race is explicitly indicated by lower levels of activation in the prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex and increased activity in the amygdala and right insula. However, if controlled processes sometimes lead to reinforcement of prejudice, there will be no relationship between racial biases in policy support and activation in the prefrontal cortex or anterior cingulate cortex.