A new study revealed that individuals who have had more interracial interactions have a decreased racial bias in gauging other people’s mental states for the purpose of social interactions, as opposed to individuals who have had less interracial interactions. This research, published in the brain-activity based journal NeuroImage, shows that interacting with people from different racial backgrounds can change the way our brains process emotions.
Historically, humans have relied on understanding others’ emotions by reading subtle cues in facial expressions. While the entire face is important, the act of mentalizing — inferring others’ mental states — relies deeply on tracking eye gaze. Prior research has shown that there’s a specific part of the brain, called the superior temporal sulcus (STS), which plays a key role in mentalizing tasks. This becomes especially intriguing when considering interactions between different racial or ethnic groups.
The primary drive behind this study was to explore this intrigue, and unpack how people’s experiences with different races, specifically the quantity of interracial contact throughout one’s life, may or may not influence brain activity during such emotion-recognition tasks. Does the human brain process emotions from eyes differently based on the race of the person we are looking at? And if so, how does a person’s prior exposure to diverse races affect this?
To test this, researchers employed an experimental tool called the Reading the Mind in the Eyes (RME) test, wherein participants have to guess the emotion or mental state of a person, out of four choices, solely based on an image of their eyes. They coupled this with fMRI scans to observe brain activity in real-time.
The participants for the study comprised of 61 self-identified White participants, 2 other gender, 28 female and 31 male, who did not identify as Hispanic or mixed-race. Participants were all screened on levels of interracial contact through the form of a questionnaire to ensure that at least 20 participants had reported at least 15% childhood contact with Black people. The images they observed were the eyes of either White or Black individuals.
The results were quite illuminating. Participants who reported limited interracial experiences displayed more pronounced STS activity when trying to infer emotions from the eyes of people from only their own racial background. In contrast, those with extensive interracial contact had consistent STS activity for both White and Black targets.
This suggests that regular interaction with people from diverse racial backgrounds could make one’s brain more ‘race-neutral’ in reading emotions.
However, although the findings shed light on the nuanced ways interracial contact might influence brain activity, it is important to note that the study’s scope was limited to White American participants interpreting the emotions of perceived White and Black individuals. As such, the conclusions might not be universally applicable across all races or ethnicities. Also, while the brain showed different activity levels, it may not necessarily indicate a deeper or lesser understanding of emotions from the eyes. Rather, it may just showcase a difference in neural engagement.
The study, “Reading the mind in the eyes of Black and White people: Interracial contact and perceived race affects brain activity when inferring mental states“, was authored by Grace Handley, Jennifer Kubota, and Jasmin Cloutier of the University of Delaware’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.
