Human beings show greater persistence of learned fear toward members of another race than those of their own race, according to a study by scientists at New York University and Harvard University. The findings, which appear in the latest issue of Science, show this effect for both Black and White Americans.
The authors on this paper are Andreas Olsson, a graduate student in NYU's Department of Psychology; Jeffrey Ebert, a graduate student in Harvard's Department of Psychology; Mahzarin Banaji, professor of psychology at Harvard; and Elizabeth A. Phelps, professor of psychology and neural science at NYU.
After a negative encounter, humans and other primates have a harder time shaking off fears of snakes and spiders compared to birds and butterflies. The findings in Science show that human beings have a similarly difficult time letting go of fears of people from another race.
Researchers presented Black and White Americans images of faces of two Black and two White unfamiliar males. In the first phase, a mildly uncomfortable shock was paired with the presentation of one of the Black faces and one of the White faces. The level of shock was chosen by each participant to be uncomfortable but not painful. In a second phase, the same faces were presented, but this time without the shock. Fear responses were measured through changes in the sweat glands due to arousal, which provides a glimpse into the person's emotional state.
As expected, all participants acquired a fear response to images of both Black and White individuals that were paired with shock. However, when shocks were no longer administered, the fear response to the face from the participant's own race diminished, while the fear response to the face from the other race persisted. These results suggest that fear learning is influenced by social group, as defined by race.