From the Cornell University press release:<\/p>\n
\nDiscrimination may happen faster than the blink of an eye<\/strong>, especially during periods of economic scarcity<\/strong>, according to a new study from Cornell University.<\/p>\n
\n“Scarcity mindsets can really exacerbate discrimination<\/strong>,” said Amy Krosch, assistant professor of psychology at Cornell. “We show that tiny shifts in the processing of minority group faces under scarcity could have downstream consequences for inequality.”<\/p>\n
In the first experiment, 71 undergraduate psychology students from a private university — none of which identified as black or African American — were asked to look at pictures of white and black male faces on a screen. Participants then awarded each face up to $10 based on “subtle perceptions of recipients’ deservingness.”<\/p>\n
A control group was told $10 was the most each face could receive. But members of the experimental group believed they were randomly assigned only $10 out of a possible $100 to give away each time — a difference that imparted a sense of scarcity.<\/p>\n
Scalp electrodes measured the time each study participant took to perceive recipients distinctly as human faces, a subconscious process linked to activity in the fusiform gyrus that is known to take just 170 milliseconds, or less than two-tenths of a second.<\/p>\n
Within the control group, test subjects took about the same amount of time to process faces of either race, and distributed money to them evenly.<\/p>\n
But in the group that perceived resources as scarce, participants took “significantly longer” to process black faces than white faces on average<\/strong>, the study found. The researchers also showed that these perceptual delays related to anti-black bias<\/strong>, in which participants allocated less money to black faces.<\/p>\n
“It’s taking them longer to see a black face as a face, and the extent to which that’s happening then predicts how much they discriminate against that black individual,” Krosch said.<\/p>\n
Krosh’s team ran a second set of experiments that imaged brain activity to test whether the “impaired” visual processing of black faces was linked to a devaluation of faces and then to biased behavior.<\/p>\n
The scans revealed dampened activity in the striatum, a brain region involved in valuation and reward processing. That suggested that test subjects may have devalued black faces they saw as “less face-like” or, in a sense, less human. Dampened fusiform and striatum activity correlated to less money given to black recipients.<\/p>\n
This study was funded by the National Science Foundation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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