psychologicalscience | By examining patterns of brain activity in the fusiform face area -- a
brain area involved in face perception -- the researchers were able to
predict the race of the person that the participant was viewing, but
only for those participants with stronger, negative implicit race
attitudes.
These results suggest that the ways in which Black and White faces
are represented in this brain region differ for people with a stronger,
implicit race bias compared to people with less or no bias. This implies
that people with stronger, negative implicit race attitudes may
actually perceive Black and White faces to look more different.
Tobias Brosch notes that "these results suggest it may be possible to
predict differences in implicit race bias at the individual level using
brain data." Elizabeth Phelps adds "although these findings may be of
interest given the behavioral and societal implications of race bias,
our ability to predict race bias based on brain data is relatively
modest at this time."
