Citation

Pan DN, Wolf OT, Merz CJ. Biol. Psychol. 2021; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.biopsycho.2021.108210

PMID

34688827

Abstract

Individuals have a tendency to show enhanced vigilance to groups of which they themselves are not a member. Stress can up-regulate hypervigilance towards threatening stimuli and was shown to promote the reinstatement of out-group related biases in a previous study conducted in women only. The current study examines how exposure to acute stress affects the retrieval of out-group related extinction biases in male participants.

RESULTS showed that men exerted a specific out-group related bias at the beginning of extinction training indexed by higher skin conductance responses (SCRs) towards out-group faces, while stress led to a return of this extinguished out-group bias. Specifically, the stress group showed higher SCRs towards out-group faces during retrieval compared to the control group and the bias index was negatively related to post-stress cardiovascular recovery. These results indicate the important interaction between stress and intergroup bias in fear conditioning, along with a potential modulation of sex.

Language: en

Keywords

Extinction learning; Fear conditioning; Racial bias; Retrieval; SECPT; Stress hormones