@article{ref1,
title="Challenging emotional prejudice by changing self-concept: priming independent self-construal reduces racial in-group bias in neural responses to other's pain",
journal="Social cognitive and affective neuroscience",
year="2015",
author="Wang, Chenbo and Wu, Bing and Liu, Yi and Wu, Xinhuai and Han, Shihui",
volume="10",
number="9",
pages="1195-1201",
abstract="Humans show stronger empathy for in-group compared to out-group members' suffering and help in-group members more than out-group members. Moreover, the in-group bias in empathy and parochial altruism tend to be more salient in collectivistic than individualistic cultures. The current work tested the hypothesis that modifying self-construals, which differentiate between collectivistic and individualistic cultural orientations, affects in-group bias in empathy for perceived own-race versus other-race pain. By scanning adults using functional MRI, we found stronger neural activities in the mid-cingulate, left insula and supplementary motor area in response to racial in-group compared to out-group members' pain after participants had been primed with interdependent self-construals. However, the racial in-group bias in neural responses to others' pain in the left SMA, MCC and insula was significantly reduced by priming independent self-construals. Our findings suggest that shifting an individual's self-construal leads to changes of his/her racial in-group bias in neural responses to others' suffering.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1749-5016",
doi="10.1093/scan/nsv005",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsv005"
}