Fear extinction to an out-group face: the role of target gender.
Conditioning studies on humans and other primates show that fear responses acquired toward danger-relevant stimuli, such as snakes, resist extinction, whereas responses toward danger-irrelevant stimuli, such as birds, are more readily extinguished. Similar evolved biases may extend to human groups, as recent research demonstrates that a conditioned fear response to faces of persons of a social out-group resists extinction, whereas fear toward a social in-group is more readily extinguished. Here, we provide an important extension to previous work by demonstrating that this fear-extinction bias occurs solely when the exemplars are male. These results underscore the importance of considering how gender of the target stimulus affects psychological and physiological responses to out-group threat.
Navarrete
Carlos David
CD
Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA. cdn@msu.edu
Olsson
Andreas
A
Ho
Arnold K
AK
Mendes
Wendy Berry
WB
Thomsen
Lotte
L
Sidanius
James
J
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D044383:Black People; D005108:Extinction, Psychological; D005145:Face; D005239:Fear; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012737:Sex Factors; D044465:White People; D055815:Young Adult