Beyond the colour of my skin: how skin colour affects the sense of body-ownership.
Multisensory stimulation has been shown to alter the sense of body-ownership. Given that perceived similarity between one's own body and those of others is crucial for social cognition, we investigated whether multisensory stimulation can lead participants to experience ownership over a hand of different skin colour. Results from two studies using introspective, behavioural and physiological methods show that, following synchronous visuotactile (VT) stimulation, participants can experience body-ownership over hands that seem to belong to a different racial group. Interestingly, a baseline measure of implicit racial bias did not predict whether participants would experience the RHI, but the overall strength of experienced body-ownership seemed to predict the participants' post-illusion implicit racial bias with those who experienced a stronger RHI showing a lower bias. These findings suggest that multisensory experiences can override strict ingroup/outgroup distinctions based on skin colour and point to a key role for sensory processing in social cognition.
Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, TW20 0EX Surrey, UK. harry.farmer.2010@rhul.ac.uk
Harry
H
Farmer
Ana
A
Tajadura-Jiménez
Manos
M
Tsakiris
D000328:Adult; D001828:Body Image / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D005712:Galvanic Skin Response; D006801:Humans; D007088:Illusions / Q000502:physiology / Q000523:psychology; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D010067:Ownership; D011287:Prejudice; D011434:Proprioception; D044469:Racial Groups; D012649:Self Concept; D012880:Skin Pigmentation; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult