title: Challenging emotional prejudice by changing self-concept: priming independent self-construal reduces racial in-group bias in neural responses to other's pain.
abstract: Humans show stronger empathy for in-group compared with 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. This 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 vs other-race pain. By scanning adults using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we found stronger neural activities in the mid-cingulate, left insula and supplementary motor area (SMA) in response to racial in-group compared with 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, mid-cingulate cortex 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, PKU-IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Peking University, Beijing, China, and shan@pku.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Chenbo
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Beijing Military General Hospital, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Bing
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, PKU-IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Peking University, Beijing, China, and.
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Beijing Military General Hospital, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Xinhuai
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, PKU-IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Peking University, Beijing, China, and.
authors.forename: Shihui
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Han
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology; D004645:Empathy / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D010146:Pain / Q000523:psychology*; D011287:Prejudice; D044469:Racial Groups; D063505:Racism / Q000523:psychology*; D012649:Self Concept; D044465:White People; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: empathy; fMRI; in-group bias; race; self-construal