title: Cardiac afferent activity modulates the expression of racial stereotypes.
abstract: Negative racial stereotypes tend to associate Black people with threat. This often leads to the misidentification of harmless objects as weapons held by a Black individual. Yet, little is known about how bodily states impact the expression of racial stereotyping. By tapping into the phasic activation of arterial baroreceptors, known to be associated with changes in the neural processing of fearful stimuli, we show activation of race-threat stereotypes synchronized with the cardiovascular cycle. Across two established tasks, stimuli depicting Black or White individuals were presented to coincide with either the cardiac systole or diastole. Results show increased race-driven misidentification of weapons during systole, when baroreceptor afferent firing is maximal, relative to diastole. Importantly, a third study examining the positive Black-athletic stereotypical association fails to demonstrate similar modulations by cardiac cycle. We identify a body-brain interaction wherein interoceptive cues can modulate threat appraisal and racially biased behaviour in context-dependent ways.
authors.affiliation: Lab of Action &Body, Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway University of London, Egham TW20 0EX, UK.|The Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London, Woburn Square, WC1H 0AB, UK.
authors.forename: Ruben T
authors.initials: RT
authors.lastname: Azevedo
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, Falmer BN1 9RR, UK.|Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, University of Sussex, Falmer BN1 9RR, UK.
authors.forename: Sarah N
authors.initials: SN
authors.lastname: Garfinkel
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, Falmer BN1 9RR, UK.|Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, University of Sussex, Falmer BN1 9RR, UK.
authors.forename: Hugo D
authors.initials: HD
authors.lastname: Critchley
authors.affiliation: Lab of Action &Body, Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway University of London, Egham TW20 0EX, UK.|The Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London, Woburn Square, WC1H 0AB, UK.
authors.forename: Manos
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tsakiris
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D044383:Black People / Q000523:psychology; D003971:Diastole; D005239:Fear; D005260:Female; D006321:Heart / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D044469:Racial Groups / Q000523:psychology*; D013240:Stereotyping; D013599:Systole; D044465:White People / Q000523:psychology; D055815:Young Adult