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Mimicry reduces racial prejudice

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2011.06.007Get rights and content

Abstract

Humans are empathic animals. We automatically match other people's motor responses, allowing us to get “under the skin” of other people. Although this perception–action-coupling—a form of motor resonance—occurs spontaneously, this happens less readily with the outgroup (vs. the ingroup) and for those high (vs. low) in prejudice. Thus, prejudice diminishes our tendency to resonate with the outgroup. Here we suggest that the reverse is also possible—that resonating with the actions of an outgroup member can reduce prejudice. We predict, in other words, that explicitly mimicking the outgroup can reduce prejudice. Participants watched a 140-second video depicting actors repeatedly reaching for and drinking from a glass of water. They passively watched a video with Black actors; watched the video and mimicked the Black actors; or watched and mimicked a video with actors from their ingroup. Participants then completed the Affect Misattribution Procedure (Payne, Cheng, Govorun, & Stewart, 2005), a measure of implicit anti-Black prejudice, and an explicit symbolic racism measure. Results indicate that the outgroup-mimicry group had similar implicit preference for Blacks and Whites, unlike the other two groups, which preferred Whites over Blacks. The outgroup-mimicry group also reported less explicit racism towards Blacks than the ingroup-mimicry group, but no less than the ingroup-observation group. Mimicking specific outgroup members, therefore, reduces implicit, and possibly explicit, bias against the outgroup more generally.

Highlights

► Mimicking members of the outgroup reduced implicit prejudice toward other members of that outgroup. ► Mimicking members of the outgroup reduced explicit prejudice toward that group, although not more than observing members of the outgroup. ► Future work is needed to assess if mimicry reduces prejudice because it increases self-other overlap. ► These results are consistent with work on the neuroscience of empathy and on the “mirror neuron system.”

Introduction

Humans are empathic animals. Basic research in neuroscience has established that we readily connect with others. We automatically match other people's motor and autonomic responses, thereby allowing us to get “under their skin,” and understand their emotions and needs. At the core of this empathic capacity lies a brain mechanism that couples the perception of another's behavior with one's own neural representations of that behavior. This perception–action-coupling or motor resonance is grounded in basic neurophysiology and results in people not only mentally simulating, but also mimicking the actions and emotions of others.

It turns out, however, that this empathic capacity is constrained by social factors, most notably attitude and group membership. Whites, for example, are less likely to mentally resonate with Blacks, especially if they are high in prejudice (Gutsell & Inzlicht, 2010). Prejudice, then, is associated with a reduction in the degree to which we spontaneously resonate with, and therefore simulate and mimic the motor actions of outgroups (Yabar, Johnson, Miles, & Peace, 2006). Here we explore if the reverse is also possible, if resonating with the actions of an outgroup member can reduce prejudice.

A number of neuroscience studies have documented that although we may automatically resonate with others (De Waal, 2008, Decety and Jackson, 2004), this happens less readily with people who belong to the outgroup. For example, measuring electroencephalographic (EEG) oscillations over motor cortex, Gutsell and Inzlicht (2010) found that although White participants generated significant motor activity when observing Whites perform an action, they showed no such activity when observing South Asians or Blacks. Similarly, activation in neural areas involved in the experience of pain is lower when people observe ethnic outgroup members in pain compared to ethnic ingroup members (Avenanti et al., 2010, Xu et al., 2009). Finally, although people of various ethnic backgrounds emotionally resonate with their ingroup, showing EEG oscillations associated with distress and withdrawal when observing ingroup others in distress, they are less likely to do so when observing outgroup others (Gutsell & Inzlicht, 2011).

All told the perception-action-mechanism, thought to be so important for our empathic capacity, appears to be constrained to the ingroup (Mathur, Harada, Lipke, & Chiao, 2010). Rather than reflecting innate ingroup preferences, however, such ingroup biases may occur as a function of culturally-learned racial prejudice (Chiao & Mathur, 2010). High-prejudice participants, for example, are especially likely to show diminished perception–action-coupling to the outgroup, be that diminished motor cortex activity (Gutsell & Inzlicht, 2010), or less avoidance-related frontal asymmetry (Gutsell & Inzlicht, 2011).

Prejudice, then, reduces perception–action-coupling to the outgroup. Our central question is if the reverse also true—can perception–action-coupling reduce prejudice? If people explicitly match their perception of individual outgroup members with their own actions—that is, if they mimic outgroup members—will they show less prejudice towards that outgroup as a whole?

Although there is now a substantial body of research on human mimicry (Chartrand & van Baaren, 2009), to our knowledge, no one has addressed this issue directly. We know that we unconsciously mimic others' postures and mannerisms (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999) and limit our mimicry to those in the ingroup (Yabar, Johnson, Miles & Peace, 2006). We also mimic people when we want to affiliate with them (Lakin & Chartrand, 2003), and we like and act more prosocially toward people who mimic us (van Baaren, Holland, Kawakami, & van Knippenberg, 2004). There are also suggestions that mimicry is implemented by the recruitment of the mirror neuron system (Obhi & Hogeveen, 2010). We do not know, however, if mimicry can reduce bias toward devalued racial outgroups; if mimicking a few outgroup members could reduce unconscious bias not only towards the people who were specifically mimicked, but also toward the outgroup as a whole.

Non-Black participants were instructed to watch a video of a number of people performing a generic motor task. In the main experimental condition, participants viewed a video with Black actors and were further instructed to mimic the actions of the actors. In one of the control conditions, participants passively watched the video of Black actors; and in a second control condition, participants watched and mimicked actors who belonged to their ingroup. Unlike most studies that use nonconscious mimicry (e.g., Chartrand & Bargh, 1999), this manipulation is consistent with work using intentional forms of mimicry (e.g., Stel et al., 2009). After the mimicry manipulation, participants then completed implicit and explicit measures of anti-Black prejudice. We predicted that mimicking the outgroup would result in less explicit and implicit prejudice than passively observing the outgroup or than mimicking the ingroup.

Section snippets

Participants

Sixty-three non-Black undergraduates (37 female, 26 male; Mage = 18.85, SD = 18.85, SD = 2.25) participated in exchange for course credit and were randomly assigned to one of three between-subject conditions: Outgroup mimicry, outgroup observation, and ingroup mimicry.

Procedure

Upon entering the lab, participants were randomly assigned to one of the three between-subject conditions that involved watching a 140-second video depicting university-aged male actors sitting at a table with a glass of water and then

Results

We submitted the AMP-ratio scores to a 3 (outgroup-mimicry vs. outgroup-observation vs. ingroup-mimicry) × 2 (Black vs. White) mixed-model ANOVA, with the last factor repeated. Results indicate greater implicit preference for Whites, F (1, 60) = 5.45, Prep = .92, d = .60, replicating past work (Payne et al., 2005). Importantly, Fig. 2a illustrates an interaction, F (2, 60) = 2.86, prep = .90, η2p = .087, suggesting that the outgroup-mimicry group showed similar preference for Blacks (M = .53, SD = .19) as for

Discussion

Mimicking outgroup members, therefore, reduces implicit bias against that outgroup. This effect cannot be attributed to merely observing outgroups or to some general effect of mimicking other people; rather the effect only occurred when people mimicked the outgroup. What is also interesting is that the effect of mimicking specific outgroup exemplars generalized to the whole outgroup, reducing bias to a completely different set of outgroup exemplars.

Another broader possibility is that mimicry

Conclusion

Even if humans are empathic creatures, this empathy is constrained by culturally-learned factors. Specifically, we are less likely to mirror the actions and emotions of outgroups when we show strong bias against these outgroups, be that less mental simulation or behavioral mimicry. So bias limits mirroring. Here, however, we show the plasticity of this gap. Even very brief interventions—a 140 s mirroring procedure—can reverse the empathy gap, at least temporarily. The empathy-gap is

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by grants from the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council to Michael Inzlicht. We thank Elizabeth Page-Gould, Jason Plaks, Alexa Tullett, Rimma Teper, Shona Tritt, Sonia Kang, Jacob Hirsh, and Naomi Sarah Ball for valuable insights. We also thank Berina Chan, Kaljani Mahalingam, Marlon Mitchell, Tharsiya Nagulesapillai, Shajia Zia, and Jeff Wong for their assistance

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