Unlearning fear of out-group others

Law and Contemporary Problems

Volumn 72, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 83-88

  Maroney, Terry A ^a  

^a VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY LAW SCHOOL   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 77950779555     PISSN: 00239186     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (21)

1. Douglas H. Yarn & Gregory Todd Jones, A Biological Approach to Understanding Resistance to Apology, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation in Group Conflict, 72 LAW & CONTEMP. PROBS. 63 (Spring 2008)
2. See, e.g., Anthony G. Greenwald & Linda Hamilton Krieger, Implicit Bias: Scientific Foundations, 94 CAL. L. REV. 945 (2006).
3. Many such studies have been limited to white and African American participants
4. See Elizabeth A. Phelps & Laura A. Thomas, Race, Behavior, and the Brain: The Role of Neuroimaging in Understanding Complex Social Behaviors, 24 POL. PSYCHOL. 747, 753 (2003) (noting that African Americans show greater "variability than white Americans on measures of indirect race bias, with some showing a pro-black bias and others showing no bias or a pro-white bias").
5. See, e.g., Elizabeth A. Phelps et al., Performance on Indirect Measures of Race Evaluation Predicts Amygdala Activation, 12 J. COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE 729, 734 (2000) (demonstrating that amygdala activation correlated with measures of implicit, but not explicit, bias). This effect was found in white participants when shown pictures of the faces of unfamiliar African Americans, but was not found when they were shown pictures of (a) unfamiliar whites and (b) famous and well-regarded whites and African Americans (for instance, John F. Kennedy and Bill Cosby).
6. (describing results of studies showing correlations between measures of implicit bias and indicators of subtle or spontaneous discriminatory actions)
7. Andreas Olsson et al., The Role of Social Groups in the Persistence of Learned Fear, 309 SCIENCE 785, 785 (2005).
8. Michael S. Gazzaniga et al., COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE: THE BIOLOGY OF THE MIND 537, 556-59 (2d ed. 2002) (chapter on "Emotion," co-authored with Elizabeth A. Phelps).
9. (describing "classic fear conditioning," associated with experiments pioneered by Pavlov, and fear extinction). Fear conditioning and extinction were measured by skinconductance responses.
10. (observing that in humans and nonhuman primates, snakes and spiders "are more readily associated with aversive events than stimuli from fear-irrelevant categories")
11. Subjects self-calibrated an electric-shock level that would be uncomfortable but not painful
12. Olsson et al., supra note 5, at 768 (noting that though "the conditioning bias to fear racial outgroup members was attenuated among those with more interracial dating experience, consistent with a substantial body of research demonstrating that positive intergroup contact reduces negativity toward outgroups," only correlation, not causation, could be shown)
13. Arne Öhman, Conditioned Fear of a Face: A Prelude to Ethnic Enmity? 309 SCIENCE 711, 711 (2005)
14. The Olsson study is therefore more relevant to the second, broader meaning of reconciliation (involving groups and persons at variance who may not previously have had a cooperative relationship) than to the first (involving repair of such a relationship)
15. (indicating that potentially contrary findings include a picture of a pointed gun paired with a loud noise)
16. ("[R]ace inherently cannot be the basis of the outgroup preparedness result.").
17. ("[C]ultural learning can imbue a stimulus with qualities that engage similar learning mechanisms as do spiders and snakes."). In the United States, at least, white and African American persons have ample opportunities to learn negative social and cultural lessons about the other race; indeed, few (if any) escape them.
18. ("[F]ew reach adulthood without considerable knowledge of these prejudices and stereotypes.").
19. ("[B]oth amygdala activation as well as behavioral responses of race bias are reflections of social learning within a specific culture at a particular moment in the history of relations between social groups."). A related question is whether, to exhibit the prepared fear pattern, the fear stimulus must be directly experienced, or whether it may be learned through instruction, such as by being told of atrocities committed by one group against another. Other research strongly suggests that instruction may suffice.
20. (finding this interracial-dating correlation "consistent with a substantial body of research demonstrating that positive inter-group contact reduces negativity toward outgroups")
21. Jerry Kang & Mahzarin R. Banaji, Fair Measures: A Behavioral Realist Revision of "Affirmative Action," 94 CAL. L. REV. 1063, 1101-05 (2006) (detailing research in support of the "social contact hypothesis" that "intergroup interaction decreases prejudice").