Human brain recognizes and reacts to different races

TORONTO - The human brain reacts differently when dealing with people of another race, says a new study.

This research, conducted by scientists at the University of Toronto (U of T), had participants view a series of videos while hooked up to electroencephalogram (EEG) machines. An EEG measures brain activity.

The participants - all white - watched simple videos in which men of different races picked up a glass and took a sip of water. They watched white, black, South Asian and East Asian men perform the task.

Typically, when people observe others perform a simple task, their motor cortex region fires similarly to when they are performing the task themselves. The motor cortex controls the planning and execution of a movement.

However, the research team, led by doctoral student Jennifer Gutsell and Michael Inzlicht, assistant professor, found that participants’ motor cortex was significantly less likely to fire when they watched the minority men perform the simple task.

In some cases when participants watched the non-white men performing the task, their brains actually registered as little activity as when they watched a blank screen.

“Previous research shows people are less likely to feel connected to people outside their own ethnic groups, and we wanted to know why,” says Gutsell.

“What we found is that there is a basic difference in the way peoples’ brains react to those from other ethnic backgrounds.”

“Observing someone of a different race produced significantly less motor-cortex activity than observing a person of one’s own race. In other words, people were less likely to mentally simulate the actions of other-race than same-race people,” says Gutsell.

The trend was even more pronounced for participants who scored high on a test measuring subtle racism, says Gutsell.

These findings were published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.