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. However, the UofT research team, led by PhD student Jennifer Gutsell and Assistant Professor Dr. Michael Inzlicht, found that participants’ motor cortex was significantly less likely to fire when they watched the visible 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…
The trend was even more pronounced for participants who scored high on a test measuring subtle racism, says Gutsell.
So much talk about mirror-neurons these days, but the vast majority of research isn’t any where nearly as interesting/socially important as things like this.
(Source: darkjez, via adailyriot)
