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Why Can’t We Be Friends?

In experiments using classical fear conditioning, people’s bias against others from different racial groups seems similar to other sorts of fears.

Bias against others unlike ourselves is common. Does fear of different racial groups develop in the same way as other fears? Researchers addressed this question in two experiments among 132 black and white American subjects.

In the first experiment, the authors presented 20 subjects with images of fear-relevant (snakes/spiders) and fear-irrelevant (birds/butterflies) stimuli. During the acquisition phase, one stimulus in each category (the reinforced conditioned stimulus) was paired with a mild electric shock; the other conditioned stimulus was unreinforced. This phase was followed by a shock-free extinction phase. In the second experiment, 112 subjects were exposed to four pictures of black and white male faces. After the extinction phase, subjects’ racial attitudes, stereotypes, and contact with racial in-group and out-group members were determined by questionnaires. In both experiments, subjects’ fear responses were assessed by measuring skin-conductance responses.

In experiment 1, conditioned responses during acquisition were greater to the reinforced stimuli (regardless of fear relevance) than to the unreinforced ones; during extinction, only conditioned responses to fear-relevant stimuli persisted. Similarly, in experiment 2, conditioned responses were greater to both in-group and out-group stimuli when the stimuli had been reinforced. For both black and white participants, the conditioned response persisted only for the out-group during extinction in this experiment. The only factor that moderated this response was interracial dating: the more romantic partners from the out-group that a subject reported, the greater the moderation of response.

Comment: Exposure to prejudices and stereotypes results in fear that is difficult to reverse. However, close positive contact with other groups nullifies this effect. The authors hypothesize that fear responses to out-groups might have evolved as a way of protecting against possible threats. Unfortunately, this barrier is difficult to demolish.

— Jonathan M. Silver, MD

Published in Journal Watch Psychiatry September 21, 2005

Citation(s):

Olsson A et al. The role of social groups in the persistence of learned fear. Science 2005 Jul 29; 309:785-7.

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