Brain scans could soon be used to detect whether or not people are racist, scientists say. Last year, researchers found that brain scans were able to pick up on differences in the way that people with implicit negative racial attitudes viewed black and white faces. Racial stereotypes have previously been shown to have subtle and unintended consequences on how we treat members of different race groups. But research shows race biases also increase differences in the brains representations of faces. Psychologists Tobias Brosch of the University of Geneva in Switzerland and Eyal Bar-David and Elizabeth Phelps of New York University examined activity in the brain while participants looked at pictures of White and Black faces. By examining patterns of brain activity in the fusiform face area - a brain area involved in face perception - the researchers were able to predict the race of the person that the participant was viewing, but only for those participants with stronger, negative implicit race attitudes. This, the researchers said, implies that people with stronger, negative implicit race attitudes may actually perceive black and white faces to look more different than others who held no such prejudice. Read more: dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2572281/Living-ethnically-diverse-areas-makes-people-tolerant.html#ixzz2uypCV8Wm Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
Posted on: Tue, 04 Mar 2014 08:18:44 +0000