Abstract
Judging people on the basis of cultural stereotypes is a ubiquitous facet of daily life, yet little is known about how this fundamental inferential strategy is implemented in the brain. Using fMRI, we measured neural activity while partic- ipants made judgments about the likely actor (i.e., person- focus) and location (i.e., place-focus) of a series of activities, some of which were associated with prevailing gender stereo- types. Results revealed that stereotyping was underpinned by activity in areas associated with evaluative processing (e.g., ventral medial prefrontal cortex, amygdala) and the represen- tation of action knowledge (e.g., supramarginal gyrus, middle temporal gyrus). In addition, activity accompanying stereo- typic judgments was correlated with the strength of partic- ipants’ explicit and implicit gender stereotypes. These findings elucidate how stereotyping fits within the neuroscience of per- son understanding.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1560-1570 |
Journal | Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience |
Volume | 21 |
Issue number | 8 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Aug 2009 |
Research Groups and Themes
- Cognitive Science
Keywords
- MEDIAL PREFRONTAL CORTEX
- HUMAN AMYGDALA
- RACIAL PREJUDICE
- TEMPORAL CORTEX
- ACTIVATION
- FACES
- GENDER
- COGNITION
- BRAIN
- RACE