Exploring the neural correlates of social stereotyping

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.