Brain programs?good?and ?bad? response early

Automatic responses to stimuli may be hard-wired and difficult to change.

By Beth Azar
Monitor staff

The brain?s tendency to automatically categorize everything from words to pictures to people as 'good' or 'bad' may provide a clue to the underpinnings of racism, according to studies by Ohio State University?s John Cacioppo, PhD, who discussed his work at a Festschrift for Stanford University?s Robert B. Zajonc, PhD.

Cacioppo and his colleagues have used evoked related potentials (ERPs), which measure brain activity, to examine an automatic human trait that Zajonc helped discover?our tendency to evaluate any and all stimuli that we see, hear, touch or smell. And they?ve found that even if people say they like something when they don?t, the brain records their true feelings, indicating that it may be hard to bypass its automatic and possibly hard-wired preferences.

In their work, the Ohio State researchers used the concept that the brain responds differently for infrequent or novel stimuli. So when they present people with lots of positive stimuli and one random negative stimulus, they see a pulse of activation.

In one study, they told participants to call negative objects positive. During the task, people saw names or pictures of a few negative objects in the context of many positive ones?for example, broccoli in the context of oranges and apples. When they said a negative object was positive, their brains weren?t fooled. They registered the negative stimulus as different from the more frequent positive stimuli, Cacioppo and his colleagues found. The same pattern emerged when they said a positive object was negative.

These findings indicate that, regardless of what we consciously say, our brains automatically categorize objects and experiences as 'good' or 'bad.' Similarly, people may consciously believe in the equality of all people, but may harbor some automatic and largely unconscious negative associations with some minority groups. This phenomenon can occur through a process of latent inhibition, posits Cacioppo.

If we?re exposed often to members of a group?seeing the good, the bad and the in between?isolated negative exposures won?t cause subsequent negative reactions to members of that group. If, however, we get little exposure to members of a group, negative exposures will create aversive reactions to all members of that group, says Cacioppo.

So if people have little exposure to members of a minority group except associated, for example, with crime on television and in movies, they will develop an automatic aversive reaction to members of that group. In contrast, if they see a different group?one with which they have an abundant mix of positive and negative experiences?in just as many violent movies and television shows, that negative exposure will not cause an aversive reaction.

'If this is the case then the development of aversive prejudice might be diminished if children have lots of neutral exposure to minority groups early in life,' says Cacioppo.'That way, one or two negative exposures are less likely to produce an aversive prejudice.'

The aversive prejudice, once created, may be difficult to consciously eliminate, says Cacioppo. Consequently, people can have egalitarian beliefs and still act prejudicial in certain situations. For example, a white civil rights activist, when fatigued an in an unfamiliar setting, may react more negatively to a surprise encounter with an African-American than to an encounter with a white person. Over time, people may develop nonprejudicial attitudes about various racial and ethnic groups?and when they sit down and think about their feelings, it?s these nonprejudiced feelings that show themselves. But their impulsive, automatic, reaction when faced with a member of that minority group may be negative based on hard wiring from a life of unrepresentative exposure.

'This doesn?t mean people are lying about nonprejudicial attitudes,' says Cacioppo. 'It?s that these attitudes can reside coincidentally with a conditioned aversive reaction learned early in childhood.'YAutomatic responses to stimuli may be hard-wired and difficult to change.