Neural Mechanisms of Attitude Change Toward Stigmatized Individuals: Temporoparietal Junction Activity Predicts Bias Reduction.

ABSTRACT:

Objectives

Psychological and neural evidence suggests that negative attitudes toward stigmatized individuals arise in part from failures to perceive them as social targets. Here, we tested whether experimentally up-regulating neural regions involved in social cognition would predict subsequent decreases in bias toward stigmatized individuals (i.e., people who use substances).

Methods

Participants underwent fMRI while completing either a lovingkindness intervention task or a control task, and each task was reinforced via daily text messages for a month following the one-time fMRI scan. Changes in implicit bias against stigmatized individuals were measured by Implicit Association Tests.

Results

The lovingkindness intervention task, compared to a control task, elicited g

SUBMITTER: Kang Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7748150 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature