What do implicit measures of bias actually measure?

Borne out of the limitations posed by self-reports, social psychologists developed implicit measures capable of assessing unconscious bias (e.g., the IAT). Scepticism towards the IAT has grown in recent years, however, with studies revealing the weak relationship between explicit and implicit measures and the apparent disconnect between implicit bias and behaviour. This has led researchers to call for innovative ways to measure the key processes underpinning implicit bias. The aim of the current study was to develop a novel battery of behavioural measures capable of assessing implicit racial bias. In a within-participants design, 257 participants completed a battery of socio-cognitive measures that were adapted to feature a race-based component. We pre-registered the prediction that participants would show more imitative tendencies, higher empathy, better perspective-taking and emotion recognition towards people of their own race. Moreover, it was predicted that these indicators of own-race bias would be related to implicit racial bias. Findings indicate that participants exhibited better emotion recognition but poorer perspective taking and empathic concern for ingroup relative to outgroup members. None of the measured socio-cognitive mechanisms correlated with IAT scores. These findings are discussed in relation to the construct, discriminant and predictive validity of the IAT

Profiling prejudice: Elucidating the socio-cognitive mechanisms underpinning implicit bias

Borne out of the limitations posed by self-report questionnaires, social psychologists developed implicit measures capable of assessing people’s unconscious prejudicial attitudes (e.g., the Implicit Association Test). Recent meta-analytic reviews, however, indicate that the relationship between explicit (self-report) and implicit attitudes is relatively low, and implicit attitudes rarely predict actual behaviour. This has led researchers to call for innovative ways to measure the key processes underlying implicit prejudice. Driven by this, the current study examined the relationships between implicit racial prejudice and various other measures of implicit socio-cognitive abilities. In a within-participants design, 250 participants (Mage = 20 years, 89% female, 64% White) completed measures assessing implicit racial bias, visual perspective taking, imitative tendencies, empathy, and emotion processing. Findings indicate how perspective taking skills, imitative tendencies, empathic awareness and emotion recognition predict implicit racial bias. Moreover, different racial groups (White, Black, Asian) exhibit diverse patterns of implicit racial bias. Prejudice is a significant social issue and exploring ways to detect and eliminate bias is fundamentally important to communities and organisations

Dissecting social interaction:Dual-fMRI reveals patterns of interpersonal brain-behavior relationships that dissociate among dimensions of social exchange

During social interactions, each individual’s actions are simultaneously a consequence of and an antecedent to their interaction partner’s behavior. Capturing online the brain processes underlying such mutual dependency requires simultaneous measurements of all interactants’ brains during real-world exchange (‘hyperscanning’). This demands a precise characterization of the type of interaction under investigation, however, and analytical techniques capable of capturing interpersonal dependencies. We adapted an interactive task capable of dissociating between two dimensions of interdependent social exchange: goal structure (cooperation vs competition) and interaction structure [concurrent (CN) vs turn-based]. Performing dual-functional magnetic resonance imaging hyperscanning on pairs of individuals interacting on this task, and modeling brain responses in both interactants as systematic reactions to their partner’s behavior, we investigated interpersonal brain-behavior dependencies (iBBDs) during each dimension. This revealed patterns of iBBDs that differentiated among exchanges; in players supporting the actions of another, greater brain responses to the co-player’s actions were expressed in regions implicated in social cognition, such as the medial prefrontal cortex, precuneus and temporal cortices. Stronger iBBD during CN competitive exchanges was observed in brain systems involved in movement planning and updating, however, such as the supplementary motor area. This demonstrates the potential for hyperscanning to elucidate neural processes underlying different forms of social exchange

Getting into sync:Data-driven analyses reveal patterns of neural coupling that distinguish among different social exchanges

In social interactions, each individual's brain drives an action that, in turn, elicits systematic neural responses in their partner that drive a reaction. Consequently, the brain responses of both interactants become temporally contingent upon one another through the actions they generate, and different interaction dynamics will be underpinned by distinct forms of between-brain coupling. In this study, we investigated this by “performing functional magnetic resonance imaging on two individuals simultaneously (dual-fMRI) while they competed or cooperated with one another in a turn-based or concurrent fashion.” To assess whether distinct patterns of neural coupling were associated with these different interactions, we combined two data-driven, model-free analytical techniques: group-independent component analysis and inter-subject correlation. This revealed four distinct patterns of brain responses that were temporally aligned between interactants: one emerged during co-operative exchanges and encompassed brain regions involved in social cognitive processing, such as the temporo-parietal cortex. The other three were associated with competitive exchanges and comprised brain systems implicated in visuo-motor processing and social decision-making, including the cerebellum and anterior cingulate cortex. Interestingly, neural coupling was significantly stronger in concurrent relative to turn-based exchanges. These results demonstrate the utility of data-driven approaches applied to “dual-fMRI” data in elucidating the interpersonal neural processes that give rise to the two-in-one dynamic characterizing social interaction

Orthogonal-compatibility effects confound automatic imitation:implications for measuring self-other distinction

Accurate distinction between self and other representations is fundamental to a range of social cognitive capacities, and understanding individual differences in this ability is an important aim for psychological research. This demands accurate measures of self-other distinction (SOD). The present study examined an experimental paradigm employed frequently to measure SOD in the action domain; specifically, we evaluated the rotated finger-action stimuli used increasingly to measure automatic imitation (AI). To assess the suitability of these stimuli, we compared AI elicited by different action stimuli to the performance on a perspective-taking task believed to measure SOD in the perception domain. In two separate experiments we reveal three important findings: firstly, we demonstrate a strong confounding influence of orthogonal-compatibility effects on AI elicited by certain rotated stimuli. Second, we demonstrate the potential for this confounding influence to mask important relationships between AI and other measures of SOD; we observed a relationship between AI and perspective-taking performance only when the former was measured in isolation of orthogonality compatibility. Thirdly, we observed a relationship between these two performance measures only in a sub-group of individuals exhibiting a pure form of AI. Furthermore, this relationship revealed a self-bias in SOD-reduced AI was associated with increased egocentric misattributions in perspective taking. Together, our findings identify an important methodological consideration for measures of AI and extend previous research by showing an egocentric style of SOD across action and perception domains

Impaired Self-Other Distinction and Subcortical Gray-Matter Alterations Characterize Socio-Cognitive Disturbances in Multiple Sclerosis

Introduction: Recent studies of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) have revealed disturbances in distinct components of social cognition, such as impaired mentalizing and empathy. The present study investigated this socio-cognitive profile in MS patients in more detail, by examining their performance on tasks measuring more fundamental components of social cognition and any associated disruptions to gray-matter volume (GMV). Methods: We compared 43 patients with relapse-remitting MS with 43 age- and sex-matched healthy controls (HCs) on clinical characteristics (depression, fatigue), cognitive processing speed, and three aspects of low-level social cognition; specifically, imitative tendencies, visual perspective taking, and emotion recognition. Using voxel-based morphometry, we then explored relationships between GMV and these clinical and behavioral measures. Results: Patients exhibited significantly slower processing speed, poorer perspective taking, and less imitation compared with HCs. These impairments were related to reduced GMV throughout the putamen, thalami, and anterior insula, predominantly in the left hemisphere. Surprisingly, differences between the groups in emotion recognition were not significant. Conclusion: Less imitation and poorer perspective taking indicate a cognitive self-bias when faced with conflicting self- and other-representations. This suggests that impaired self-other distinction, and an associated subcortical pattern of GM atrophy, might underlie the socio-cognitive disturbances observed in MS

Where’s that wine? A pre-registered study assessing the utility of visual search to measure alcohol-related attentional bias.

Background & Aims: Experimental research consistently shows that individuals who regularly consume alcohol prioritise their attention towards alcohol-related cues. Many tasks that measure alcohol-related attentional bias (AB), however, are limited by their low internal reliability and the artificial manner in which stimuli are shown. In a bid to overcome these limitations, the current study employed a visual search paradigm to examine whether heavy social drinkers exhibit AB towards alcoholic relative to non-alcoholic stimuli. It also assessed whether self-reported alcohol consumption, drinking motives or subjective craving predicted alcohol-related AB. Method: Ninety-nine participants (Mage = 20.77, MAUDIT= 12.89) completed a Visual Conjunction Search Task in which they were instructed to identify alcoholic (wine, beer) or non-alcoholic (lemonade, cola) targets in an array of matching and mismatching distractors. They also completed questionnaires probing their alcohol consumption behaviours. Findings: Participants were significantly faster to detect alcoholic relative to non-alcoholic targets, which was predicted by self-reported alcohol consumption and related behaviours (AUDIT scores). Subjective craving and drinking motives did not significantly account for additional explained variance. Conclusions: Alcohol-related stimuli capture heavy social drinker’s attention, which may present as a risk factor for continued (mis)use. Visual search paradigms appear to offer a highly reliable assessment of alcohol-related AB over other experimental paradigms in alcohol research

Social Cognitive Disruptions in Multiple Sclerosis: The Role of Executive (Dys)Function

Objective: Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a chronic demyelinating disease of the central nervous system, resulting in a range of potential motor and cognitive impairments. The latter can affect both executive functions that orchestrate general goal-directed behaviour, and social cognitive processes that support our ability to interact with others and maintain healthy interpersonal relationships. Despite a long history of research into the cognitive symptoms of MS, it remains uncertain if social cognitive disruptions occur ndependently of, or reflect underlying disturbances to, more foundational executive functions. The present preregistered study investigated this directly. Method: Employing an experimental design, we administered a battery of computerised tasks online to a large sample comprising 134 individuals with MS and 134 age- and sex-matched healthy controls (HCs). Three tasks measured elements of executive function (working memory, response inhibition, and switching) and two assessed components of social cognition disrupted most commonly in MS (emotion perception and theory of mind). Results: Individuals with MS exhibited poorer working memory (d = .31), response inhibition (d = -.26), emotion perception (d = .32) and theory of mind (d = .35) compared with matched HCs. Furthermore, exploratory mediation analyses revealed that working memory performance accounted for approximately 20% of the group differences in both measures of social cognition. Conclusions: Disruptions to working memory appear to serve as one of the mechanisms underpinning disturbances to social cognition in MS. Future research should therefore examine if the benefits of cognitive rehabilitation programs that incorporate working memory training transfer to these social cognitive processe

The role of generalised reciprocity and reciprocal tendencies in the emergence of cooperative group norms

Norms for cooperation are essential for groups to function effectively, yet there are often strong incentives for group members to behave selfishly. Direct and indirect reciprocity can help to discourage such uncooperative behaviour by punishing defectors and rewarding cooperators, but require explicit means for punishment and tally-keeping. What, then, encourages an individual to cooperate with their group when others cannot track the behaviour of others? We adapted the Bargaining Game to examine the emergence and maintenance of cooperation among 20 groups of six anonymous players (N = 120) who interacted amongst themselves over recursive bargaining exchanges. By estimating the expected utility that drives players’ demands in these interactions, we demonstrate that their behaviour on each exchange reflects the demands placed upon them previously. Thus, we highlight the role of generalised reciprocity in such situations; that is, when an individual passes on to another member of their group the behaviour they have received previously. Furthermore, we identify four distinct behavioural types that differ in their expressions of generalised reciprocity: Some players converge quickly on cooperative demands regardless of the behaviour they received from their co-players, and are therefore characterised by low expressions of reciprocity. In contrast, individuals with strong reciprocal tendencies decrease their demands over successive interactions in response to the behaviour of their group. By simulating groups with different compositions of these player types, we reveal the strong influence of individual differences in reciprocal tendencies on the emergence of cooperative group dynamics

Imitation or Polarity Correspondence?:Behavioural and Neurophysiological Evidence for the Confounding Influence of Orthogonal Spatial Compatibility on Measures of Automatic Imitation

During social interactions, humans tend to imitate one another involuntarily. To investigate the neurocognitive mechanisms driving this tendency, researchers often employ stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) tasks to assess the influence that action observation has on action execution. This is referred to as automatic imitation (AI). The stimuli used frequently in SRC procedures to elicit AI often confound action-related with other nonsocial influences on behaviour; however, in response to the rotated hand-action stimuli employed increasingly, AI partly reflects unspecific up-right/down-left biases in stimulus-response mapping. Despite an emerging awareness of this confounding orthogonal spatial-compatibility effect, psychological and neuroscientific research into social behaviour continues to employ these stimuli to investigate AI. To increase recognition of this methodological issue, the present study measured the systematic influence of orthogonal spatial effects on behavioural and neurophysiological measures of AI acquired with rotated hand-action stimuli in SRC tasks. In Experiment 1, behavioural data from a large sample revealed that complex orthogonal spatial effects exert an influence on AI over and above any topographical similarity between observed and executed actions. Experiment 2 reproduced this finding in a more systematic, within-subject design, and high-density electroencephalography revealed that electrocortical expressions of AI elicited also are modulated by orthogonal spatial compatibility. Finally, source localisations identified a collection of cortical areas sensitive to this spatial confound, including nodes of the multiple-demand and semantic-control networks. These results indicate that AI measured on SRC procedures with the rotated hand stimuli used commonly might reflect neurocognitive mechanisms associated with spatial associations rather than imitative tendencies