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Abstract

Worldwide racial prejudice is originated from in-group/out-group discrimination. This prejudice can bias face perception at the very beginning of social interaction. However, little is known about the neurocognitive mechanism underlying the influence of racial prejudice on facial emotion perception. Here, we examined the neural basis of disgust perception in racial prejudice using a passive viewing task and functional magnetic resonance imaging. We found that compared with the disgusted faces of in-groups, the disgusted faces of out-groups result in increased amygdala and insular engagement, positive coupling of the insula with amygdala-based emotional system, and negative coupling of the insula with anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)-based regulatory system. Furthermore, machine-learning algorithms revealed that the level of implicit racial prejudice could be predicted by functional couplings of the insula with both the amygdala and the ACC, which suggests that the insula is largely involved in racially biased disgust perception through two distinct neural circuits. In addition, individual difference in disgust sensitivity was found to be predictive of implicit racial prejudice. Taken together, our results suggest a crucial role of insula-centered circuits for disgust perception in racial prejudice.

Keywords: amygdala; anterior cingulate cortex; disgust; face perception; insula; racial prejudice.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Experimental design. The experiment consists of three sessions: IAT, passive viewing task, and post‐scan testing. (a) During IAT, participants categorized names as “foreigner” or “Chinese” and categorized adjectives as “pleasant” or “unpleasant.” Participants' implicit racial prejudice was measured by comparing the mean reaction time between two conditions. The compatible condition mapped Chinese names and pleasant adjectives to the same response key while the incompatible condition mapped foreigners' names and pleasant adjectives to the same response key. (b) During passive viewing task, participants underwent fMRI scanning while they were explicitly instructed to passively view the faces presented on the screen without further cognitive processes. (c) During the post‐scan testing, participants were asked to rate all facial pictures they had seen in the passive viewing task using a nine‐point Likert scale. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at http://wileyonlinelibrary.com.]
Figure 2
Figure 2
Scores of implicit racial prejudice and disgust sensitivity. (a) Mean reaction time (RT) in compatible and incompatible blocks. (b) Individual's disgust sensitivity is a predictor of implicit racial prejudice. Dotted lines indicate 95% confidence intervals. Error bars represent standard error of mean. *P < 0.05; **P < 0.01.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Insula and amygdala underlying the racial prejudice in disgust perception and their relations to disgust sensitivity. (a, c) Axial view of right anterior insula and coronal view of right amygdala engagements that underlie theracial prejudice in disgust perception (i.e., (disgusted out‐group − neutral out‐group) − (disgusted in‐group − neutral in‐group)). (b, d) Higher disgust sensitivity is predictive of greater activations in the right anterior insula and the right amygdala. Bar graph represents the median split in disgust sensitivity. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at http://wileyonlinelibrary.com.]
Figure 4
Figure 4
Functional connectivity of insula under the racial prejudice in disgust perception. (a) Coronalview of the anatomically defined bilateral insula used as seed in psychophysiological interaction analysis of task‐based functional connectivity underlying the racial prejudice in disgust perception (i.e., (disgusted out‐group − neutral out‐group) − (disgusted in‐group − neutral in‐group)). (b) Coronal view of bilateral amygdala (in hot) and sagittal view of right ACC (in cool) showing increased functional connectivity with insula. Hot denotes positive coupling and cool denotes negative coupling. (c) Correlations among functional connectivity of insula and amygdala/ACC, implicit racial prejudice, and disgust sensitivity. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at http://wileyonlinelibrary.com.]
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References

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