Tobias A Wagner-Altendorf, Arie H van der Lugt, Anna Kroeber, Anna Cirkel, Marcus Heldmann, Thomas F Münte
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background and objective: Implicit social cognition refers to attitudes and stereotypes that may reside outside conscious awareness and control but that still affect human behavior. In particular, the implicit favoritism of an ingroup, to which an individual belongs, as opposed to an outgroup, to which the individual does not belong, characterized as ingroup bias, is of interest and is investigated here.
Method: We used a Go/NoGo association task (GNAT) and behavioral and electroencephalographic (event-related EEG potential [ERP] analysis) measures to investigate the implicit bias toward cities in East Germany, West Germany, and Europe, in 16 individuals each from West and East Germany (mixed gender, M age = 24). The GNAT assesses an individual's Go and NoGo responses for a given association between a target category and either pole (positive or negative) of an evaluative dimension.
Results: Behavioral measures revealed slightly faster reaction times to the combination of European city names and negative, as compared with positive, evaluative words in both groups. ERP analysis showed an increased negativity at 400-800 ms poststimulus in the incongruent conditions of East German city/positive word pairings (in West Germans) and West German city/positive word pairings (in East Germans).
Conclusion: An implicitly moderately negative evaluation of Europe by both groups was exhibited based on the behavioral data, and an increased level of conflict arising from the "incongruent" pairings (ie, as manifestation of an implicitly negative attitude toward East Germany in West Germans, and toward West Germany in East Germans) was exhibited based on the electrophysiological data.
期刊介绍:
Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology (CBN) is a forum for advances in the neurologic understanding and possible treatment of human disorders that affect thinking, learning, memory, communication, and behavior. As an incubator for innovations in these fields, CBN helps transform theory into practice. The journal serves clinical research, patient care, education, and professional advancement.
The journal welcomes contributions from neurology, cognitive neuroscience, neuropsychology, neuropsychiatry, and other relevant fields. The editors particularly encourage review articles (including reviews of clinical practice), experimental and observational case reports, instructional articles for interested students and professionals in other fields, and innovative articles that do not fit neatly into any category. Also welcome are therapeutic trials and other experimental and observational studies, brief reports, first-person accounts of neurologic experiences, position papers, hypotheses, opinion papers, commentaries, historical perspectives, and book reviews.