Scientists claim that a fear of black faces is all in the mind

Mon 9 May 2005
John Von Radowitz

RACIST stereotyping has programmed the brains of both black and white people to feel threatened by African faces, a controversial study suggests.

Scientists carried out brain scans of black and white Americans, focusing on a part of the brain called the amygdala. This area reacts to both threat and novelty, and has been linked to race-related prejudice. But because the region responds in different ways, the precise nature of what is happening has not previously been clear.

Now researchers have investigated how the amygdalas of black and white volunteers reacted to facial images of people from both their own and each other’s race.

A response to novelty would be expected to be more pronounced for whites looking at black faces than African-Americans shown images of black individuals, and vice-versa. But the scientists found black faces caused a sharper response than white faces, to both white and black people. The result suggested that feelings of fear or threat rather than novelty were at the root of the reaction, since black participants would not regard black faces as novel.

The researchers, led by Matthew Lieberman from the University of California at Los Angeles, believe culturally learned negative associations can explain the findings. Even black Americans had been taught to be wary of people of African race, the findings suggested.

The scientists wrote in the journal Nature Neuroscience: "Although no single study can conclusively address this issue, the present study suggests that the amygdala activity typically associated with race-related processing may be a reflection of culturally learned negative associations regarding African-American individuals."

The study also found that verbally labelling faces as African-American reduced the amygdala activity in both groups. It was possible that putting race into words helped reduce its emotional impact, said the authors.