Abstract
Outgroup members are often perceived as threating and untrustworthy, and this is particularly true for judgments of outgroup males. As race influences perceptions of group membership, male racial outgroup faces (MROFs) are judged as less trustworthy than male racial ingroup faces (MRIFs). Neurologically, this effect is mediated by amygdala activation, a brain region central to the processing of fear-related stimuli, threat detection, vigilance regulation and facial trustworthiness. As acute stress up regulates amygdala activity and promotes hyper-vigilance towards threatening stimuli, we hypothesised that acute stress would result in increased vigilance and lower trustworthiness judgements towards MROFs. In contrast, we expected that stress would have no effect on MRIFs. Using a within-subjects design, White-Dutch male participants rated the perceived trustworthiness of White males (ingroup) and Arab males (outgroup) under stress and during the absence of stress (baseline). Stress significantly reduced trust towards racial outgroup members, whilst trust towards racial ingroup members was maintained. Understanding the mechanisms by which stress differentially affects social behaviors towards outgroups is of theoretical and practical relevance to our understanding of the biological basis of ethnocentrism and xenophobia.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., Damasio, H., & Damasio, A. (1994). Impaired recognition of emotion in facial expressions following bilateral damage to the human amygdala. Nature, 372(6507), 669–672. doi:10.1038/372669a0.
Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., & Damasio, A. R. (1998). The human amygdala in social judgment. Nature, 393(6684), 470–474. doi:10.1038/30982.
Beekman, G., Cheung, S. L., & Levely, I. (2017). The effect of conflict history on cooperation within and between groups: Evidence from a laboratory experiment. Journal of Economic Psychology. doi:10.1016/j.joep.2017.02.004.
Bijleveld, E., Scheepers, D., & Ellemers, N. (2012). The cortisol response to anticipated intergroup interactions predicts self-reported prejudice. PloS One, 7(3), e33681. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0033681.g001.
Bos, P. A., Terburg, D., & van Honk, J. (2010). Testosterone decreases trust in socially naive humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(22), 9991–9995. doi:10.1073/pnas.0911700107.
Brewer, M. B. B. (1999). The psychology of prejudice: Ingroup love and outgroup hate? Journal of Social Issues, 55(3), 429–444. doi:10.1111/0022-4537.00126.
Cannon, W. B. (1915). Bodily changes in pain, hunger, fear, and rage: An account of recent researches into the function of emotional excitement. New York: D. Appleton and company.
Cassidy, B. S., & Krendl, A. C. (2016). Dynamic neural mechanisms underlie race disparities in social cognition. NeuroImage, 132(C), 238–246. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.02.043.
Charmandari, E., Tsigos, C., & Chrousos, G. (2005). Endocrinology of the stress response. Annual Review of Physiology, 67, 259–284. doi:10.1146/annurev.physiol.67.040403.120816.
Cottrell, C. A., & Neuberg, S. L. (2005). Different emotional reactions to different groups: A Sociofunctional threat-based approach to "prejudice". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88(5), 770–789. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.88.5.770.
von Dawans, B., Fischbacher, U., Kirschbaum, C., Fehr, E., & Heinrichs, M. (2012). The social dimension of stress reactivity: Acute stress increases Prosocial Behavior in humans. Psychological Science, 23(6), 651–660. doi:10.1177/0956797611431576.
Donders, N. C., Correll, J., & Wittenbrink, B. (2008). Danger stereotypes predict racially biased attentional allocation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44(5), 1328–1333. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2008.04.002.
Eberhardt, J. L., Goff, P. A., Purdie, V. J., & Davies, P. G. (2004). Seeing Black: Race, crime, and visual processing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(6), 876–893. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.87.6.876.
Ember, C. R., & Ember, M. (1992). Resource unpredictability, mistrust, and war: A cross-cultural study. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 36(2), 242–262. doi:10.1177/0022002792036002002.
Foley, P., & Kirschbaum, C. (2010). Human hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis responses to acute psychosocial stress in laboratory settings. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 35(1), 91–96. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2010.01.010.
Galvez, R., Mesches, M. H., & McGaugh, J. L. (1996). Norepinephrine release in the amygdala in response to footshock stimulation. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 66(3), 253–257. doi:10.1006/nlme.1996.0067.
Gneezy, A., & Fessler, D. M. (2011). Conflict, sticks and carrots: War increases prosocial punishments and rewards. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, rspb20110805. doi:10.1098/rspb.2011.0805.
Hart, A. J., Whalen, P. J., Shin, L. M., McInerney, S. C., Fischer, H., & Rauch, S. L. (2000). Differential response in the human amygdala to racial outgroup vs ingroup face stimuli. Neuroreport, 11(11), 2351–2355.
Harvey-Lintz, T., & Tidwell, R. (1997). Effects of the 1992 Los Angeles civil unrest: Post traumatic stress disorder symptomatology among law enforcement officers. The Social Science Journal, 34(2), 171–183. doi:10.1016/s0362-3319(97)90049-5.
Hermans, E. J., van Marle, H. J. F., Ossewaarde, L., Henckens, M. J. A. G., Qin, S., van Kesteren, M. T. R., et al. (2011). Stress-related noradrenergic activity prompts large-scale neural network reconfiguration. Science, 334(6059), 1151–1153. doi:10.1126/science.1209603.
Hill, K., Barton, M., & Hurtado, A. M. (2009). The emergence of human uniqueness: Characters underlying behavioral modernity. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 18(5), 187–200. doi:10.1002/evan.20224.
Horowitz, D. L. (2001). The deadly ethnic riot. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hugenberg, K., & Bodenhausen, G. V. (2003). Facing prejudice: Implicit prejudice and the perception of facial threat. Psychological Science, 14(6), 640–643. doi:10.1046/j.0956-7976.2003.psci_1478.x.
Keeley, L. H. (2010). War before civilization. OUP USA.
Kubota, J. T., Li, J., Bar-David, E., Banaji, M. R., & Phelps, E. A. (2013). The price of racial bias: Intergroup negotiations in the ultimatum game. Psychological Science, 24(12), 2498–2504. doi:10.1177/0956797613496435.
Kurzban, R., Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2001). Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social categorization., 98(26), 15387–15392. doi:10.1073/pnas.251541498.
Langner, O., Dotsch, R., Bijlstra, G., Wigboldus, D. H. J., Hawk, S. T., & van Knippenberg, A. (2010). Presentation and validation of the Radboud faces database. Cognition & Emotion, 24(8), 1377–1388. doi:10.1080/02699930903485076.
Lupien, S. J., McEwen, B. S., Gunnar, M. R., & Heim, C. (2009). Effects of stress throughout the lifespan on the brain, behaviour and cognition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(6), 434–445. doi:10.1038/nrn2639.
Maner, J. K., & Miller, S. L. (2013). Adaptive Attentional attunement: Perceptions of danger and attention to Outgroup men. Social Cognition, 31(6), 733–744. doi:10.1521/soco.2013.31.6.733.
Maner, J. K., Miller, S. L., Moss, J. H., Leo, J. L., & Plant, E. A. (2012). Motivated social categorization: Fundamental motives enhance people's sensitivity to basic social categories. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103(1), 70–83. doi:10.1037/a0028172.
van Marle, H. J. F., Hermans, E. J., Qin, S., & Fernández, G. (2009). From specificity to sensitivity: How acute stress affects amygdala processing of biologically salient stimuli. Biological Psychiatry, 66(7), 649–655. doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2009.05.014.
McDonald, M. M., Navarrete, C. D., & van Vugt, M. (2012). Evolution and the psychology of intergroup conflict: The male warrior hypothesis. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 367(1589), 670–679.
Meier, S., Pierce, L., Vaccaro, A., & La Cara, B. (2016). Trust and in-group favoritism in a culture of crime. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 132, 78–92. doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2016.09.005.
van der Meij, L., Almela, M., Hidalgo, V., Villada, C., IJzerman, H., van Lange, P. A. M., & Salvador, A. (2012). Testosterone and cortisol release among Spanish soccer fans watching the 2010 world cup final. PloS One, 7(4), e34814. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0034814.s001.
Minear, M., & Park, D. C. (2004). A lifespan database of adult facial stimuli. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 36(4), 630–633. doi:10.3758/BF03206543.
Morgan III, C. A., Wang, S., Mason, J., Southwick, S. M., Fox, P., Hazlett, G., et al. (2000). Hormone profiles in humans experiencing military survival training. Biological Psychiatry, 47(10), 891–901. doi:10.1016/S0006-3223(99)00307-8.
Navarrete, C. D., Olsson, A., Ho, A. K., Mendes, W. B., Thomsen, L., & Sidanius, J. (2009). Fear extinction to an out-group face: The role of target gender. Psychological Science, 20(2), 155–158. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02273.x.
Navarrete, C. D., McDonald, M. M., Molina, L. E., & Sidanius, J. (2010). Prejudice at the nexus of race and gender: An outgroup male target hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(6), 933. doi:10.1037/a0017931.
Öhman, A. (2005). The role of the amygdala in human fear: Automatic detection of threat. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 30(10), 953–958. doi:10.1016/j.psyneuen.2005.03.019.
Payne, B. K. (2001). Prejudice and perception: The role of automatic and controlled processes in misperceiving a weapon. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(2), 181–192. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.81.2.181.
Phelps, E. A., & LeDoux, J. E. (2005). Contributions of the amygdala to emotion processing: From animal models to human Behavior. Neuron, 48(2), 175–187. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2005.09.025.
Phelps, E. A., O'Connor, K. J., Cunningham, W. A., Funayama, E. S., Gatenby, J. C., Gore, J. C., & Banaji, M. R. (2000). Performance on indirect measures of race evaluation predicts amygdala activation. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 12(5), 729–738. doi:10.1162/089892900562552.
Phillips, P. J., Wechsler, H., Huang, J., & Rauss, P. J. (1998). The FERET database and evaluation procedure for face-recognition algorithms. Image and Vision Computing, 16(5), 295–306. doi:10.1109/34.879790.
Pietraszewski, D., Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2014). The content of our cooperation, not the color of our skin: An alliance detection system regulates categorization by coalition and race, but not sex. PloS One, 9(2), e88534. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0088534.
Schuster, M. A., Stein, B. D., Jaycox, L., Collins, R. L., Marshall, G. N., Elliott, M. N., et al. (2001). A national survey of stress reactions after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The New England Journal of Medicine, 345(20), 1507–1512. doi:10.1056/NEJM200111153452024.
Smeets, T., Cornelisse, S., Quaedflieg, C. W. E. M., Meyer, T., Jelicic, M., & Merckelbach, H. (2012). Introducing the Maastricht acute stress Test (MAST): A quick and non-invasive approach to elicit robust autonomic and glucocorticoid stress responses. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 37(12), 1998–2008. doi:10.1016/j.psyneuen.2012.04.012.
Smith, A., Johal, S., Wadsworth, E., & Britain, G. (2000). The scale of occupational stress: The Bristol stress and health at work study. Sudbury: HSE books.
Stanley, D. A., Sokol-Hessner, P., Banaji, M. R., & Phelps, E. A. (2011). Implicit race attitudes predict trustworthiness judgments and economic trust decisions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(19), 7710–7715. doi:10.1073/pnas.1014345108.
Stanton, S. J., LaBar, K. S., Saini, E. K., Kuhn, C. M., & Beehner, J. C. (2010). Stressful politics: voters' cortisol responses to the outcome of the 2008 United States presidential election. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 35(5), 768–774. doi:10.1016/j.psyneuen.2009.10.018.
van Stegeren, A. H., Goekoop, R., Everaerd, W., Scheltens, P., Barkhof, F., Kuijer, J. P. A., & Rombouts, S. A. R. B. (2005). Noradrenaline mediates amygdala activation in men and women during encoding of emotional material. NeuroImage, 24(3), 898–909. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2004.09.011.
Strange, B., & Dolan, R. (2004). β-adrenergic modulation of emotional memory-evoked human amygdala and hippocampal responses. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 101(31), 11454–11458.
Taylor, S. E., Klein, L. C., Lewis, B. P., Gruenewald, T. L., Gurung, R. A., & Updegraff, J. A. (2000). Biobehavioral responses to stress in females: Tend-and-befriend, not fight-or-flight. Psychological Review, 107(3), 411. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.107.3.411.
Terbeck, S., Kahane, G., McTavish, S., Savulescu, J., Cowen, P. J., & Hewstone, M. (2012). Propranolol reduces implicit negative racial bias. Psychopharmacology, 222(3), 419–424. doi:10.1007/s00213-012-2657-5.
Todorov, A., Pakrashi, M., & Oosterhof, N. N. (2009). Evaluating faces on trustworthiness after minimal time exposure. Social Cognition, 27(6), 813–833. doi:10.1521/soco.2009.27.6.813.
Trawalter, S., Todd, A. R., Baird, A. A., & Richeson, J. A. (2008). Attending to threat: Race-based patterns of selective attention. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44(5), 1322–1327. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2008.03.006.
Velasco González, K., Verkuyten, M., Weesie, J., & Poppe, E. (2010). Prejudice towards Muslims in The Netherlands: Testing integrated threat theory. British Journal of Social Psychology, 47(4), 667–685. doi:10.1348/014466608X284443.
Veldhuis, T., & Bakker, E. (2009). Muslims in the Netherlands: Tensions and violent conflict. In Ethno-religious conflict in Europe: Typologies of radicalisation in Europe’s Muslim communities. Brussels: Centre for European Policy Studies.
van Vugt, M., De Cremer, D., & Janssen, D. P. (2007). Gender differences in cooperation and competition the male-warrior hypothesis. Psychological Science, 18(1), 19–23.
Wheeler, M. E., & Fiske, S. T. (2005). Controlling racial prejudice: Social-cognitive goals affect amygdala and stereotype activation. Psychological Science, 16(1), 56–63. doi:10.1111/j.0956-7976.2005.00780.x.
van Wingen, G. A., Geuze, E., Vermetten, E., & ndez, G. F. A. (2011). Perceived threat predicts the neural sequelae of combat stress. Molecular Psychiatry, 16(6), 664–671. doi:10.1038/mp.2010.132.
van't Wout, M., & Sanfey, A. G. (2008). Friend or foe: The effect of implicit trustworthiness judgments in social decision-making. Cognition, 108(3), 796–803. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2008.07.002.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Iain Morley, Tom Smeets, Leeander van der Meij, Josh Tybur, Gustav Schelling, Peter Bos and the providers of the face databases.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflicts of Interest
The authors report no conflicts of interest.
Funding
This study was supported by a European Human Evolution and Behaviour Association Society student grant.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Salam, A.P., Rainford, E., van Vugt, M. et al. Acute Stress Reduces Perceived Trustworthiness of Male Racial Outgroup Faces. Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology 3, 282–292 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40750-017-0065-0
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40750-017-0065-0