Stereotypes on the brain: Using event-related brain potentials to investigate stereotyping.

According to a social cognitive perspective, stereotypes have been defined as cognitive structures that contain the perceiver’s knowledge, beliefs, and expectations about social groups (Hamilton & Trolier, 1986). Perceivers regularly rely on stereotypes to simplify the complex social environment and quickly make sense of the social world. Because of the importance and pervasiveness of stereotypes in everyday life, these phenomena have been at the top of the interests of social psychological research. Traditionally, the nature and functions of stereotypes have been primarily investigated by using self-report measures (i.e., questionnaires) and more cognitive measures (mainly based on response latencies and accuracy) in order to infer the underlying cognitive mechanisms. However, responses in computerized tasks represent the final outcome of a large number of intervening cognitive processes, and variations in the response latencies may not often be attributed to a single specific process. Recently, the emergence of neuroscience has provided social psychology with new methods that can override this limitation. In particular, the event-related brain potential (ERP) technique can provide a direct, on line, continuous measure of processing between a stimulus and a response, giving direct access to the various stages of information processing between perception and behavior (Luck, 2005). The main goal of this chapter is to introduce readers to recent social neuroscience research that has applied the ERP approach to the study of stereotypes and to show the major advances that it has produced in relation with the existing theories. We will first provide a brief overview of the recording, theory, and interpretation of the ERPs. Then, we will review studies that have used ERPs as useful tools to further investigate various aspects related to stereotyping: a) stereotype violation and confirmation; b) the influence of stereotype activation on behavioral processes, with specific attention given to the mechanisms involved in self-regulation; c) individual and situational differences in self-regulatory processes linked to the expression of stereotypes. In the chapter we will try to highlight how the integration of different methods, theories, and levels of analysis from both neuroscience and social psychology (i.e., the social neuroscience approach) can greatly facilitate a most comprehensive understanding of different important aspects of the human social mind.