ABSTRACT
Functional magnetic imaging (fMRI) measures and maps brain activity. One criticism of fMRI studies in psychology has been the fascination that researchers have had with just finding out “where the brain lights up” and possibly being too enamored with the technology. The omnibus ANOVA isolated a race-of-face main effect in the right amygdala and hippocampus and an interaction of race of face by task in the right amygdala; these areas overlapped. Planned contrasts of trials presenting Black faces versus White faces were completed separately for each of the three main tasks. Categorical processing of social targets, which social psychology nominates as the default processing mode, generated differential responses to in-group versus out-group members both in the amygdala and in stereotype activation. Changes in social-cognitive set occurred within the same individuals; that is, regardless of an individual’s long-term tendencies toward prejudice, responses to the target person varied with controllable processing goals.
