Researchers have found that fulfilling a stereotype leads to a reward response in the brain and that people are even willing to give up money for it
Why do we need stereotypes and what are the inherent risks? Stereotypes (beliefs about traits that apparently characterize members of a certain group) can be positive or negative, right or wrong, and are used to catalog people.
Dr. Niv Regev, a researcher in the field of cognitive-social neuroscience in the psychology department at Ben Gurion University, examines phenomena from the world of social psychology, including stereotypes. According to him, "using the knowledge from neuroscience, I try to understand how people from different groups perceive others and themselves and their resulting behavior. For example, in an unfamiliar social situation - it will be observed that men (especially Israelis) will be more dominant in the conversation and women less so. It was also observed that women would talk more about family and children and men about football and work. Since these are the expectations of women and men, this is also the behavior they adopt, which reinforces these stereotypes. So it turns out that many times society criticizes those who break the stereotype and do not behave as expected."
In a significant part of his research, Dr. Regev tries to understand why the social and cultural stereotypes and the behavior resulting from them are so mentally fixed and difficult to change, what are the mechanisms that strengthen them and how they affect us. In their latest study, carried out with the support of the National Science Foundation, the researcher and his team examined how stereotypes affect the brain and behavior.
In the first part of the study, the researchers scanned the brains of 46 subjects (male and female students) with an fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) device, while they watched content on a screen that represented gender or ethnic stereotypes; The subjects were presented with 240 gender-neutral sentences, such as "thinks a lot about family/football", "tends to drive irresponsibly", "tends to like high-tech work". After each sentence, the researchers asked the subjects to guess which character would appear on the screen - a man or a woman, an Arab or a Jew - and then showed them a picture of one of these characters. The brain area associated with reward (the ventral striatum) where increased activity was found when the stereotype was fulfilled
It was found that when the sentence corresponded to the picture stereotypically (for example, "often thinks about family" + a picture of a woman), the activity of the ventral striatum - part of the brain area related to reward, pleasure and reinforcement of the behavior (so that it repeats itself) - was strengthened. That is, the fulfillment of the stereotype led to a reward response in the brain. When the sentence did not match the image stereotypically - the activity of the area weakened. "This finding illustrates that in our minds there is a feedback loop that reinforces the stereotypes we hold," explains Dr. Regev.
In the second part of the study, the researchers wanted to test the behavioral pattern that results from the stereotypes - are people willing to give up money in order to be exposed to information that matches their expectations. For this purpose, we examined about 450 subjects on the Internet (60-18 years old) who belong to the databases of Ben Gurion University and the "Sample Project Panel" company.
The researchers wanted to check the behavioral pattern that results from the stereotypes - are people willing to give up money in order to be exposed to information that matches their expectations.
The researchers presented the subjects with several screens where they were asked to choose a picture of a character (woman or man) with a sentence that describes a certain trait (for example, "often thinks about family"). The choice was between seeing a typical or atypical figure (picture + sentence) (for example, a woman who often thinks about family / a man who often thinks about family). A different monetary value was attached to each choice - an amount ranging from three to 12 shekels. For example, the typical figure was assigned a sum of six pennies and the atypical figure a sum of nine pennies or the opposite or equal. The subjects were told that at the end of the experiment they would receive the accumulated sum of their choices. It was found that most of them gave up 5%-13% of the money just to choose typical information and avoid choosing atypical information.
"Although the subjects did not give up a lot of money, this illustrates the impact of stereotypes on our society and the discrimination caused by them. These are gray cases, where people think it won't hurt to go with the known and known because it doesn't cause them a big loss. That is, when the disadvantage is supposedly small (a loss of a few pennies in this case), it is much easier to justify choosing a stereotype. But in the real world it is of course more critical when people value more the characters that conform to the stereotype and do not consider objective qualities. This is the case, for example, in job interviews for jobs that are considered masculine (such as programming) - the interviewee will often be perceived as having a higher value than the interviewee even when they are compared in all variables (such as performance and recommendations)", concludes Dr. Regev.
Life itself:
Dr. Niv Regev, married + two (10, 7), lives in Tel Aviv. From the founders of "A common denominator - an association for gender education in Israel" ("Within the association, we held workshops for students on gender stereotypes. These workshops are part of what shaped my research identity in addition to the doctorate I did in cognitive and memory sciences"). Fan of fantasy and science fiction and in his free time likes to spend time and travel with his family.
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