Social learning of fear and safety is determined by the demonstrator’s racial group (Experiment 2)

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Abstract

Social learning offers an efficient route through which humans and other animals learn about potential dangers in the environment. Such learning inherently relies on the transmission of social information and should imply selectivity in what to learn from whom. Here, we conducted two observational learning experiments to assess how humans learn about danger and safety from members (‘demonstrators') of an other social group than their own. We show that both fear and safety learning from a racial in-group demonstrator was more potent than learning from a racial out-group demonstrator.

ID 183

Authors

Armita Golkar, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Division of Psychology, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden Vasco Castro, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Division of Psychology, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden Andreas Olsson, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Division of Psychology, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

Year

2015

DOI of Publication

10.1098/rsbl.2014.0817

Persistent Identifier to Dataset

10.1098/rsbl.2014.0817

Where was the data collected?

Karolinska Institutet, Sweden

How to Cite

Golkar, Armita; Castro, Vasco; Olsson, Andreas (2014). Social learning of fear and safety is determined by the demonstrator’s racial group [Dataset]. Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.n9v18

Participant Information

Participant Age

Participant Gender

Experimental Group

[...] during observational extinction, participants watched a video depicting either the in- (White) or the out-group (Black) demonstrator acting calmly when exposed to presentations of both CSs

Stimuli

Drug Administration

No

Conditioning Protocol

Differential

Instructions CS-US Contingencies

Partially instructed (whole exp)

Number of Different US

1

US Modality

electrotactile

Number of Different CS+

1

CS+ 1: Reinforcement Rate (%)

100

CS+ 2: Reinforcement Rate (%)

CS+ 3: Reinforcement Rate (%)

Number of Different CS-

1

CS Modality

visual

Data Collected During MRI

No

Physiological Measures

measured trialwise & untransformed

Skin Conductance Response

Yes Yes

Skin Conductance Level

No No

Pupil Size

No No

Fear Potentiated Startle/Startle EMG

No No

Heart Rate

No No

Ratings

US Expectancy

No

US Intensity Rating

No

CS Valence

No

CS Arousal

No

CS Fear

No

CS Stress

No

CS Anxiety

No

Contingency Awareness

No

Questionnaires

State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-T)