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

ID 183 2 Reuses

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.

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

Is Version of

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

Uninstructed (whole exp)

Number of Different US

1

US Modality

electrotactile

US Duration (ms)

Time Between CS and US Onset (ms)

Number of Different CS+

1

CS+ Duration (ms)

CS+ 1: Reinforcement Rate (%)

100

CS+ 2: Reinforcement Rate (%)

CS+ 3: Reinforcement Rate (%)

Number of Different CS-

1

CS- Duration (ms)

CS Modality

visual

Data Collected During MRI

No

Measures

skin conductance response

trialwise & untransformed

Amplitude of skin conductance response to stimulus.

State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-T)