Your brain on stereotypes : social context biases early cortical attention

Racially charged stereotypical associations exert a powerful influence on perception, memory, and attention (Payne, 2001; Shriver et al., 2008). Eberhardt et al. (2004) demonstrated that priming Black stereotypes (i.e., crime or basketball) elicited an attentional bias to Black faces. Numerous electrophysiological studies on person perception utilize samples of White participants and focus on later cognitive processing of social information (Bartholow & Dickter, 2007). Historically, few studies have investigated how stereotypical information is attended to early in the brain. We examined whether a similar attention bias to Black stereotypic faces would emerge in the N1 eventrelated brain potential (ERP) component, indicating early cortical activation of stereotypic associations. Findings demonstrated a bias to Black faces in race-stereotypic contexts, evident in larger N1 amplitude, regardless of participants??? racial/ethnic identity. This did not extend into later processing; Black faces were categorized faster than White faces overall, indexed by shorter P3 latency and reaction time.\ud Keywords'. ERPs, racial stereotypes, early attentio