Changing bodies changes minds: owning another body affects social cognition

Area of Science:

• Social Psychology
• Cognitive Neuroscience

Background:

• Prejudice influences how individuals process outgroups.
• Implicit social bias is a significant area of research.
• Previous studies explored changing implicit bias through altered self-other relationships.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if bodily illusions can alter implicit social bias.
• To examine the role of self-association in reducing prejudice.
• To understand the mechanism linking physical self-perception to conceptual bias reduction.

Main Methods:

• Experimental studies involving bodily illusions.
• Inducing a sense of ownership over an outgroup body (differing in gender, age, or race).
• Measuring changes in implicit biases post-illusion.

Main Results:

• Ownership of an outgroup body significantly reduced implicit biases against that outgroup.
• Bodily illusions led to increased perceived physical similarity between self and outgroup members.
• This effect extended from the physical to the conceptual domain.

Conclusions:

• Self-association, initiated through physical embodiment, can effectively reduce implicit social bias.
• Perceived physical similarity is a key mediator in generalizing positive self-associations to outgroups.
• Experimental manipulation of bodily ownership offers a novel pathway to mitigate prejudice.