The drug that reduces racial bias

[Ingrid in grids]

Here's the original UK study: Propranolol reduces implicit negative racial bias

Taking a heart disease medication can affect a person's subconscious attitudes towards race, a team of ethicists, psychiatrists and psychologists at Oxford University has found.

In a study published in Psychopharmacology, researchers gave 18 people the drug propranolol and 18 people a placebo and found that the propranolol group scored significantly lower on the Implicit Attitude Test into subconscious racial bias – a standard test for testing subconscious racial attitudes. There was no significant difference in the groups' explicit attitudes to other races.

Propranolol is a beta-blocker used to treat heart disease that blocks activation in the peripheral 'autonomic' nervous system and in the area of the brain implicated in fear or emotional responses. The researchers believe propranolol reduced implicit racial basis because such bias is based on automatic, non-conscious fear responses, which propranolol blocks.

Sylvia Terbeck, lead author and experimental psychologist at Oxford University, said: 'Our results offer new evidence about the processes in the brain that shape implicit racial bias. Implicit racial bias can occur even in people with a sincere belief in equality. Given the key role that such implicit attitudes appear to play in discrimination against other ethnic groups, and the widespread use of propranolol for medical purposes, our findings are also of considerable ethical interest.’

She added: 'Many people with medical conditions are probably already on drugs which affect subconscious bias and more research is needed into how drugs which affect our nervous system affect our moral attitudes and practices.'

Professor Julian Savulescu of Oxford University’s Faculty of Philosophy, a co-author, added: 'Such research raises the tantalising possibility that our unconscious racial attitudes could be modulated using drugs, a possibility that requires careful ethical analysis.

‘Biological research aiming to make people morally better has a dark history. And propranolol is not a pill to cure racism. But given that many people are already using drugs like propranolol which have 'moral' side effects, we at least need to better understand what these effects are.'

This study is the result of a collaboration between Sylvia Terbeck and Miles Hewstone of the department of Experimental Psychology, Phil Cowen and Sarah McTavish of the Department of Psychiatry, and Guy Kahane and Julian Savulescu of the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics

Sauce

An interesting and unexpected link. Thoughts?

 

[Ethanescence]

Interesting? Yes and no.

Implicit Attitude Test into subconscious racial bias - what does this mean, exactly? And if it doesn't impact upon explicit racial bias, which seems to what people would actually consider racism, why the preoccupation with racial attitudes?

Subconscious racial attitude is a narrowing down of a broad range of psychological activity that deals with emotional responses like fear, distrust, disgust and apprehension. And would probably impact upon other implicit attitudes to things like strangers, foreign situations, politicians, and dark rooms. It seems like the kind of article that could be easily strewn into something it's not, and raising ethical issues where none actually exist.

Personally I don't see the so called ethical issues or moral side effects that Savulescu speaks of.