July 24, 2007
Evidence of White Guilt?
A recent Association for Psychological Science article has attempted to decipher why people feel "guilt."
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Given the way they're measuring this effect, I'd love to see some demographic information on their participants. Who wants to bet they're predominantly white, female college students? I'd be willing to bet we're looking at a classic example of white guilt in action.To test their theory, the researchers showed participants pictures of White, Black, or Asian faces, while monitoring their brain activity using EEG. The researchers then relayed randomized scores to the participants, telling them whether they responded positively or negatively to the White, Black, and Asian faces.
After receiving feedback indicating that they had responded negatively toward Black faces, subjects reported significantly increased guilt, anxiety, and sadness. The increase in guilt was larger than the change in any other emotion. Their reports were confirmed by the EEG, which showed significant reduction in left-sided frontal asymmetry following feedback. A large body of literature contends that left-sided asymmetry corresponds to approach motivation. So, in this case, the participants were initially feeling the punitive effects of guilt, or withdrawal motivation.
Posted by: Joseph at
11:39 AM
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