‘Peace efforts’ take longer to recognise than threats, study shows

Our brains detect threats ‘automatically’ but the process of understanding conciliatory gestures is far more complex, new research from Goldsmiths, University of London suggests.

Dorottya Lantos and colleagues aimed to gain a better understanding on a neurological level of how people respond to threats and intergroup conflict; for instance, conflict between people of different races or religions. 

Their work helps contribute toward our understanding of what happens in the brain when we are faced with existential threats that challenge our way of survival, be it terrorism or a global pandemic such as Covid-19. 

Evaluating and responding to a reconciliation effort triggers different areas of the brain than a threat does, their study found. It takes more cognitive effort because we have to quickly consider multiple questions and weigh up more information during the process before drawing a conclusion. 

The hope is that this kind of research can help us understand how to prevent stereotypical thinking and negative bias, with that reinforcement often coming from biased media coverage.

Their study, published in the journal Social Neuroscience on Monday 4 May 2020, looked at the parts of the brain which activate when threats are perceived and which parts are triggered into action when observing reconciliation. 

Researchers showed non-Muslim Western Caucasian participants video clips of Muslim men in traditional Middle Eastern dress making a threatening statement, offering reconciliation, or making a neutral statement. 

Using neuroimaging techniques (fMRI), the researchers observed which areas of participants’ brain were activated while watching each of the scenarios. 

Threatening statements led to increased activation in the amygdala, insula, supramarginal gyrus and temporal lobe areas of the brain. The amygdala is associated with responding to high-arousal situations and fear-related stimuli and converting this to threat and distress. The supramarginal gyrus has been associated with increased attention to specific semantic information, suggesting that threats capture the attention of participants more.

When participants watched video clips showing reconciliation efforts, the results of the fMRI showed increased activation in other areas: the prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate gyrus, and caudate. The prefrontal cortex has been associated with forgiveness as well as impulse control, inhibition, and emotion regulation. 

These findings suggest that threat detection is a relatively automatic process, while evaluating and responding to reconciliation offers elicited responses in more cognitive regions (such as the prefrontal lobe).

Continuous exposure to media representations of certain groups as harbouring evil intentions promotes the endorsement of negative stereotypes and hostility, prior research has shown. This can lead to the escalation of intergroup conflict and violence.

Dorottya Lantos, PhD candidate in the Department of Psychology at Goldsmiths, said:

“Attention-grabbing headlines of terrorism threats have become a part of our everyday lives. Data suggests that this threat is overexaggerated by the media, compared to that warranted by the actual number of deaths caused by terrorism. A 2019 study also found that acts of terrorism are over 350% more likely be covered by the US media if the perpetrator is Muslim.

 “To prevent the escalation of intergroup conflict, we must gain a better understanding of the way individuals respond to threats and reconciliation offers from perceived dangerous outgroups.

“The COVID-19 outbreak brought with it instances of blatant hostility and xenophobic attitudes globally between different racial groups. Our research may help shed light on how we can foster intergroup peace while also inform social scientists and policy makers about the neural responses to threat posed by outgroups, and the ways in which targeting reconciliation efforts may be the most beneficial.”

'The Neural Mechanisms of Threat and Reconciliation Efforts Between Muslims and Non-Muslims' by Dorottya Lantos (Goldsmiths, University of London), Yong Hui Lau (University of Melbourne), Winnifred Louis (University of Queensland) and Pascal Molenberghs (Institute for Social Neuroscience, Melbourne) is published in Social Neuroscience: https://doi.org/10.1080/17470919.2020.1754287