The DOI matches its Crossref record; 41 of the 41 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Experiencing ownership over a dark-skinned body reduces implicit racial bias
Open accessAbstract
Previous studies have investigated how existing social attitudes towards other races affect the way we 'share' their bodily experiences, for example in empathy for pain, and sensorimotor mapping. Here, we ask whether it is possible to alter implicit racial attitudes by experimentally increasing self-other bodily overlap. Employing a bodily illusion known as the 'Rubber Hand Illusion', we delivered multisensory stimulation to light-skinned Caucasian participants to induce the feeling that a dark-skinned hand belonged to them. We then measured whether this could change their implicit racial biases against people with dark skin. Across two experiments, the more intense the participants' illusion of ownership over the dark-skinned rubber hand, the more positive their implicit racial attitudes became. Importantly, it was not the pattern of multisensory stimulation per se, but rather, it was the change in the subjective experience of body ownership that altered implicit attitudes. These findings suggest that inducing an overlap between the bodies of self and other through illusory ownership is an effective way to change and reduce negative implicit attitudes towards outgroups.
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“This study was notable because it demonstrated a role of the self-association in attitude change, whereas previous research [9,10] had investigated more generic positive or negative associations with the embodied social group.”
From Changing bodies changes minds: Owning another body affects social cognition (2015) · cites this paper as [9]
In the citing paper
“Taken together, the findings show that changes in the mental representation of one's own body affect the perceived similarity between one's own body and that of an outgroup, resulting in significant changes in implicit biases.”
From Changing bodies changes minds: Owning another body affects social cognition (2015) · cites this paper as [9]
In the citing paper
“Ownership of an outgroup body has been found to be associated with a significant reduction in implicit biases against that outgroup.”
From Changing bodies changes minds: Owning another body affects social cognition (2015) · cites this paper as [9]
In the citing paper
“However, the manipulations used to induce bodily illusions involve highly salient multisensory cues which are strongly predictive of body ownership, and thus may override top-down modulations by social attitudes [9][10][11][12][13].”
From Changing bodies changes minds: Owning another body affects social cognition (2015) · cites this paper as [9]
In the citing paper
“Importantly, participants showed a significant decrease in negative implicit attitudes towards dark skin, which correlated with the strength of ownership experienced over the other-race hand.”
From Changing bodies changes minds: Owning another body affects social cognition (2015) · cites this paper as [9]
In the citing paper
“The more intense the participants' illusion of ownership over the dark-skinned rubber hand, the more positive their implicit racial attitudes became.”
From Changing bodies changes minds: Owning another body affects social cognition (2015) · cites this paper as [9]
In the citing paper
“This results in the outgroup not only being associated with the self-concept, as already shown by [11], but also with positive concepts more generally, as shown by [9,10].”
From Changing bodies changes minds: Owning another body affects social cognition (2015) · cites this paper as [9]
In the citing paper
“In both cases, there was a reduction in implicit racial bias associated only with the illusion of ownership of a dark-skinned body.”
From Illusory ownership of a virtual child body causes overestimation of object sizes and implicit attitude changes (2013) · cites this paper as [41]
In the citing paper
“These experiments provide evidence supporting the idea that it is not only prior experience of a body type that influences the extent of perceptual, attitudinal, and behavioral correlates of the body ownership illusion.”
From Illusory ownership of a virtual child body causes overestimation of object sizes and implicit attitude changes (2013) · cites this paper as [41]
In the citing paper
“There is further evidence for this in recent experiments where light-skinned people were induced to experience the illusion of ownership over a black rubber arm (41) and over a dark-skinned virtual body (42).”
From Illusory ownership of a virtual child body causes overestimation of object sizes and implicit attitude changes (2013) · cites this paper as [41]
In the citing paper
“Previous studies on the perceptual, behavioural and cognitive correlates of body transformation have concentrated on embodiment of adult participants in bodies that are representative of a group: for example, children16 or a different race20212324.”
From Conversations between self and self as Sigmund Freud—A virtual body ownership paradigm for self counselling (2015) · cites this paper as [21]
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Citations
Cites
Measuring individual differences in empathy: Evidence for a multidimensional approach.
Davis, M. H. (1983) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.44.1.113 · Cited by 10,272
Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: the implicit association test
Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. L. K. (1998) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.74.6.1464 · Cited by 9,210
Understanding and using the Implicit Association Test: I. An improved scoring algorithm.
Greenwald, A. G., Nosek, B. A., & Banaji, M. R. (2003) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.85.2.197 · Cited by 5,815
Rubber hands ‘feel’ touch that eyes see
Botvinick, M., & Cohen, J. (1998) · Nature · doi:10.1038/35784 · Cited by 4,410
A unifying view of the basis of social cognition
GALLESE, V, KEYSERS, C., & RIZZOLATTI, G. (2004) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2004.07.002 · Cited by 2,236
Harvesting implicit group attitudes and beliefs from a demonstration web site.
Nosek, B. A., Banaji, M. R., & Greenwald, A. G. (2002) · Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice · doi:10.1037/1089-2699.6.1.101 · Cited by 1,321
The roots of empathy: the shared manifold hypothesis and the neural basis of intersubjectivity
Gallese, V. (2003) · Psychopathology · doi:10.1159/000072786 · Cited by 1,249
The Single Category Implicit Association Test as a measure of implicit social cognition.
Karpinski, A., & Steinman, R. B. (2006) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.91.1.16 · Cited by 1,108 · cited 5×
“Results were analysed with an adapted version of Greenwald, Nosek, & Banaji, 2003 utilised by Karpinski and Steinman (2006). First, the overall error rates of each participant were checked to confirm that none exceeded the maximum acceptable error rate of 20% (as defined by Karpinski & Steinman, 2006).”
BackgroundMethodInfluentialWhat is embodiment? A psychometric approach
Longo, M. R., Schüür, F., Kammers, M. P. M., Tsakiris, M., & Haggard, P. (2008) · Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2007.12.004 · Cited by 956
(2001) · Cited by 864
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Enhancing Our Lives with Immersive Virtual Reality
Slater, M., & Sanchez-Vives, M. V. (2016) · Frontiers in Robotics and AI · doi:10.3389/frobt.2016.00074 · Cited by 1,993
Putting yourself in the skin of a black avatar reduces implicit racial bias
Peck, T. C., Seinfeld, S., Aglioti, S. M., & Slater, M. (2013) · Consciousness and Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.concog.2013.04.016 · Cited by 967
Parsons, T. D. (2015) · Frontiers in Human Neuroscience · doi:10.3389/fnhum.2015.00660 · Cited by 837
A meta-analysis of procedures to change implicit measures
Forscher, P. S., Lai, C. K., Axt, J. R., Ebersole, C. R., Herman, M., Devine, P. G., & Nosek, B. A. (2019) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/pspa0000160 · Cited by 700
Banakou, D., Groten, R., & Slater, M. (2013) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1306779110 · Cited by 695
Metadata
- Authors
- Maister, L., Sebanz, N., Knoblich, G., & Tsakiris, M.
- Affiliations
- Royal Holloway University of London (GB)
- Radboud University Nijmegen (NL)
- Central European University (AT)
- Corresponding author
- Maister, Lara
- Venue
- Cognition
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2013-08
- Volume
- 128
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 170-178
- ISSN
- 0010-0277 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC3750641
- OpenAlex
- W2038594232
- Cited by
- 221
- References
- 41
- Citations by year
- 2026: 12 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 16 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 31 · 2020: 30 · 2019: 28 · 2018: 18 · 2017: 14 · 2016: 14 · 2015: 8 · 2014: 12 · 2013: 7
- FWCI
- 42.18
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- europepmc.org
- Locations
- Cognition (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Radboud Repository (Radboud University) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Experimental Psychology Society
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Virtual Reality Applications and Impacts
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Racial and Ethnic Identity Research
- Keywords
- implicit racial bias, body ownership, rubber hand illusion, multisensory integration, dark skin, outgroup attitudes, implicit attitudes, embodiment, intergroup attitudes
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Attitude, Body Image, Female, Humans, Illusions, Male, White People, Racial Groups, Young Adult, Racism
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