“How do you like me now?”
Using movies to investigate the socially biased brain.

Our instinctive negative attitude toward “others” – due to prejudice, stereotyping and social misconceptions – causes intergroup conflicts to grow stronger and fuel disparities and discrimination. However, the reason behind this unfortunate neuro-psychological bias, that can easily make us empathize with some while dehumanizing others, remains unclear. Recent advances in the field of neuroscience show that the brain is in perceptual state where film clips can highly engage the brain to respond as if it was perceiving a real social event. These encouraging findings make it possible to use media simulation as a stimulus to investigate complex social dynamics that previously were difficult to investigate.

In this Talk we will present a new paradigm using naturalistic viewing of a movie to tap into the biased brain. We will also present our some of our preliminary results using this paradigm. Based on our knowledge, this is the first study to combine cutting-edge neuroscience methodology along with media stimulation to investigate complex social perception. Furthermore, our findings will serve to identify the successful properties needed to develop a future media-intervention application that will function as an effective tool to restore healthy social interaction between and within social groups.