Take a look at the picture to the right. Scary aren't they. That is because they are black. In a fascinating study by Matthew Lieberman, assistant professor of psychology at UCLA, it was discovered that fear of black men in embedded in the American psyche and that is not only the white American psyche, African-Americans are equally fearful when they see photos of expressionless African-American males. This is in contrast to Caucasian males who do not illicit this fear in either Black or White Americans.

The study was conducted by monitoring one of the most primitive structures in the brain, the amygdala. If you are talking primal fear then you talking about the amygdala. Most subjects, both Black and White, showed increased activity in this section of the brain when shown photos of expressionless faces of black men in a way that was completely absent when shown equivalent photos of white men. Professor Matt says,

Many people of either race may not be happy to find out that a part of their brain involved in responding to potential threats responds more to African Americans than Caucasians. Even people who believe to their core that they do not have prejudices may still have negative associations that are not conscious.

One of the more popular theories explaining this phenonemon is that our brains are "trained" at an early age to illicit this response when confronted with the appropriate stimuli, ie a black face. This training is independant of immediate family relationships. One could speculate that the Black Power movement originating in the 1960s may have fundamentally altered the perception of a whole generation of Americans of all colours towards Black males.

As pointed out earlier the amygdala is a very primitive structure in the brain and we have more modern structures that can, and do, come into play when dealing with our primal fears. The right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex is primarily concerned with moderating/inhibiting our more primal responses. In the case of the subjects of this study mentioning the term "African-American" at the time the image was shown caused a substantial increase in activity in this area. Spoken language interpretation is, of course, a much more advanced brain function than vision and invoking this high brain function also invoked the higher regulatory functions as well. It seems that whilst the subjects were scared of the image they also worked at suppressing this fear, presumably because they viewed it as racist and inappropriate.

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