INTERVIEW: Mina Cikara Flashcards
What did Mina Cikara study?
the policy beliefs for three other target
Results found that as the distractor (Target C) becomes more similar to the Participant / Target B, preferences for Target B increase
What guides her work?
How people thoughts/ felings/ brains/ and behaviour change when they switch from
(i’m an individual)
vs
(us vs them groupings)
How thinking through lens of “us and them” changes empathy
Why is the neuroscience approach important, what can we learn from it?
Some intergroup info is hard to access with only self report
We have the accumulated info of all of neuroscience (it would be irresponsible to not use the info)
What does she study on pleasure and outgroups?
Does seeing an outgroup member suffer make u happy
- Does this then reaffirm your bias against the outgroup
How do we connect neuroscience to other stuff?
If we see a brain part activated we can reverse engineer and see what others studies found on these brain areas
Find different associations we might have that we can’t see with self report
Why is it important to look at micro type research?
(like few ppl instead of generalization with neuroscience)
Good to use all approaches (micro and macro)
If we can nail down basic cognitive structures, we can provide future research directions
What does she look into about groups?
What makes up groups
Why does definition of white change
Why aren’t brunettes a social category
Did the latent structure or outgroup membership matter more?
Both held influence
She assumes Latent might be more important if ran study for a long time
Is it inherently categories that make us act with preference?
Not the categories themselves, but it’s the years of subjugation at the hands of majority groups
(no intrinsic reasons)
Is there a future direction she is excited to see?
Her work and seeing how shifting demographics are going to impact how intergroup relations is in the US over the next decades
How you feel about groups depends on who else is around
- How expectations of shifting demographics are changing political preferences
(Putting her work out in general to see who people will be aligning with)
How new groups showing up (immigration) changes your attitudes to previous out-groups
