Can feeling a different race's hand as your own reduce bias?
White participants who experienced a simulated sensation of owning a black-skinned hand showed a reduction in implicit racial bias, but only if they initially held negative attitudes.
Source
Change my body, change my mind: the effects of illusory ownership of an outgroup hand on implicit attitudes toward that outgroup
What they did
The researchers tested 148 white participants using a between-subjects design. Participants received either synchronous or asynchronous touch stimulation on their own hand while looking at either a black or white rubber hand. Their implicit attitudes toward Black people were measured before and after this experience using a single-category computer test.
What they found
Synchronous touch successfully created the illusion of ownership over both black and white rubber hands. Critically, participants who saw the black hand with synchronous touch showed significantly more positive post-test implicit attitudes compared to those who received asynchronous touch. This reduction in racial bias was specifically observed in individuals who initially held relatively negative attitudes.
The limits
What it doesn't show
This study only tested white participants, so it is unclear if the findings generalize to other racial groups or in-group/out-group combinations. It also did not measure the duration of this effect, meaning we do not know if the reduction in implicit bias lasts beyond the immediate experimental session. Furthermore, the single-category computer test may not directly translate to real-world behavioral changes.
Key terms
- Rubber Hand Illusion
- A psychological phenomenon where a person experiences a fake hand as part of their own body due to synchronized visual and tactile sensations.
- Implicit Association Test
- A computer-based assessment designed to measure automatic, subconscious associations and biases between concepts and evaluations.
- Visuotactile Stimulation
- The simultaneous delivery of visual input and tactile input to study sensory integration.
- Outgroup
- A social group with which an individual does not identify.
- Single Category Implicit Association Test
- A variation of the standard bias test that measures automatic attitudes toward a single target category in isolation rather than comparing two categories.
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Quiz yourself
In social cognition, how does race modulate the visual remapping of touch (VRT)?
Common questions
Did the participants' initial level of prejudice affect whether they felt the illusion?
No, the study found that pre-existing implicit racial bias did not predict how strongly participants experienced the rubber hand illusion.
Why was an asynchronous touch condition included in the experiment?
It acted as a control condition to prove that the changes in bias were driven by the sensory integration of touch (the illusion itself) rather than just looking at a different-colored hand.
Did looking at a white rubber hand change the participants' bias?
No, synchronous stimulation of the white rubber hand did not result in any significant changes to implicit racial attitudes.
How did facial features play a role in this research?
Unlike previous studies that used simplified drawings, this experiment used grayscale photographs with prototypical Black facial features, showing that the illusion's effects transfer to complex physical markers of race beyond just skin tone.
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