Attention Marxists: Now, a pill to soften your racial bias

PTI Mar 11, 2012, 06.07AM IST

LONDON: A drug used to treat heart disease can affect a person's subconscious attitudes towards race, a new study has claimed.

In the study, at the Oxford University, published in Psychopharmacology , researchers gave 18 people drug propranolol and 18 people a placebo and found that the propranolol group scored significantly lower on the Implicit Attitude Test into subconscious racial bias, a standard test for testing subconscious racial attitudes.

Propranolol is a betablocker used to treat heart disease that blocks activation in the peripheral 'autonomic' nervous system and in the area of the brain implicated in fear or emotional responses . Researchers believe propranolol reduced implicit racial bias because such bias is based on automatic, nonconscious fear responses, which propranolol blocks.

Sylvia Terbeck, lead author and experimental psychologist at Oxford University , said, "Our results offer new evidence about the processes in the brain that shape implicit racial bias. Implicit racial bias can occur even in people with a sincere belief in equality," she said.

Julian Savulescu of Oxford University's Faculty of Philosophy, a co-author , said: "Such research raises the tantalizing possibility that our unconscious racial attitudes could be modulated using drugs."

SOURCE: Times of India