Perceiving social injustice during arrests of Black and White civilians by White police officers: An fMRI investigation.

From social media to courts of law, recordings of interracial police officer-civilian interactions are now widespread and publicly available. People may be motivated to preferentially understand the dynamics of these interactions when they perceive injustice towards those whose communities experience disproportionate policing relative to others (e.g., non-White racial/ethnic groups). To explore these questions, two studies were conducted (study 1 neuroimaging n = 69 and study 2 behavioral n = 58). The fMRI study examined White participants' neural activity when viewing real-world videos with varying degrees of aggression or conflict of White officers arresting a Black or White civilian. Activity in brain regions supporting social cognition was greater when viewing Black (vs. White) civilians involved in more aggressive police encounters. Additionally, although an independent sample of perceivers rated videos featuring Black and White civilians as similar in overall levels of aggression when civilian race was obscured, participants in the fMRI study (where race was not obscured) rated officers as more aggressive and their use of force as less legitimate when the civilian was Black. In study 2, participants who had not viewed the videos also reported that they believe police are generally more unjustly aggressive towards Black compared with White civilians. These findings inform our understanding of how perceptions of conflict with the potential for injustice shape social cognitive engagement when viewing arrests of Black and White individuals by White police officers.

Social justice neuroscience, a valuable and complex endeavor: Authors' reply to commentaries on "Perceiving social injustice during arrests of Black and White civilians by White police officers: An fMRI investigation".

In commentaries about our article, "Perceiving social injustice during arrests of Black and White civilians by White police officers: An fMRI investigation" (Dang et al., 2022), Harris (2022), Niv and Kardosh (2022), and Purdie-Greenway and Spagna (2022) made suggestions to increase the generalizability of future research on this topic and cautioned about misinterpretation of the obtained findings. We agree with their assessments, noting that this emerging program of research should be extended to different populations and stimuli. We conclude with a general discussion of the benefits and challenges associated with multidisciplinary research and share our thoughts about engaging in social justice neuroscience.

Regional and network neural activity reflect men's preference for greater socioeconomic status during impression formation.

Evidence from social psychology suggests that men compared to women more readily display and pursue control over human resources or capital. However, studying how status and gender shape deliberate impression formation is difficult due to social desirability concerns. Using univariate and multivariate fMRI analyses (n = 65), we examined how gender and socioeconomic status (SES) may influence brain responses during deliberate but private impression formation. Men more than women showed greater activity in the VMPFC and NAcc when forming impressions of high-SES (vs. low-SES) targets. Seed partial least squares (PLS) analysis showed that this SES-based increase in VMPFC activity was associated with greater co-activation across an evaluative network for the high-SES versus low-SES univariate comparison. A data-driven task PLS analysis also showed greater co-activation in an extended network consisting of regions involved in salience detection, attention, and task engagement as a function of increasing target SES. This co-activating network was most pronounced for men. These findings provide evidence that high-SES targets elicit neural responses indicative of positivity, reward, and salience during impression formation among men. Contributions to a network neuroscience understanding of status perception and implications for gender- and status-based impression formation are discussed.

Punishing the privileged: Selfish offers from high-status allocators elicit greater punishment from third-party arbitrators.

Individuals high in socioeconomic status (SES) are often viewed as valuable members of society. However, the appeal of high-SES people exists in tension with our aversion to inequity. Little experimental work has directly examined how people rectify inequitable distributions between two individuals varying in SES. The objective of the present study was to examine how disinterested third parties adjudicate inequity in the context of concrete financial allocations between a selfish allocator and a recipient who was the victim of the allocator's selfish offer. Specifically, this study focused on whether knowing the SES of the victim or the allocator affected the participant's decisions to punish the selfish allocator. In two experiments (N = 999), participants completed a modified third-party Ultimatum Game in which they arbitrated inequitable exchanges between an allocator and a recipient. Although participants generally preferred to redistribute inequitable exchanges without punishing players who made unfair allocations, we observed an increased preference for punitive solutions as offers became increasingly selfish. This tendency was especially pronounced when the victim was low in SES or when the perpetrator was high in SES, suggesting a tendency to favor the disadvantaged even among participants reporting high subjective SES. Finally, punitive responses were especially likely when the context emphasized the allocator's privileged status rather than the recipient's underprivileged status. These findings inform our understanding of how SES biases retributive justice even in non-judicial contexts that minimize the salience of punishment.

Bringing technology to the bedside: using smartphones to improve interprofessional communication.

The purpose of this project was to evaluate the impact of using Smartphones at the bedside on the quality of interprofessional communication and measure the response time between nurses and physicians compared with the usual paging device. Smartphones were provided to nurses and physicians on a 26-bed medical unit during a 2-month study period. Data were collected using Nurse-Physician Communication Questionnaires and Time and Motion data collection tools. Baseline data gathered from a convenience sample of general medicine nurses (n=61) and physicians (n=44) indicated that both nurses and physicians were dissatisfied with the current one-way paging devices and were frequently interrupted during patient care (P=.000). Postimplementation data suggested that the use of Smartphones significantly reduced patient interruptions (P=.021), allowed nurses to stay with patients (P=.002), and reduced wait times for a returned call (P=.001). Nurse travel time to answer a telephone call and time spent on hold by nurses and physicians also decreased by 100% from a range of 8 to 79 minutes down to 0 minutes. Staff reported improvement in quality of communication, and significant workflow efficiency was noted. Further research on the impact on patient safety and satisfaction is needed and other nursing units should consider implementing Smartphones within their medical centers.