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Undergraduate students, 27 white and 27 black, provided saliva samples for testosterone assay, completed measures of prejudice, and viewed pictures of black and white target persons. Pupil dilation was measured continuously while subjects viewed the pictures and thought about meeting the persons whom they were seeing. Testosterone interacted with prejudice, such that prejudiced individuals who were low in testosterone showed large pupil dilation and prejudiced individuals who were high in testosterone showed small pupil dilation. The interaction of testosterone with prejudice in affecting dilation was not related to the race either of the subject, or of the target being viewed.
Most research on prejudice deals with motivational and cognitive processes (Fiske, 1998). Motivational processes involve denigrating others who are perceived as threatening one's physical, social, or psychological security. Cognitive processes involve treating others as members of groups, rather than as individuals, and attributing to them negative feelings and beliefs associated with the groups. These are general processes relevant to all prejudiced persons, though they are moderated by experience and training.
There is also research on individual differences, reflected most clearly in The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950), which would explain prejudice in terms of personality. In this view, the target is hardly relevant, and prejudice arises from the external workings out of disturbed inner processes. We propose a variation on this idea, specifically, that testosterone levels moderate the reactions of prejudiced persons. Testosterone is related to interpersonal dominance (Mazur, 1985), and prejudiced persons should react differently depending upon whether they feel more or less threatened by others whom they meet.
We examined pupil dilation among low and high prejudiced subjects reacting to persons of their own or a different race. On the basis of other research, more dilation should indicate more interest, attention, or arousal (Beatty, 1986). Less dilation should indicate a lack of arousal and possibly even negative affect and withdrawal (Hess, 1965).
METHOD
We measured testosterone and prejudice among white and black college students and monitored their pupil dilation while they viewed pictures of white and black target persons. Subjects were initially 87 male and female undergraduates participating as part of a course requirement. We excluded 11 subjects who could not be classified as either white or black, and...