{"id":120271,"date":"2015-05-29T10:00:06","date_gmt":"2015-05-29T10:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=120271"},"modified":"2015-05-29T07:49:47","modified_gmt":"2015-05-29T07:49:47","slug":"sleep-training-may-reduce-racism-and-sexism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2015\/05\/sleep-training-may-reduce-racism-and-sexism\/","title":{"rendered":"Sleep training may reduce racism and sexism"},"content":{"rendered":"
Levels of unconscious racist and sexist bias have been reduced by manipulating the way the brain learns during sleep.<\/p>\n
A team at Northwestern University, Chicago, played sounds while people slept to trigger and enforce memories of an exercise earlier in the day.<\/p>\n
The trial on 40 people, published in the journal Science, showed the changes lasted at least a week.<\/p>\n
Experts said the findings had potential in many situations, but also raised ethical questions.<\/p>\n
Sexual and racial prejudice are common but may often be unintentional, says the Northwestern team.<\/p>\n
They cite studies in computer games when people chose to shoot black characters more often than white ones or men being favoured over women despite having identical job applications.<\/p>\n
Breaking bias?<\/strong><\/p>\n People’s prejudices were assessed with a series of publicly available tests at the start of the study.<\/p>\n They were then given “counter-bias training”. During the session, pictures of faces were paired with words that were the opposite of widely-held stereotypes.<\/p>\n So female faces were paired with words like “maths” or black faces with positive words like “sunshine”.<\/p>\n Distinctive sounds were played during the counter-bias training and were played again at low volume during a 90-minute afternoon nap.<\/p>\n The result was a reduction in sexual and racial bias scores, which persisted for at least a week.<\/p>\n So could this really make someone less sexist or racist?<\/p>\n Prof Ken Paller, the director of the cognitive neuroscience programme at Northwestern University, told the BBC News website: “We didn’t have people interact with or make decisions about other people, so that sort of experiment is needed to know the full effects of the methods we used.<\/p>\n “But we suggest that modifying unconscious social bias is likely to influence the extent to which decisions are influenced by racist or sexist attitudes.”<\/p>\n He argues the technique may have potential in tackling addiction or unhealthy eating.<\/p>\n