11 Race and Emotion: Insights from a Social Neuroscience Perspective

Successful human social interaction relies on each individual's ability to understand other people's intentions, beliefs, and desires (Baron-Cohen, 1988). An important building block for understanding others' mental states is being able to recognize how they feel. We can infer this in many ways, for example, from a person's tone of voice or social context. Another important way is through deciphering facial expressions. Endowed with a tlexible, sophisticated set of facial muscles, human and nonhuman primates use these expressions as a primary means of communicating emotions (Darwin, 1872). Although the ability to express and recognize emotions is to a large extent universally shared across human and nonhuman primates, social experience, and in particular racial or cultural experience, moderates how well an individual recognizes these cnotions in others. For example, elnotional expressions expressed by members of a different species or racial group are often inaccurately recognized (Elfenbein & Arnbady, 2002a). Cultural differences in display rules indicating when it is appropriate to communicate certain kinds of emotions are another example of how social experience can shape the ability to recognize emotions. Differences in the capacity to recognize emotions accurately may explain social misunderstandings anci cornmunication difficulties that can arise during interracial interactions.