March 7, 2012

expert reaction to study showing propranolol reduces racial bias

Research published in Psychopharmacology suggested a surprising link between a drug for heart disease and people’s propensity for racial bias.

Dr Chris Chambers, Senior Research Fellow, School of Psychology, Cardiff University, said:

“This is an interesting study suggesting that a common heart medication could influence unconscious or ‘implicit’ racial attitudes. On the one hand this is a remarkable result, but it is crucial to view the results with extreme caution. We don’t know whether the drug influenced racial attitudes only or whether it altered implicit brain systems more generally. And we can’t rule out the possibility that the effects were due to the drug incidentally reducing heart rate. So although interesting, in my view these preliminary results are a long way from suggesting that propranolol specifically influences racial attitudes.”

‘Propranolol reduces implicit negative racial bias’ by Sylvia Terbeck et al. was published in Psychopharmacology and a press release was issued by the University of Oxford.