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?Why African-Americans Dominant Basketball
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By Kendric, Section Other fields
Posted on Thu Apr 29th, 2010 at 01:19:28 PM PST
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My proposed experiment examines whether reduced responsiveness to individuals of differing ethnic backgrounds contributes to the reason why African-American dominate (i.e. comprise 82% of players) in the NBA compared to Caucasians and persons of other ethnicities.
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Background
In social neuroscience, a widely supported model called perception-action-coupling suggests that when one person observes another person, body actions or facial expressions in the 2nd person will activate the neural networks for the same actions and expressions in the 1st person. This activation simulates a similar experience in the observer, which seem to be essential for interpersonal sensitivity such as showing empathy, understanding and judging of intentions.
A recent study investigated how perception-action-coupling is subjective to racial biases. Their hypothesis was that individuals would preferentially exhibit perception-action-coupling in response to actions or expressions from persons belonging to the same ethnic identity ("ingroup") over persons from a different ethnic background ("outgroups"). They tested this hypothesis by showing videos of individuals from various ethnic groups (Caucasian, East Asian, South-Asian, and African-Canadian) performing a simple action - sitting at a table, picking up a glass and sipping water - to an audience of Caucasian men and women. Brain activities (in the motor cortex) monitored by EEG showed that the audience was mentally stimulated by ingroup action, but were significantly less responsive to outgroup action. This result supports the study's hypothesis.
Proposal
My proposed experiment uses these findings and examines whether reduced responsiveness to individuals of differing ethnic backgrounds contributes to the reason why African-American dominate (i.e. comprise 82% of players) in the NBA compared to Caucasians and persons of other ethnicities.
At the elite playing level of basketball, performance involves not only mastery of complex actions such as shooting a ball into the basket, but also the ability to predict and anticipate the behaviors of other players. For example, a player observing their opponent's shot may attempt to predict whether it will go in and plan their behaviour accordingly.
For the experiment, I would recruit groups of NBA players from Caucasian (C) and African-American (AA) backgrounds. First, I will test the ability of each group to predict behaviour in terms of their simulated response due to perception-action coupling. This will be done by showing a video clips of an AA and C shooting at a basket to both ethnic audience and asking them predict whether the basket will go IN or OUT. The number of correct/incorrect answers and the duration it takes them to make a decision will be an indication of their ability to predict behaviour. At the same time, I will measure their EEG in a manner similar to the described study above to establish if there is a correlation between their ability to predict behaviour and their brain response to the shooting action (based on results from individuals watching players of their same ethnicity). If there is a correlation between perception and response, then I would be interested to see if caucasian players when observing african-american in the video show decreased ability to predict behaviour, which would further support that perception-action coupling is subjective to racial bias and suggest that the over-representation of African americans in the NBA selects against players of other ethnicity backgrounds.
Reference
Gutsell JN and Inzlicht M. Empathy constrainted: Prejudice predicts reduced mental simulation of actions during observation of outgroups Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (2010).
Aglioti SM, Cesari P, Romani M, and Urgesi C. Action anticipation and motor resonance in elite basketball players. Nature Neuroscience (2008). 11(9): 1109-116.
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