The neurological basis of prejudice-formation in childhood: a VBM study on how parental bonding styles can affect social dominance orientation

• Main Author: Koh, Shannen
• Other Authors: Gianluca Esposito
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2022
• Subjects: Social sciences::Psychology
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/159201
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

How individuals develop prejudice and form perspectives of those around them differs from person to person. However, factors such as childhood parental bonding styles can affect how prejudice forms. Social dominance in adulthood may thus be affected by childhood experiences through the bonding received. Research has shown a lack of studies that examine how an individuals’ social dominance orientation can be influenced by parental bonding styles in childhood. Furthermore, few studies that investigated neural correlates associated with these two variables. As such, this study aims to establish how parental bonding in childhood affects brain regions that are also implicated in SDO in adults. We aim to determine the presence of any neural correlates between parental bonding and social dominance in a Singaporean sample. We intend to perform a correlational test between the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), an a priori Region of Interest (ROI) analysis focused on amygdala grey matter volume (GMV), to test our hypotheses. This study focuses on 5 central hypotheses: (1): There will be a strong correlation between PBI and SDO, (2): PBICare and PBIProtection scores will significantly predict SDO scores, (3): SDO is positively associated with amygdala GMV, (4): PBICare is negatively associated with amygdala GMV, and (5): PBIProtection is positively associated with amygdala GMV. Through this study, we aim to reveal the presence of any correlations between the PBI and SDO constructs, as well as their association with the amygdala and other regions of the brain.