Social Cognition in African American Men: The Roles of Experimenter Race and Perceived Racism

The Social Cognition Psychometric Evaluation (SCOPE) study consists of a battery of eight tasks selected to measure social-cognitive deficits in individuals with schizophrenia. The battery is currently in a multisite validation process. While the SCOPE study collects basic demographic data, more nuanced race-related factors might artificially inflate cross-cultural differences in social cognition. Thus, it is important to examine whether race, independent of mental illness status, affects performance on the SCOPE battery. One particularly important racial group to consider is African Americans, who are disproportionately impacted by schizophrenia. The current study was to examine the effects of perceived discrimination and experimenter race on the performance of 51 non-clinical healthy African American men on the SCOPE battery. Results revealed that these factors impacted social cognitive task performance. Specifically, participants performed better on a skills-based task factor in the presence of Black experimenters, and frequency of perceived racism predicted increased perception of hostility in negative interpersonal situations with accidental causes. Thus, race-related factors are important to identify and explore in the measurement of social cognition in African Americans.