Drug may reduce subconscious racism

A beta-blocker, a medication used to treat heart disease, may reduce a person's subconscious racial bias, researchers in Britain suggest. Lead author Sylvia Terbeck, an experimental psychologist at Oxford University in England, and colleagues gave 18 people the drug propranolol and 18 people a placebo. The study published in Psychopharmacology found the propranolol group scored significantly lower on the Implicit Attitude Test into subconscious racial bias -- a standard test for testing subconscious racial attitudes. Propranolol blocks activation in the peripheral "autonomic" nervous system and in the area of the brain implicated in fear or emotional responses, Terbeck said. The researchers said they think propranolol reduced implicit racial basis because such bias is based on automatic, non-conscious fear responses, which propranolol blocks, Terbeck explained. Study co-author Julian Savulescu said this research raises the tantalizing possibility that unconscious racial attitudes could be modulated using drugs, a possibility that requires careful ethical analysis. "Biological research aiming to make people morally better has a dark history," Savulescu said in a statement. "And propranolol is not a pill to cure racism. But given that many people are already using drugs like propranolol which have 'moral' side effects, we at least need to better understand what these effects are."