How the human brain flexibly adapts social perception by recategorizing out-group (them) to in-group (us) remains unclear. Using functional MRI in Singapore’s multicultural population, we investigated how priming subordinate (ethnic) versus superordinate (national) identities reshapes neural processing of ethnic in-group and out-group faces. We demonstrate that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a hub for self-referential processing, preferentially activates for ethnic in-group faces under ethnic identity priming, while showing increased engagement for ethnic out-group faces under national identity priming. Representational similarity analyses reveal that national priming reduces the neural representational distance between in-group and out-group faces, though ethnic distinctions persisted. These findings provide neural evidence for the Common Ingroup Identity Model, revealing a partial recategorization process in which superordinate identity priming increases self-referential processing of former out-group members while maintaining underlying ethnic category distinctions. These results elucidate the neural mechanisms supporting identity flexibility with implications for improving intergroup relations in diverse societies.
Sng et al. (Mon,) studied this question.