Figure 4.

Race-related differences in brain activity are accounted for by negative life experience. Negative life experience diminishes the effect of race (i.e., White-American and Black-American) on the neural response to threat. Cohen’s d values from “raw” (i.e., the % fMRI signal responses obtained from the first-level analyses) and “residual” (i.e., the residuals of the model that assessed the relationship between negative life experiences and % fMRI signal responses) neural activity for White-American > Black-American (a) and Black-American > White-American (b) analyses. Large effects of race were observed in the threat-elicited fMRI signal response (i.e., White-American > Black-American: raw). However, these racial differences were reduced (i.e., White-American > Black-American: residual) after accounting for negative life experiences (i.e., violence exposure, family income, and neighborhood disadvantage). A comparison of the confidence intervals for the raw and residual effect sizes is presented in Figure S1.