Margo Jeanne Monteith - US grants

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The fact that stereotypes prejudice operate automatically or implicitly (unconsciously) adverse and often has consequences for people who must continually endure discriminatory outcomes, and also for people who feel guilty about their unintended biases. The PI previously advanced a model of self-regulation to explain how control over automatically activated prejudices might be achieved. The model posits that the neurophysiological behavioral inhibition system (BIS) mediates the processes involved in bringing behavior that results from automatically activated biases under control. Theoretically, this system enables the development and operation of cues for control, which are stimuli that have come to be associated with prejudiced responses and the negative consequences of those responses (e.g., feelings of guilt). Through the development and operation of cues for control, implicit biases and their consequences can be changed. Although supported in experiments that maximized conditions for successful self-regulation, the model has not been tested in more realistic contexts nor has it addressed actual strategies for replacing prejudiced responses. The current program of research extends the application and theoretical breadth of the self-regulation model. Aim 1 is to examine experimentally the power of cues for control to command attention and facilitate non-prejudiced responding (1) when people have access to limited processing resources; (2) across time; and (3) after an experience that affirms one's non-prejudiced self-image. Thus these experiments test the power of cues to encourage non-prejudiced responding under situations that challenge the potential operation of cues. Aim 2 is to examine the operation of "real world" cues by obtaining a rich source of experiential data using an interview methodology to answer questions about the self-regulation of prejudiced responses in people's everyday lives. The operation of "real world" cues will also be examined experimentally by presenting individuals' idiosyncratic cues (as determined in the interview study) in a priming task to determine whether they do, indeed, facilitate control over prejudice. Aim 3 is to theoretically extend the self-regulation model by drawing on the de-biasing and correction literatures to provide an account of replacement strategies and to explain how the use of different strategies will depend on a likely moderator (capacity for reflection). Relevant experiments will test this theoretical extension.

This travel grant supports travel expenses for the PI and two graduate students to participate in the eleventh annual Transfer of Knowledge Conference of the European Social Cognition Network (ESCON) in Warsaw, Poland. The conference is to be held August 26-30, 2009. Approximately 120 participants will take part in the conference, and they will come from 15 European countries and the US. The conference will include 90 presentations in four parallel sessions, and also four plenary sessions with keynote speakers. This conference provides a forum where junior researchers can present their latest research related to social cognition and receive feedback, with the ultimate aim that the conference fulfill training and networking functions for the new generation of social cognition researchers. The PI, as one of the plenary speakers, will present her research to the international audience and discuss her work both in the session and more informally through other conference interaction contexts. The two graduate students to accompany the PI will also present their research and have the opportunity to benefit from feedback and interaction with junior and senior social cognition researchers. Overall, the conference will provide ample opportunity for networking, learning, and the stimulation of research related to social cognition in a context that enables knowledge sharing across nations.

This project capitalizes upon current understanding of implicit attitudes in social psychology. The study of implicit processes has been especially prevalent in the area of stereotyping and prejudice where researchers have determined that attitudes and associations activated implicitly may be consistent with or strikingly contradictory to attitudes activated explicitly. For example, White people's explicit attitudes may lead them to espouse egalitarian and non-prejudiced attitudes toward African Americans. However, various cognitive, motivational and social processes can simultaneously lead to negative implicit attitudes and stereotypic associations in relation to African Americans. These associations have been linked to discriminatory outcomes in many domains, including education, psychological health, employment outcomes, medical care, and policing. Therefore, understanding how implicit biases can be changed is critically important not only for advances in our knowledge of attitudes, but also for reducing the pervasive consequences of implicit prejudice.

The purpose of the research in this grant is to improve understanding of the potential effectiveness of different strategies for changing implicit attitudes, the time course and persistence of change brought about through these strategies, as well as the underlying processes through which change may be achieved. In addition, the research examines the effects of implicit bias reduction strategies on judgmental and evaluative behavioral outcomes in short and long term contexts, and with respect to interracial interactions. The first set of experiments examines the effectiveness of intergroup bias reduction strategies among Whites. The second set of experiments examines the effects of the change strategies on judgmental and evaluative behavioral outcomes. The final set of experiments focuses on the outcomes of implicit bias change among members of stereotyped groups who have negative implicit biases related to their own group. Ultimately, this research will advance current understanding of the interplay of automatic and controlled processes by providing and testing a framework of implicit bias change.

The Directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences offers postdoctoral research fellowships to provide opportunities for recent doctoral graduates to obtain additional training, to gain research experience under the sponsorship of established scientists, and to broaden their scientific horizons beyond their undergraduate and graduate training. Postdoctoral fellowships are further designed to assist new scientists to direct their research efforts across traditional disciplinary lines and to avail themselves of unique research resources, sites, and facilities, including at foreign locations. This postdoctoral fellowship award supports a rising scholar in the field of social psychology researching racial bias. There are many perspectives about the operation of racial bias in society, and yet, people often shirk away from conversations about racial issues-of-the-day because they can be tense and uncomfortable. Indeed, disagreement during conversations about racial bias typically engenders defensiveness, anger, and withdrawal?other-focused emotions that inhibit perspective-taking and downstream attitudinal and behavioral change. This research program combines social psychological scholarship on confronting racial bias, self-regulation, and interracial interactions to identify strategies that will temper these feelings of defensiveness. More specifically, this project explores how Whites respond to different styles of feedback (i.e., confrontation) during conversations about bias. Additionally, this project explicitly tests whether self-regulation training that provides insight into one?s own propensity for racial bias will improve Whites? reactions to confrontation. Achieving greater insight into how confrontation targets feel and respond in face-to-face interactions, and whether this differs based on the race of the confronter or the style that individual uses, can inform ways to engage majority group allies when working toward racial equality and social change. An additional benefit of this work is its applicability for creating diversity and inclusion workshops that promote self-driven change, instead of ones that result in other-focused (i.e., defensive) reactions that can lead to backlash. Taken together, this research will provide practical knowledge about how to confront and discuss racial bias in ways that will motivate individuals toward social change and foster mutual understanding of the relevance and prevalence of racial bias in today?s society.

The present studies advance social psychological theory by exploring how people respond to different types of racial bias confrontation. Building on self-determination theory and the self-regulation model of prejudice, four experiments empirically test how Whites respond to confrontation that emphasizes compliance with social norms (i.e., a controlling strategy) compared to confrontation that emphasizes compliance with personal egalitarian standards (i.e., an autonomy-supportive strategy). The first study uses a free-recall paradigm to explore whether Whites spontaneously distinguish between autonomy-supportive and controlling confrontations, and how this affects their attitudes, behavior, and perceptions of racial bias confronters. The subsequent experiments test whether safety cues from the confronter (i.e., shared racial group) and safety cues from the self (i.e., training that emphasize one?s propensity for racial bias and self-regulation) temper negative reactions to controlling racial bias confrontation. The final study mimics real-world conversations about race by examining how Whites respond to face-to-face confrontation, and whether safety cues (from others, and the self) encourage more positive, perceivable differences in the confrontation target?s behavior. In sum, the present research extends past work by identifying when and why racial bias confrontation interferes with self-regulatory processes, and by creating ways to intervene to encourage engagement in future intergroup contact.