We investigated whether confrontations of intergroup bias that had an external (e.g., emphasizing social norms) versus internal (e.g., emphasizing values) motivational framing differentially reduce...
Previous work has found that individuals who have been confronted for discrimination demonstrate a reduction in explicit prejudice and use fewer stereotypes immediately after the confrontation. Although confronting prejudice has been touted as a tool for prejudice reduction, it is not known how these effects translate over time and what processes might account for their endurance. Across two studies, the present research finds that individuals used significantly fewer negative stereotypes 7 days...
Abstract Whereas confrontations of racial bias prompt negative self-directed affect (e.g., guilt) and reduce bias, confrontations of gender bias are typically disregarded. We examined the effectiveness of an evidence - based confrontation in which participants received concrete evidence of their discriminatory gender-biased evaluations. Participants were confronted with evidence that they evaluated a female applicant for a lab manager position negatively, which would have resulted in her not bei...
Abstract A pressing issue concerns how to reduce stereotypic responses and discriminatory outcomes resulting from the operation of implicit biases. One possibility is that cognitive retraining, such as by repeatedly practicing counterstereotypes, can reduce implicit bias so that stereotype application will be reduced in turn. Another possibility involves motivated self-regulation, where people's awareness of their proneness to biased responses heightens negative self-directed affect, which in tu...
Abstract Three studies introduced the construct of bias awareness and examined its effect on Whites' responses to evidence of personal and others' racial biases. Contemporary theories of prejudice suggest that awareness of personal bias is a critical step in reducing one's prejudice and discrimination. When bias is a cloaked in a way that people do not recognize, they are likely to continue to perpetuate their biased behaviors and unlikely to reduce their negative attitudes. However, when people...
This article reviews the small but emerging literature on men who become allies against sexism. Although men are less likely than women to recognize sexism, male allies possess psychological belief systems that allow them to overcome barriers to seeing sexism and thus recognize the unfair treatment of women. We review research demonstrating that relative to women who confront sexism, men who act as allies are evaluated more positively, while their confrontations are taken as more serious and le...
Following a task that ostensibly revealed implicit racism or sexism, participants were confronted about their bias. The confronter's race and gender were manipulated to test whether group membership (whether one is part of the group experiencing prejudice) determined confrontation effectiveness. Results showed that the confrontation of racism met with greater acceptance when performed by a White than a Black confronter, indicating that group membership drives confrontation impact. Further, tests...
Persuasive messages are more effective when they are custom-tailored to reflect the interests and concerns of the intended audience. Much of the message-framing literature has focused on the advantages of using either gain or loss frames, depending on the motivational orientation of the target group. In the current study, we extended this research to examine whether a persuasive appeal's effectiveness can be increased by aligning the message framing with the recipient's personality profile. For ...
Last. Michael Inzlicht(U of T: University of Toronto)H-Index: 65
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Although prejudice-reduction policies and interventions abound, is it possible that some of them result in the precise opposite of their intended effect—an increase in prejudice? We examined this question by exploring the impact of motivation-based prejudice-reduction interventions and assessing whether certain popular practices might in fact increase prejudice. In two experiments, participants received detailed information on, or were primed with, the goal of prejudice reduction; the informatio...
#2Dana E. Wagner(LUC: Loyola University Chicago)H-Index: 7
Majority-group members expect to dislike those who confront them for prejudiced behavior. Yet if majority-group members are susceptible to the same social constraints as minority-group members, then their public responses to confrontation should be similarly inhibited. A tempered response to confrontation could smooth a potentially problematic social interaction, thereby producing an outcome that is better than expected. Female confederates confronted men during an interpersonal interaction and ...
Relative to confrontations of other forms of prejudice and stereotyping, confronting gender stereotypes can be challenging, in part, because recipients may be unlikely to accept such feedback. Given the importance of accepting negative feedback in the promotion of reparative efforts, the present research investigated how to frame confrontations of gender stereotyping to be more readily accepted. Across three experiments (131 and 247 U.S. undergraduates; 174 U.S. MTurk workers), we investigated h...
