Reducing White Juror Bias: The Role of Race Salience and Racial Attitudes1

Both Black and White jurors exhibit a racial bias by being more likely to find defendants of a different race guilty than defendants who are of the same race. Sommers & Ellsworth (2000, 2001 ) found that salient racial issues in a trial reduced White juror racial bias toward a Black defendant. We examined if race salience could reduce White juror racial bias, even for individuals who reported high levels of racism. Making race salient reduced White juror racial bias toward a Black defendant. Jurors' racist beliefs were only associated with the verdict when the defendant's race was not made salient. This finding suggests that the effects of individual prejudice toward a Black defendant can be reduced by making the defendant's race salient.     

Accounting for successful control of implicit racial bias: the roles of association activation, response monitoring, and overcoming bias

Individuals who are primarily internally motivated to respond without prejudice show less bias on implicit measures than individuals who are externally motivated or unmotivated to respond without prejudice. However, it is not clear why these individuals exhibit less implicit bias than others. We used the Quad model to examine motivation-based individual differences in three processes that have been proposed to account for this effect: activation of associations, overcoming associations, and response monitoring. Participants completed an implicit measure of stereotyping (Study 1) or racial attitudes (Study 2). Modeling of the data revealed that individuals who were internally (but not externally) motivated to respond without prejudice showed enhanced detection and reduced activation of biased associations, suggesting that these processes may be key to achieving unbiased responding.     

Possible Implicit Mechanisms of Minority Representation

Minority representation is an important topic for political science—how do members of a racial majority group identify with the political goals of a minority, even when research documents widespread anti‐Black bias? Does pro‐Black policy support require an individual to be unbiased, or can such support emerge despite internalized anti‐Black bias? This paper draws a distinction between two types of implicit racial attitude measures based on functionalist theories of attitudes ( Katz, 1960 ; Smith, Bruner, & White, 1956 ) and research regarding automatic empathic processes ( Decety & Jackson, 2004 ; Preston & de Waal, 2002 ). According to this distinction, some attitudes evaluate racial groups as attitude objects (evaluative associations), while others involve automatic identification with them as people (relational associations). I use subliminal racial priming for evaluative associations and a measure of implicit closeness to Blacks ( Craemer, 2008 ) for relational associations. The evaluative measure captures association strength between a racial stimulus and race‐unrelated positive or negative target words. The relational measure assesses association strength between the respondent's self‐concept and the mental representation of a racial group based on implicit “self‐other overlap” ( Aron, Aron, Tudor, & Nelson, 1991 ). Implicit measures are obtained in a well powered online reaction time study (n = 1,341). Online results are evaluated against a representative telephone survey (n = 1,200). Consistent with the extant literature, a significant anti‐Black bias emerges in evaluative associations. In contrast, a significant pro‐Black effect emerges in relational associations and the two implicit measures are statistically unrelated. Both measures predict pro‐Black policy support independently of one another and net of other factors. Implicit closeness to Blacks predicts pro‐Black policy support even among White respondents suggesting that minority representation based on relational associations may be possible despite widespread anti‐Black evaluative bias.     

Individual differences in the activation and control of affective race bias as assessed by startle eyeblink response and self-report

The activation and control of affective race bias were measured using startle eyeblink responses (Study 1) and self-reports (Study 2) as White American participants viewed White and Black faces. Individual differences in levels of bias were predicted using E. A. Plant and P. G. Devine's (1998) Internal and External Motivation to Respond Without Prejudice scales (IMS/EMS). Among high-IMS participants, those low in EMS exhibited less affective race bias in their blink responses than other participants. In contrast, both groups of high-IMS participants exhibited less affective race bias in self-reported responses compared with low-IMS participants. Results demonstrate individual differences in implicit affective race bias and suggest that controlled, belief-based processes are more effectively implemented in deliberative responses (e.g., self-reports).     

Individuation training with other‐race faces reduces preschoolers’ implicit racial bias: a link between perceptual and social representation of faces in children

The present study examined whether perceptual individuation training with other‐race faces could reduce preschool children's implicit racial bias. We used an ‘angry = outgroup’ paradigm to measure Chinese children's implicit racial bias against African individuals before and after training. In Experiment 1, children between 4 and 6 years were presented with angry or happy racially ambiguous faces that were morphed between Chinese and African faces. Initially, Chinese children demonstrated implicit racial bias: they categorized happy racially ambiguous faces as own‐race (Chinese) and angry racially ambiguous faces as other‐race (African). Then, the children participated in a training session where they learned to individuate African faces. Children's implicit racial bias was significantly reduced after training relative to that before training. Experiment 2 used the same procedure as Experiment 1, except that Chinese children were trained with own‐race Chinese faces. These children did not display a significant reduction in implicit racial bias. Our results demonstrate that early implicit racial bias can be reduced by presenting children with other‐race face individuation training, and support a linkage between perceptual and social representations of face information in children.     

Racial discrimination by low-prejudiced whites. Facial movements as implicit measures of attitudes related to behavior

We investigated the relationship of implicit racial prejudice to discriminatory behavior. White university students chose the best of three applicants (two were White and one was Black) for a prestigious teaching fellowship. They then completed the Implicit Association Test (IAT), a measure of implicit racial bias. Three weeks later, participants completed a second implicit measure of racial bias by viewing photos of Whites and Blacks while facial electromyography (EMG) was recorded from sites corresponding to the muscles used in smiling and frowning. Analyses revealed that bias in cheek EMG activity was related to the race of the chosen applicant, whereas bias on the IAT was not. Motivations to control prejudiced reactions were not related to EMG activity or the race of the applicant chosen, but were related to IAT bias. The findings indicate that facial EMG can be used as an implicit measure of prejudice related to discrimination.     

Fertility and intergroup bias in racial and minimal-group contexts: evidence for shared architecture

Recent research has shown that White women's bias against Black men increases with elevated fertility across the menstrual cycle. We demonstrate that the association between fertility and intergroup bias is not limited to groups defined by race, but extends to group categories that are minimally defined, and may depend on the extent to which women associate out-group men with physical formidability. In Study 1, Black and White women with strong associations between the racial out-group and physical formidability displayed greater bias against out-group men as conception risk increased. Study 2 replicated these results in a minimal-group paradigm. These findings are consistent with the notion that women may be endowed with a psychological system that generates intergroup bias via mechanisms that rely on categorization heuristics and perceptions of the physical formidability of out-group men, particularly when the costs of sexual coercion are high.     

Racial bias in behavioral assessment of children's social skills

The social skills of 20 second- and sixth-grade students were assessed by 20 trained raters using the Social Skills Test for Children (SST-C). Rater and child characteristics were examined to determine whether differences in social skills ratings were due to the race of the rater or the race of the children being rated or due to the interactive effects of these characteristics, which would suggest racial bias in the ratings procedure. The results showed that the race of the rater did affect some behavioral observations. Black raters gave higher scores than white raters on four behavioral categories: response latency, appropriate assertion, effective assertion, and smiling. White raters gave higher scores for head position and gestures. The results of this study replicated earlier findings of significant differences in social skills ratings due to the race and age of the child being rated. The results also showed modest racial bias effects in that black and white raters scored black and white children differentially on two behavioral categories: overall skill ratings and smiling. These results suggested that most behavioral categories of the SST-C were not systematically affected by racial bias. However, the most subjective rating, overall skill, did evidence racial bias effects. This finding is consistent with previous data showing that subjective ratings may be most affected by racial bias.     

Integrating Criminological and Decision Research Theory: Implications for Understanding and Addressing Crime in Marginalized Communities

Minority groups are significantly overrepresented in crime. Theories of racial differences in crime developed using two separate and distinct approaches that highlight either increased exposure to criminogenic factors at the individual level or greater risk of crime due to disadvantaged neighborhood conditions. Neighborhood theories describe how structural disadvantage disrupts neighborhood social processes and produces oppositional street cultures. In the article, we advance theorizing on race and crime by linking the neighborhood experience to individual-level decision making via new conceptualizations of culture. Rather than a “values as goals” view of culture, culture may include a “tool kit” of ways to solve problems and this cultural toolkit may, in turn, influence how an individual makes decisions. Specifically, culturally learned toolkits may increase flaws in the decision process (e.g., fast and intuitive rather than deliberate decision processes, the use of decision heuristics) to produce more crime, which would explain the association between race and crime. We integrate this conceptualization of culture and these flaws in the decision-making process into rational choice theory at the individual level and describe how they may be exacerbated in disadvantaged neighborhood contexts. Implications for understanding race and crime and directions for future research are discussed.     

Nonindependent and nonstationary response times in stopping and stepping saccade tasks

Saccade stop signal and target step tasks are used to investigate the mechanisms of cognitive control. Performance of these tasks can be explained as the outcome of a race between stochastic go and stop processes. The race model analyses assume that response times (RTs) measured throughout an experimental session are independent samples from stationary stochastic processes. This article demonstrates that RTs are neither independent nor stationary for humans and monkeys performing saccade stopping and target-step tasks. We investigate the consequences that this has on analyses of these data. Nonindependent and nonstationary RTs artificially flatten inhibition functions and account for some of the systematic differences in RTs following different types of trials. However, nonindependent and nonstationary RTs do not bias the estimation of the stop signal RT. These results demonstrate the robustness of the race model to some aspects of nonindependence and nonstationarity and point to useful extensions of the model.     

Internal motivation to respond without prejudice and automatic egalitarian goal activation

Past research has shown that people who are motivated primarily by their internalized beliefs to respond without prejudice are less likely to show implicit forms of racial bias (e.g., Devine, P. G., Plant, E. A., Amodio, D. M., Harmon-Jones, E., & Vance, S. L. (2002). The regulation of explicit and implicit race bias: The role of motivations to respond without prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 835-848). We tested the idea that such individuals inhibit implicit race bias by automatically activating egalitarian goals. Study 1 showed that participants high in internal motivation but low in external motivation (i.e., primary internal) displayed more egalitarianism, but only after they had been subliminally exposed to African American faces. Study 2 showed that primary internal motivation was associated with lower levels of automatic stereotype activation and this effect was mediated by egalitarian goal activation. These results provide converging evidence that the relationship between primary internal motivation and low levels of implicit bias stems from the activation of egalitarian goals. We discuss the implications of these findings for efforts to reduce cognitive and affective forms of implicit racial bias.     

Racial phenotypicality bias in educational expectations for both male and female teenagers from different socioeconomic backgrounds

In three experiments (N = 56, 99, and 225), we showed that racial phenotypicality bias characterizes educational expectations for Chilean mestizo students: participants displayed more positive educational expectations for light complexioned than for dark complexioned high school students. In Study 1, with male high school target students, the relation between racial phenotypic appearance and educational expectations was mediated by differences in perceived competence. Study 2 suggests that the gender of the target student did not influence the occurrence of racial phenotypicality bias. Study 3 showed that racial phenotypicality bias occurs in both university students and high school teachers' judgements. Although socioeconomic background of the target student partially explained the effects of racial phenotypic appearance (especially in teachers), the latter exerted an additional and independent influence on educational expectations. These results underline the fact that effects of racial phenotypicality bias should not be overlooked in the educational domain. As mediational analyses suggested, these effects only partly occur because of stereotypical associations between racial phenotypic appearance and socioeconomic background, but also because of stereotypical associations between racial phenotypic appearance and attributed competence.     

Bias at the intersection of race and gender: Evidence from preschool‐aged children

There is ample evidence of racial and gender bias in young children, but thus far this evidence comes almost exclusively from children's responses to a single social category (either race or gender). Yet we are each simultaneously members of many social categories (including our race and gender). Among adults, racial and gender biases intersect: negative racial biases are expressed more strongly against males than females. Here, we consider the developmental origin of bias at the intersection of race and gender. Relying on both implicit and explicit measures, we assessed 4‐year‐old children's responses to target images of children who varied systematically in both race (Black and White) and gender (male and female). Children revealed a strong and consistent pro‐White bias. This racial bias was expressed more strongly for males than females: children's responses to Black boys were less positive than to Black girls, White boys or White girls. This outcome, which constitutes the earliest evidence of bias at the intersection of race and gender, underscores the importance of addressing bias in the first years of life.     

Investigating whether group status modulates the relationship between individual differences in epistemic motivation and political conservatism

Previous research has found that individual differences in epistemic motivation predict political conservatism. However, meta-analyses indicate substantial heterogeneity in this association and such variation remains underexamined. Using a large, pre-existing dataset, we investigated whether group status—a group’s social value—modulates this relationship. We used several assessments of epistemic motivation (need for structure, need for cognition) and group status (race, gender, social class). We found that the epistemic motivation-ideology relationship was stronger for women (versus men) and for members of lower (versus higher) social class groups, although the relationship strength differences were relatively small. The relationship did not consistently vary across racial group status. Group status appears to be a small, but not consistent, moderator of the epistemic motivation-ideology relationship.     

“American” as a Proxy for “Whiteness”: Racial Color-Blindness in Everyday Life

This article discusses racial color-blindness as it relates to a modern strategy used by both Whites and People of Color (POC) to mask their discussions of race and privilege. People who endorse racial color-blindness tend to believe that race should not matter and currently does not matter in understanding individuals’ lived experiences. Therefore, racially color-blind individuals use strategies to justify their racial privilege and racist beliefs and attitudes. One such strategy is to use the term “American” as a proxy for “White” in describing instances of White privilege as norms and to hide discussions of race more generally. Study 1 findings show that there are many different socially constructed definitions for the term American. Study 2 findings reveal differences in definitions for American depending on an individual’s race and generational status.     

Event-related potentials and the decision to shoot: The role of threat perception and cognitive control

Participants played a videogame in which they were required to make speeded shoot/don’t-shoot decisions in response to armed and unarmed targets, half of whom were Black, half of whom were White. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs), recorded during the game, assessed attentional processes related to target race and object type. Early ERP components (i.e., the P200 and N200) differentiated between Black and White targets, as well as between armed and unarmed targets. Explicitly measured cultural stereotypes predicted both this racial ERP differentiation and racial bias in the game. Most importantly, the degree of racial differentiation in the early ERP components predicted behavioral bias in the videogame and mediated the relationship between cultural stereotypes and bias.     

Neural and behavioral effects of regulating emotional responses to errors during an implicit racial bias task

Affect regulation plays a key role in several theories of racial bias reduction. Here, we tested whether engaging in emotion regulation strategies while performing an implicit racial bias task (Weapons Identification Task; WIT) would alter neural and behavioral manifestations of bias. Participants either suppressed or reappraised in a positive light the distress associated with making errors during the WIT, while an electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded. We hypothesized that engaging in emotion regulation strategies would reduce the distress associated with making errors indicative of bias, resulting in smaller error-related negativity (ERN) amplitude during errors and increased expression of racial bias. Results of within-subjects comparisons (Experiment 1) generally supported these predictions. However, when emotion regulation strategies were manipulated between subjects (Experiment 2) there was no effect of suppression or reappraisal on bias expression. Across both experiments, engaging in emotion regulation led to larger ERNs for errors occurring on Black- relative to White-primed trials. In addition, a number of significant order effects were observed, indicating important differences in the effects of engaging in emotion regulation strategies when those strategies are attempted in participants’ first versus second block of trials. No such order effects were evident when a second trial block was completed with no emotion regulation instructions. Findings are discussed in terms of the need for greater specificity in experimental tests of emotion regulation on error processing and cognitive performance.     

Aging and prejudice: Diminished regulation of automatic race bias among older adults

A popular view holds that older adults are more prejudiced than younger adults because they grew up in a less tolerant era. An alternative view proposes that aging corresponds with stronger prejudice among older adults because they have reduced capacity to inhibit biased associations that come to mind automatically. To independently assess these possibilities, we modeled the processes underlying implicit racial attitudes in samples of teenagers through people in their nineties. Results indicated that older adults showed greater implicit bias because they were less able to regulate the automatic associations they possessed, not because of holding stronger associations in the first place. These findings suggest that age-related increases in racial biases, even those that are implicit, may be due to self-regulatory failure of older adults, rather than to cohort effects.     

The self-regulating brain: Cortical-subcortical feedback and the development of intelligent action

To speak of cognitive regulation versus emotion regulation may be misleading. However, some forms of regulation are carried out by executive processes, subject to voluntary control, while others are carried out by “automatic” processes that are far more primitive. Both sets of processes are in constant interaction, and that interaction gives rise to a stream of activity that is both cognitive and emotional. Studying the brain helps us understand these reciprocal regulatory influences in some detail. Cortical activities regulate subcortical activities through executive modulation of prepotent appraisals and emotional responses. Subcortical systems regulate the cortex by tuning its activities to the demands or opportunities provided by the environment. Cortical controls buy us time, as needed for planning and intelligent action. Subcortical controls provide energy, focus, and direction, as needed for relevant emotion-guided behaviour. We review the neural processes at work in both directions of regulatory activity, looking at the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) as a hub of cortical systems mediating downward control, and discussing limbic, hypothalamic, and brainstem systems that mediate upward control. A macrosystem that displays both directions of control includes the ACC and the amygdala within a feedback circuit whose features vary with clinical-personality differences. Developmental changes in ACC-mediated self-regulation support advances in directed attention, response inhibition, and self-monitoring. Developmental changes in amygdala-mediated self-regulation involve the compilation of meanings that direct thought and behaviour, thus consolidating individual differences over the lifespan. In this way, the capacity to exert voluntary control develops alongside the accumulation of associations that trigger the responses that demand control. The balance between these developmental progressions has implications for personality formation and mental health.     

Racial/ethnic differences in the influence of cultural values, alcohol resistance self-efficacy, and alcohol expectancies on risk for alcohol initiation

Prior research has reported racial/ethnic differences in the early initiation of alcohol use, suggesting that cultural values that are central to specific racial/ethnic groups may be influencing these differences. This 1-year longitudinal study examines associations between two types of cultural values, parental respect (honor for one's parents) and familism (connectedness with family), both measured at baseline, and subsequent alcohol initiation in a sample of 6,054 (approximately 49% male, 57% Hispanic, 22% Asian, 18% non-Hispanic White, and 4% non-Hispanic Black) middle school students in Southern California. We tested whether the associations of cultural values with alcohol initiation could be explained by baseline measures of alcohol resistance self-efficacy (RSE) and alcohol expectancies. We also explored whether these pathways differed by race/ethnicity. In the full sample, adolescents with higher parental respect were less likely to initiate alcohol use, an association that was partially explained by higher RSE and fewer positive alcohol expectancies. Familism was not significantly related to alcohol initiation. Comparing racial/ethnic groups, higher parental respect was protective against alcohol initiation for Whites and Asians, but not Blacks or Hispanics. There were no racial/ethnic differences in the association between familism and alcohol initiation. Results suggest that cultural values are important factors in the decision to use alcohol and these values appear to operate in part, by influencing alcohol positive expectancies and RSE. Interventions that focus on maintaining strong cultural values and building strong bonds between adolescents and their families may help reduce the risk of alcohol initiation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).