Opening closed minds: the combined effects of intergroup contact and need for closure on prejudice

Five studies tested whether need for closure (NFC) moderates the relation between intergroup contact and prejudice toward immigrants. The results consistently showed that intergroup contact was more strongly associated with reduced levels of prejudice among people high in NFC compared to people low in NFC. Studies 1 (N = 138 students) and 2 (N = 294 adults) demonstrated this moderator effect on subtle, modern, and blatant racism. Study 2 also replicated the moderator effect for extended contact. An experimental field study (Study 3; N = 60 students) provided evidence of the causal direction of the moderator effect. Finally, Studies 4 (N = 125 students) and 5 (N = 135 adults) identified intergroup anxiety as the mediator through which the moderator effect influences modern and blatant racism as well as hostile tendencies toward immigrants. The role of motivated cognition in the relation between intergroup contact and prejudice is discussed.     

Property and prejudice: How racial attitudes and social‐evaluative concerns shape property appraisals

Property evaluations rarely occur in the absence of social context. However, no research has investigated how intergroup processes related to prejudice extend to concepts of property. In the present research, we propose that factors such as group status, prejudice and pressure to mask prejudiced attitudes affect how people value the property of racial ingroup and outgroup members. In Study 1, White American and Asian American participants were asked to appraise a hand‐painted mug that was ostensibly created by either a White or an Asian person. Asian participants demonstrated an ingroup bias. White participants showed an outgroup bias, but this effect was qualified. Specifically, among White participants, higher racism towards Asian Americans predicted higher valuations of mugs created by Asian people. Study 2 revealed that White Americans' prejudice towards Asian Americans predicted higher valuations of the mug created by an Asian person only when participants were highly concerned about conveying a non‐prejudiced personal image. Our results suggest that, ironically, prejudiced majority group members evaluate the property of minority group members whom they dislike more favourably. The current findings provide a foundation for melding intergroup relations research with research on property and ownership.     

Facing prejudice: implicit prejudice and the perception of facial threat

We propose that social attitudes, and in particular implicit prejudice, bias people's perceptions of the facial emotion displayed by others. To test this hypothesis, we employed a facial emotion change-detection task in which European American participants detected the offset (Study 1) or onset (Study 2) of facial anger in both Black and White targets. Higher implicit (but not explicit) prejudice was associated with a greater readiness to perceive anger in Black faces, but neither explicit nor implicit prejudice predicted anger perceptions regarding similar White faces. This pattern indicates that European Americans high in implicit racial prejudice are biased to perceive threatening affect in Black but not White faces, suggesting that the deleterious effects of stereotypes may take hold extremely early in social interaction.     

Relatively Socially Acceptable Prejudice Within and Between Societies

Two studies investigated the relative social acceptability of certain prejudices within a society (Study 1) and between societies (Study 2), using (less) internal motivation to control prejudice as an indicator of social acceptability. In Study 1, White British participants reported less internal motivation to control prejudice against people with schizophrenia than against Black people. In Study 2, Jamaican participants reported less internal motivation to control anti‐homosexual prejudice than did either British participants or American participants. Other differences in motivation to control prejudice were smaller, absent, or at odds with this difference, indicating that differences in motivation to control anti‐homosexual prejudice were not solely due to cultural differences concerning motivation to control prejudice in general. Results are discussed in terms of novel findings, relevance to the literature and possible future research. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The antecedents and implications of interracial anxiety

Drawing on previous theorizing from both the prejudice and social anxiety literatures, a model of the antecedents and implications of intergroup anxiety is offered. It is argued that a lack of positive previous experiences with outgroup members creates negative expectancies about interracial interactions, which result in intergroup anxiety. This anxiety is posited to result in heightened hostility toward outgroup members and a desire to avoid interacting with outgroup members. Study 1 examined White participants' responses to interacting with Black people using a range of self-report measures; the associations between these responses supported the relationships outlined in the model. Study 2 explored White participants' responses to an anticipated interaction with a Black person or a White person. The findings revealed that high levels of anxiety about an interaction with a Black person, but not a White person, were associated with a lower likelihood of returning for the interaction.     

Different sides of the same conversation: Black and White partners differ in perceptions of interaction content

A positive interracial interaction can create a foundation for friendships, improved intergroup attitudes and reduced prejudice. Recent research has demonstrated that what people talk about in important. Here, two studies expand the interaction content model of interracial interactions to reveal that Black and White Americans perceive interaction content in similar and different ways. As expected, Black and White participants evaluated conversation topics along the same three dimensions, but differed in their perceptions of specific conversation topics. These convergences and differences emerged for pre‐generated (Study 1) and self‐generated (Study 2) topics. Factor analyses revealed that conversation attributes similarly distilled to the predicted underlying content dimensions of intimacy, valence, and controversy for Black and White Americans. However, Black individuals found interaction content, in general, to be more controversial, race‐related, enjoyable, and predictable than White individuals. Although both groups found race‐related content more controversial, Black individuals were less bothered by discussing race and found race‐related topics to be more predictable and enjoyable to discuss. These findings supported the interaction content model which may provide a framework for future research on interracial interactions. We conclude with the importance of considering differences in perceptions of interaction content, as well as suggestions for how intergroup interaction research could benefit from systematically incorporating such content.     

Framing matters: contextual influences on interracial interaction outcomes

Previous studies indicate that interracial interactions frequently have negative outcomes but have typically focused on social contexts. The current studies examined the effect of manipulating interaction context. In Study 1, Black and White participants worked together with instructions that created either a social focus or a task focus. With a task focus, interracial pairs were more consistently synchronized, Black participants showed less executive function depletion, and White participants generally showed reduced implicit bias. Follow-up studies suggested that prejudice concerns help explain these findings: White participants reported fewer concerns about appearing prejudiced when they imagined an interracial interaction with a task focus rather than a social focus (Study 2a), and Black participants reported less vigilance against prejudice in an imagined interracial interaction with a task focus rather than a social focus (Study 2b). Taken together, these studies illustrate the importance of interaction context for the experiences of both Blacks and Whites.     

Responses to interracial interactions over time

The current work tested and expanded on Plant and Devine's (2003) model of the antecedents and implications of interracial anxiety by examining people's experiences with interracial interactions at two time points. Study 1 explored non-Black people's responses to interactions with Black people and Study 2 explored Black people's responses to interactions with White people. Non-Black participants' expectancies about coming across as biased in interracial interactions and Black participants' expectancies about White people's bias predicted their interracial anxiety and whether they had positive interactions with outgroup members during the 2 weeks between assessments. Across both studies, interracial anxiety predicted the desire to avoid interactions with outgroup members. In addition, participants who were personally motivated to respond without prejudice reported more positive expectancies. The findings are discussed in terms of the implications for understanding the course and quality of interracial interactions.     

Got Pain? Racial Bias in Perceptions of Pain

In the days of slavery, White people assumed that Black people felt less pain than did White people. This belief was used to justify slavery; it was also used to justify the inhumane treatment of Black men and women in medical research. Today, White Americans continue to believe that Black people feel less pain than do White people although this belief has changed from its historical, explicitly racist form. Racial attitudes do not moderate the bias, suggesting that racial bias in perceptions of others' pain is not rooted (solely) in racial prejudice. Moreover, Black Americans too believe that Black people feel less pain than do White people, suggesting that the bias is no longer grounded in intergroup dynamics. Rather, contemporary forms of this bias stem from assumptions that Black people face more hardship and “thus” can withstand more pain and assumptions that Black people's bodies are not only different but also superhuman. Although this new instantiation of the pain perception bias is decidedly more “benevolent”, it can nonetheless lead to negative outcomes. Here, we consider how racial bias in perceptions of others' pain may affect racial disparities in health care and intergroup relations more generally. We also discuss potential avenues for interventions aimed at preventing this bias among children and reducing this bias among adults.     

Avoiding affect in intergroup relations: The roles of dispositional and intergroup empathy in the relationship between alexithymia and prejudice

Alexithymia, that is, difficulties in recognizing, communicating, and processing one's own emotions, is associated with poorer interpersonal relations. Emotional processes are key drivers and mechanisms of prejudice and its reduction, and alexithymia is thought to influence individuals' empathic responses. This research examined the relationship between alexithymia and prejudice, and the role of empathy in this relationship. Three studies were conducted in three intergroup contexts to test whether alexithymia is also associated with poorer intergroup relations with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender+ individuals (Study 1, N = 126 heterosexual late adolescents) and Asian British people (Study 3, N = 300 White adults) in the United Kingdom, and immigrants in Italy (Study 2, N = 381 Italian adults). Participants completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), measures on dispositional and intergroup empathic concern (EC) and perspective taking (PT) as well as measures of prejudice (anti-outgroup hostility, anti-outgroup attitudes, and anti-outgroup behavioral intentions). Lower dispositional EC (Studies 1, marginal effect in Study 2) and intergroup EC and PT (Study 3) mediated the relationship between the Externally Oriented Thinking subscale of the TAS-20 (i.e., avoiding emotions and affective thinking) and greater prejudice. The findings are important for understanding the challenges of late adolescents and adults with alexithymia in intergroup relations, highlighting the role of dispositional and intergroup empathy for individual differences such as alexithymia in endorsing prejudice.     

Social power increases implicit prejudice

The effects of power on implicit and explicit attitudes towards racial groups were examined. In Study 1, participants who had power showed a stronger facilitation of positive words after exposure to White faces, and negative words after exposure to Black faces, compared to participants who did not have power. In Study 2, powerful participants, compared to controls and powerless participants, showed more positive affective responses to Chinese pictographs that followed White compared to Black faces. Power did, however, not affect explicit racial attitudes. In Study 3, powerful participants showed greater racial prejudice toward Arabs in an Implicit Association Test than did powerless participants. This effect was driven by the power of the perceiver rather than the power of the target. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

"Prejudiced" behavior without prejudice? Beliefs about the malleability of prejudice affect interracial interactions

Prejudiced behavior is typically seen as emanating from prejudiced attitudes. Eight studies showed that majority-group members' beliefs about prejudice can create seemingly "prejudiced" behaviors above and beyond prejudice measured explicitly (Study 1b) and implicitly (Study 2). Those who believed prejudice was relatively fixed, rather than malleable, were less interested in interracial interactions (Studies 1a-1d), race- or diversity-related activities (Study 1a), and activities to reduce their prejudice (Study 3). They were also more uncomfortable in interracial, but not same-race, interactions (Study 2). Study 4 manipulated beliefs about prejudice and found that a fixed belief, by heightening concerns about revealing prejudice to oneself and others, depressed interest in interracial interactions. Further, though Whites who were taught a fixed belief were more anxious and unfriendly in an interaction with a Black compared with a White individual, Whites who were taught a malleable belief were not (Study 5). Implications for reducing prejudice and improving intergroup relations are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Specific emotions as mediators of the effect of intergroup contact on prejudice: findings across multiple participant and target groups

Emotions are increasingly being recognised as important aspects of prejudice and intergroup behaviour. Specifically, emotional mediators play a key role in the process by which intergroup contact reduces prejudice towards outgroups. However, which particular emotions are most important for prejudice reduction, as well as the consistency and generality of emotion–prejudice relations across different in-group–out-group relations, remain uncertain. To address these issues, in Study 1 we examined six distinct positive and negative emotions as mediators of the contact–prejudice relations using representative samples of U.S. White, Black, and Asian American respondents (N?=?639). Admiration and anger (but not other emotions) were significant mediators of the effects of previous contact on prejudice, consistently across different perceiver and target ethnic groups. Study 2 examined the same relations with student participants and gay men as the out-group. Admiration and disgust mediated the effect of past contact on attitude. The findings confirm that not only negative emotions (anger or disgust, based on the specific types of threat perceived to be posed by an out-group), but also positive, status- and esteem-related emotions (admiration) mediate effects of contact on prejudice, robustly across several different respondent and target groups.     

Learning social attitudes: children's sensitivity to the nonverbal behaviors of adult models during interracial interactions

White children show marked ingroup race preferences and a relative devaluation of Black people. The origin of these early interracial attitudes is to a large extent still unclear. The studies here test the possibility that preschool-aged children are particularly sensitive to the nonverbal behaviors performed by White adults during interracial interactions. In Study 1, children were shown a video displaying an interaction between a White and a Black adult. Across conditions, the White adult's verbal behaviors were either friendly or neutral, whereas his nonverbal behaviors showed either easiness (e.g., closeness, high eye contact) or uneasiness (e.g., distance, avoidance of eye contact). Results revealed that participants shaped their attitudes toward the Black target accordingly, independently from the White adults' verbal behaviors. Study 2 replicated the basic findings and demonstrated that the observed effects generalized to other Black targets. Results are discussed in relation to current approaches to understanding the formation of racial attitudes among children.     

Having an open mind: the impact of openness to experience on interracial attitudes and impression formation

This article considers how Openness to Experience may mitigate the negative stereotyping of Black people by White perceivers. As expected, White individuals who scored relatively high on Openness to Experience exhibited less prejudice according to self-report measures of explicit racial attitudes. Further, White participants who rated themselves higher on Openness to Experience formed more favorable impressions of a fictitious Black individual. Finally, after observing informal interviews of White and Black targets, White participants who were more open formed more positive impressions of Black interviewees, particularly on dimensions that correspond to negative racial stereotypes. The effect of Openness to Experience was relatively stronger for judgments of Black interviewees than for judgments of White interviewees. Taken together these findings suggest that explicit racial attitudes and impression formation may depend on the individual characteristics of the perceiver, particularly whether she or he is predisposed to consider stereotype-disconfirming information.     

Trust and Acceptance in Response to References to Group Membership: Minority and Majority Perspectives on Cross‐Group Interactions1

This research examined anticipated feelings of trust and acceptance in cross‐group interactions among members of ethnic minority and majority groups, depending on whether an out‐group member referred to their group membership. In Study 1, Asian, Latino, and White participants read scenarios describing interactions between them and an in‐group member, an out‐group member, or an out‐group member who referred to their group membership. Participants from each group responded more negatively toward interactions with out‐group members when they referred to group membership. These findings were replicated in Study 2 with samples of Black and White participants, also showing that anticipated prejudice partially mediated the effects of out‐group members' references to group membership on feelings of trust and acceptance. Implications of these findings are discussed in terms of facilitating intergroup communication and conversations about group differences.     

In the privacy of their own homes: using the internet to assess racial bias

Recent studies suggest that research participants show reduced distortion of their taboo attitudes and behaviors when they take part in Internet-based procedures from outside the laboratory. We explored whether such procedures would reduce distortion in the assessment of racial bias. In Study 1, White participants who completed the study in the laboratory evaluated Black targets more favorably than White targets. This unexpected "outgroup-favoring" pattern occurred in both pencil-and-paper and Internet versions of the study, showing that modality did not produce it; but when participants worked outside the laboratory via the Internet, this pattern disappeared. Study 2 replicated the above findings and further indicated that the reduced distortion in Internet-based studies was due to the removal of the experimenter rather than removing the participants from the laboratory environment. The implications of these findings for the study of controlled processes of prejudice and the nature of Internet-based social communication are discussed.     

The police officer's dilemma: using ethnicity to disambiguate potentially threatening individuals

Using a simple videogame, the effect of ethnicity on shoot/don't shoot decisions was examined. African American or White targets, holding guns or other objects, appeared in complex backgrounds. Participants were told to "shoot" armed targets and to "not shoot" unarmed targets. In Study 1, White participants made the correct decision to shoot an armed target more quickly if the target was African American than if he was White, but decided to "not shoot" an unarmed target more quickly if he was White. Study 2 used a shorter time window, forcing this effect into error rates. Study 3 replicated Study 1's effects and showed that the magnitude of bias varied with perceptions of the cultural stereotype and with levels of contact, but not with personal racial prejudice. Study 4 revealed equivalent levels of bias among both African American and White participants in a community sample. Implications and potential underlying mechanisms are discussed.     

An investigation of the social identity model of collective action and the 'sedative' effect of intergroup contact among Black and White students in South Africa

Two studies investigated the role of intergroup contact in predicting collective action tendencies along with three key predictors proposed by the social identity model of collective action (SIMCA; Van Zomeren, Postmes, & Spears, 2008). Study 1 (N= 488 Black South African students) tested whether social identity would positively, whereas intergroup contact would negatively predict collective action and support for policies benefiting the ingroup. Study 2 (N= 244 White South African students) predicted whether social identity would positively predict collective action benefiting the ingroup, and intergroup contact would positively predict support for policies to benefit the Black outgroup. Both studies yielded evidence in support of the predictive power of social identity and contact on collective action and policy support. Additionally, Study 1 confirmed that intergroup contact moderated the effects of social identity on relative deprivation, and relative deprivation on collective action. Overall findings support an integration of SIMCA and intergroup contact theory, and provide a fuller understanding of the social psychological processes leading to collective action.     

Reaction in action: intergroup contrast in automatic behavior

Whereas previous research has shown automatic behavior conforming to outgroup stereotypes, the authors demonstrate automatic behavioral contrast away from a stereotype/trait associated with an outgroup (Study 1 and 2) and point to the importance of an "us-them" intergroup comparison in this process. In Study 1, participants colored pictures more messily when neatness was associated with an outgroup rather than the ingroup. In Study 2, using a different behavior, participants primed with busy business people reacted faster than controls (assimilation) but became slower when their student ingroup identity was activated (contrast). Subliminally priming an "us-them" intergroup comparison set undermined the accessibility of outgroup stereotypic words (Study 3), especially for those higher in prejudice (Study 4). This suggests that people automatically distance themselves from outgroup attributes when intergroup antagonism is cued or chronic. Implications for the role of self and comparison processes in automatic behavior are discussed.