Although research suggests distressed individuals benefit from others’ empathy, it is unclear how... more Although research suggests distressed individuals benefit from others’ empathy, it is unclear how an individual’s level of empathy influences dyadic responses during emotional situations. In the current study, female participants ( N = 140; 70 dyads) were paired with a stranger. One member of each dyad (the experiencer) was randomly assigned to undergo a stressful task and disclose negative personal experiences to their partner (the listener). Experiencers paired with listeners higher in dispositional emotional empathy had less negative affect during emotional disclosure and lower sympathetic nervous system reactivity during the stressful task and disclosure. Listeners higher in emotional empathy reported more negative affect in response to their partner’s distress. Furthermore, for listeners higher in emotional empathy, those who more accurately rated their partner’s emotions were more physiologically influenced by their partners. Findings shed light on interpersonal functions of e...
The degree to which experimenters shape participant behavior has long been of interest in experim... more The degree to which experimenters shape participant behavior has long been of interest in experimental social science research. Here, we extend this question to the domain of peripheral psychophysiology, where experimenters often have direct, physical contact with participants, yet researchers do not consistently test for their influence. We describe analytic tools for examining experimenter effects in peripheral physiology. Using these tools, we investigate nine data sets totaling 1,341 participants and 160 experimenters across different roles (e.g., lead research assistants, evaluators, confederates) to demonstrate how researchers can test for experimenter effects in participant autonomic nervous system activity during baseline recordings and reactivity to study tasks. Our results showed (a) little to no significant variance in participants' physiological reactivity due to their experimenters, and (b) little to no evidence that three characteristics of experimenters that are well known to shape interpersonal interactions-status (using five studies with 682 total participants), gender (using two studies with 359 total participants), and race (in two studies with 554 total participants)-influenced participants' physiology. We highlight several reasons that experimenter effects in physiological data are still cause for concern, including the fact that experimenters in these studies were already restricted on a number of characteristics (e.g., age, education). We present recommendations for examining and reducing experimenter effects in physiological data and discuss implications for replication. K E Y W O R D S autonomic nervous system, experimenter effects, multilevel modeling, psychophysiology, replication 2 of 18 | THORSON eT al.
Fairness in machine-assisted decision making is critical to consider, since a lack of fairness ca... more Fairness in machine-assisted decision making is critical to consider, since a lack of fairness can harm individuals or groups, erode trust in institutions and systems, and reinforce structural discrimination. To avoid making ethical mistakes, or amplifying them, it is important to ensure that the algorithms we develop are fair and promote trust. We argue that the marriage of techniques from behavioral science and computer science is essential to develop algorithms that make ethical decisions and ensure the welfare of society. Specifically, we focus on the role of procedural justice, moral cognition, and social identity in promoting trust in algorithms and offer a road map for future research on the topic.
Recent work has demonstrated that people can be influenced by the physiological states of their i... more Recent work has demonstrated that people can be influenced by the physiological states of their interaction partners, showing physiological linkage to them from one moment to the next. In a study of unacquainted dyads who interacted for 30 min (n = 47), we examine the novel question: Are people who show physiological linkage to their partners in sympathetic nervous system responding also less stable in their own responses? Understanding this relationship has important implications for how social relationships impact affective functioning and health. Results using multilevel modeling demonstrated that the within-person correlation between linkage and stability was negative-the more dyad members were physiologically influenced by their interaction partners, the less stable they were in their own physiological responding. This work shows that physiological linkage can come at a cost to people's own stability, meaning our physiological states are more vulnerable to social influence ...
Scholars across domains in psychology, physiology, and neuroscience have long been interested in ... more Scholars across domains in psychology, physiology, and neuroscience have long been interested in the study of shared physiological experiences between people. Recent technological and analytic advances allow researchers to examine new questions about how shared physiological experiences occur. Yet comprehensive guides that address the theoretical, methodological, and analytic components of studying these processes are lacking. The goal of this article is to provide such a guide. We begin by addressing basic theoretical issues in the study of shared physiological states by presenting five guiding theoretical principles for making psychological inferences from physiological influence-the extent to which one dyad member's physiology predicts the other dyad member's physiology at a future time point. Second, keeping theoretical and conceptual concerns at the forefront, we outline considerations and recommendations for designing, implementing, and analyzing dyadic psychophysiolog...
During interracial encounters, well-intentioned European Americans sometimes engage in subtle dis... more During interracial encounters, well-intentioned European Americans sometimes engage in subtle displays of anxiety, which can be interpreted as signs of racial bias by African American partners. In the present research, same-race and cross-race stranger dyads ( N = 123) engaged in getting-acquainted tasks, during which measures of sympathetic nervous system responses (preejection period, PEP) and heart rate variability were continuously collected. PEP scores showed that African American partners had stronger physiological linkage to European American partners who evidenced greater anxiety-greater cortisol reactivity, behavioral tension, and self-reported discomfort-which suggests greater physiological responsiveness to momentary changes in partners' affective states when those partners were anxious. European Americans showed physiological linkage to African American and European American partners, but linkage did not vary as a function of their partner's anxiety. Using physio...
Journal of experimental psychology. General, Jul 11, 2017
Mothers and their babies represent one of the closest dyadic units and thus provide a powerful pa... more Mothers and their babies represent one of the closest dyadic units and thus provide a powerful paradigm to examine how affective states are shared, and result in, synchronized physiologic responses between two people. We recruited mothers and their 12- to 14-month-old infants (Ndyads = 98) to complete a lab study in which mothers were initially separated from their infants and assigned to either a low-arousal positive/relaxation condition, intended to elicit parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) reactivity, or a high-arousal negative/stress task, intended to elicit sympathetic nervous system (SNS) reactivity. Upon reunion, infants were placed either on their mothers' laps (touch condition) or in a high chair next to the mother (no-touch condition). We then examined if the babies SNS and/or PNS responses changed from their baseline levels and how the dyads' physiological responses-both PNS and SNS responses-synchronized over time as a function of mothers' affect manipulati...
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2016
Does government stability shift the way White and Black Americans represent and make voting decis... more Does government stability shift the way White and Black Americans represent and make voting decisions about political candidates? Participants judged how representative lightened, darkened, and unaltered photographs were of a racially ambiguous candidate ostensibly running for political office (Studies 1-3). When the governmental system was presented as stable, White participants who shared (vs. did not share) the candidate's political beliefs rated a lightened photo as more representative of the candidate, and Black participants who shared (vs. did not share) the candidate's political beliefs rated a darkened photo as more representative (Studies 1-3). However, under conditions of instability, both Whites and Blacks who shared (vs. did not share) the candidate's political beliefs rated a lightened photo as more representative (Study 3). Representations of (Studies 2 and 3) and actual differences in (Studies 4a and 4b) skin tone predicted intentions to vote for candidates, as a function of government stability and participants' race. Further evidence suggested that system stability shifted the motivations that guided voting decisions (Study 4a and 4b). When the system was stable, the motivation to enhance one's group predicted greater intentions to vote for lighter skinned candidates among Whites, and greater intentions to vote for darker skinned candidates among Blacks. When the system was unstable, however, lacking confidence in the sociopolitical system predicted intentions to vote for lighter skinned candidates among both Whites and Blacks. Implications for political leadership and social perception are discussed.
The myth of racial color blindness: Manifestations, dynamics, and impact., 2016
Even though minorities comprise 37% of the U.S. population (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012), an astound... more Even though minorities comprise 37% of the U.S. population (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012), an astounding 30% of Americans interact exclusively with family members, friends, and coworkers who are of their own race (Reuters, 2013). Given these statistics, it is perhaps not surprising that despite increasingly favorable views of racial integration, interracial inter actions in the United States continue to be anxiety provoking (
Cultural diversity & ethnic minority psychology, 2014
The white male norm hypothesis (Zárate & Smith, 1990) posits that White men's race and gender... more The white male norm hypothesis (Zárate & Smith, 1990) posits that White men's race and gender go overlooked as a result of their prototypical social statuses. In contrast, the intersectional invisibility hypothesis (Purdie-Vaughns & Eibach, 2008) posits that people with membership in multiple subordinate social groups experience social invisibility as a result of their non-prototypical social statuses. The present research reconciles these contradictory theories and provides empirical support for the core assumption of the intersectional invisibility hypothesis-that intersectional targets are non-prototypical within their race and gender ingroups. In a speeded categorization task, participants were slower to associate Black women versus Black men with the category "Black" and slower to associate Black women versus White women with the category "woman." We discuss the implications of this work for social categorical theory development and future intersectional...
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 2009
We conducted a longitudinal study involving 734 college students over a three-month period that i... more We conducted a longitudinal study involving 734 college students over a three-month period that included the 2008 U.S. presidential election. The study investigated factors such as respondents' personality characteristics and ideological proclivities in predicting perceptions of the major candidates and both stability and change in voting preferences for Barack Obama and John McCain. Previous research on personality and political orientation suggests that Openness to New Experiences is positively associated with liberal political preferences, whereas Conscientiousness is positively associated with conservative preferences; we replicated these results in the context of the current study. Several ideological factors also predicted conversion to Obama's candidacy. These included respondents' degree of self-reported liberalism, perceptions of their parents as liberal (versus conservative), and lower scores on measures of authoritarianism and political system justification (i...
Personality & social psychology bulletin, Jan 27, 2014
In three studies, we examined (a) whether conservatives possess a stronger desire to share realit... more In three studies, we examined (a) whether conservatives possess a stronger desire to share reality than liberals and are therefore more likely to perceive consensus with politically like-minded others even for non-political judgments and, if so, (b) whether motivated perceptions of consensus would give conservatives an edge in progressing toward collective goals. In Study 1, participants estimated ingroup consensus on non-political judgments. Conservatives perceived more ingroup consensus than liberals, regardless of the amount of actual consensus. The desire to share reality mediated the relationship between ideology and perceived ingroup consensus. Study 2 replicated these results and demonstrated that perceiving ingroup consensus predicted a sense of collective efficacy in politics. In Study 3, experimental manipulations of affiliative motives eliminated ideological differences in the desire to share reality. A sense of collective efficacy predicted intentions to vote in a major ...
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2014
Integrating theory on close relationships and intergroup relations, we construct a manipulation o... more Integrating theory on close relationships and intergroup relations, we construct a manipulation of similarity that we demonstrate can improve interracial interactions across different settings. We find that manipulating perceptions of similarity on self-revealing attributes that are peripheral to the interaction improves interactions in cross-race dyads and racially diverse task groups. In a getting-acquainted context, we demonstrate that the belief that one's different-race partner is similar to oneself on self-revealing, peripheral attributes leads to less anticipatory anxiety than the belief that one's partner is similar on peripheral, nonself-revealing attributes. In another dyadic context, we explore the range of benefits that perceptions of peripheral, self-revealing similarity can bring to different-race interaction partners and find (a) less anxiety during interaction, (b) greater interest in sustained contact with one's partner, and (c) stronger accuracy in perceptions of one's partners' relationship intentions. By contrast, participants in same-race interactions were largely unaffected by these manipulations of perceived similarity. Our final experiment shows that among small task groups composed of racially diverse individuals, those whose members perceive peripheral, self-revealing similarity perform superior to those who perceive dissimilarity. Implications for using this approach to improve interracial interactions across different goal-driven contexts are discussed.
Interactions between members of different groups are substantially more challenging cognitively, ... more Interactions between members of different groups are substantially more challenging cognitively, emotionally, and socially than are exchanges between members of the same group. This chapter considers how these processes form a psychological basis for divergent intergroup perspectives. In particular, perceptions of membership in different social categories influence evaluations and expectations of others. These processes create initial biases that may systematically be reinforced by the ways people behave (often automatically and unconsciously) toward others, how they interpret others' behaviors, and the different goals they have in intergroup interaction. Efforts to appear unbiased can also sometimes backfire, contributing to miscommunication and increasing tension. Nevertheless, divergent group perspectives and consequent misunderstandings, tension, and conflict are far from inevitable. Structural, contextual, and psychological interventions can promote mutual understanding and...
Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 2014
The present longitudinal study examined the complex role of race-including racial attitudes and v... more The present longitudinal study examined the complex role of race-including racial attitudes and visual representations of race-in White Americans' responses to Obama during the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Consistent with prior research, participants who perceived Obama as darker skinned were less likely to vote for him and generally evaluated Obama less positively. It is important to note, however, that these effects were stronger among Whites with more egalitarian expressed racial attitudes. Moreover, this pattern occurred over and above effects of political orientation and remained stable over a 2-month period, including pre-and postelection. Implications of these findings for understanding the complex and persistent influence of race in politics are considered.
Physician racial bias and patient perceived discrimination have each been found to influence perc... more Physician racial bias and patient perceived discrimination have each been found to influence perceptions of and feelings about racially discordant medical interactions. However, to our knowledge, no studies have examined how they may simultaneously influence the dynamics of these interactions. This study examined how (a) non-Black primary care physicians' explicit and implicit racial bias and (b) Black patients' perceived past discrimination affected physicianepatient talk time ratio (i.e., the ratio of physician to patient talk time) during medical interactions and the relationship between this ratio and patients' subsequent adherence. We conducted a secondary analysis of self-report and video-recorded data from a prior study of clinical interactions between 112 low-income, Black patients and their 14 non-Black physicians at a primary care clinic in the Midwestern United States between June, 2006 and February, 2008. Overall, physicians talked more than patients; however, both physician bias and patient perceived past discrimination affected physicianepatient talk time ratio. Non-Black physicians with higher levels of implicit, but not explicit, racial bias had larger physicianepatient talk time ratios than did physicians with lower levels of implicit bias, indicating that physicians with more negative implicit racial attitudes talked more than physicians with less negative racial attitudes. Additionally, Black patients with higher levels of perceived discrimination had smaller physicianepatient talk time ratios, indicating that patients with more negative racial attitudes talked more than patients with less negative racial attitudes. Finally, smaller physicianepatient talk time ratios were associated with less patient subsequent adherence, indicating that patients who talked more during the racially discordant medical interactions were less likely to adhere subsequently. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed in the context of factors that affect the dynamics of racially discordant medical interactions.
Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2013
Previous research suggests that the perception of anxiety in intergroup interactions can be detri... more Previous research suggests that the perception of anxiety in intergroup interactions can be detrimental to relationship formation. However, the underlying processes through which this occurs remain unclear. The present longitudinal study, which studied same- and different-race/ethnicity roommates over 6 weeks, investigated whether perceived partner anxiety moderates two types of processes previously shown to facilitate relationship development: (a) tracking accuracy, the relationship between perceivers’ assessments of their partner’s interest in remaining roommates and the partner’s stated interest and (b) positive directional bias, representing overestimation of partners’ relationship interest. Under high levels of perceived anxiety, both accuracy and directional bias were generally low, independent of the dyad type. In contrast, when perceived anxiety was relatively low, Whites and minorities in cross-race dyads and Whites in same-race dyads showed a positive directional bias in t...
Intergroup interactions between racial or ethnic majority and minority groups are often stressful... more Intergroup interactions between racial or ethnic majority and minority groups are often stressful for members of both groups; however, the dynamic processes that promote or alleviate tension in intergroup interaction remain poorly understood. Here we identify a behavioral mechanism—response delay—that can uniquely contribute to anxiety and promote disengagement from intergroup contact. Minimally acquainted White, Black, and Latino participants engaged in intergroup or intragroup dyadic conversation either in real time or with a subtle temporal disruption (1-s delay) in audiovisual feedback. Whereas intergroup dyads reported greater anxiety and less interest in contact after engaging in delayed conversation than after engaging in real-time conversation, intragroup dyads reported less anxiety in the delay condition than they did after interacting in real time. These findings have theoretical and practical implications for understanding intergroup communication and social dynamics and ...
Emotions are not simply concepts that live privately in the mind, but rather affective states tha... more Emotions are not simply concepts that live privately in the mind, but rather affective states that emanate from the individual and may influence others. We explored affect contagion in the context of one of the closest dyadic units, mother and infant. We initially separated mothers and infants; randomly assigned the mothers to experience a stressful positive-evaluation task, a stressful negative-evaluation task, or a nonstressful control task; and then reunited the mothers and infants. Three notable findings were obtained: First, infants’ physiological reactivity mirrored mothers’ reactivity engendered by the stress manipulation. Second, infants whose mothers experienced social evaluation showed more avoidance toward strangers compared with infants whose mothers were in the control condition. Third, the negative-evaluation condition, compared with the other conditions, generated greater physiological covariation in the dyads, and this covariation increased over time. These findings ...
Although research suggests distressed individuals benefit from others’ empathy, it is unclear how... more Although research suggests distressed individuals benefit from others’ empathy, it is unclear how an individual’s level of empathy influences dyadic responses during emotional situations. In the current study, female participants ( N = 140; 70 dyads) were paired with a stranger. One member of each dyad (the experiencer) was randomly assigned to undergo a stressful task and disclose negative personal experiences to their partner (the listener). Experiencers paired with listeners higher in dispositional emotional empathy had less negative affect during emotional disclosure and lower sympathetic nervous system reactivity during the stressful task and disclosure. Listeners higher in emotional empathy reported more negative affect in response to their partner’s distress. Furthermore, for listeners higher in emotional empathy, those who more accurately rated their partner’s emotions were more physiologically influenced by their partners. Findings shed light on interpersonal functions of e...
The degree to which experimenters shape participant behavior has long been of interest in experim... more The degree to which experimenters shape participant behavior has long been of interest in experimental social science research. Here, we extend this question to the domain of peripheral psychophysiology, where experimenters often have direct, physical contact with participants, yet researchers do not consistently test for their influence. We describe analytic tools for examining experimenter effects in peripheral physiology. Using these tools, we investigate nine data sets totaling 1,341 participants and 160 experimenters across different roles (e.g., lead research assistants, evaluators, confederates) to demonstrate how researchers can test for experimenter effects in participant autonomic nervous system activity during baseline recordings and reactivity to study tasks. Our results showed (a) little to no significant variance in participants' physiological reactivity due to their experimenters, and (b) little to no evidence that three characteristics of experimenters that are well known to shape interpersonal interactions-status (using five studies with 682 total participants), gender (using two studies with 359 total participants), and race (in two studies with 554 total participants)-influenced participants' physiology. We highlight several reasons that experimenter effects in physiological data are still cause for concern, including the fact that experimenters in these studies were already restricted on a number of characteristics (e.g., age, education). We present recommendations for examining and reducing experimenter effects in physiological data and discuss implications for replication. K E Y W O R D S autonomic nervous system, experimenter effects, multilevel modeling, psychophysiology, replication 2 of 18 | THORSON eT al.
Fairness in machine-assisted decision making is critical to consider, since a lack of fairness ca... more Fairness in machine-assisted decision making is critical to consider, since a lack of fairness can harm individuals or groups, erode trust in institutions and systems, and reinforce structural discrimination. To avoid making ethical mistakes, or amplifying them, it is important to ensure that the algorithms we develop are fair and promote trust. We argue that the marriage of techniques from behavioral science and computer science is essential to develop algorithms that make ethical decisions and ensure the welfare of society. Specifically, we focus on the role of procedural justice, moral cognition, and social identity in promoting trust in algorithms and offer a road map for future research on the topic.
Recent work has demonstrated that people can be influenced by the physiological states of their i... more Recent work has demonstrated that people can be influenced by the physiological states of their interaction partners, showing physiological linkage to them from one moment to the next. In a study of unacquainted dyads who interacted for 30 min (n = 47), we examine the novel question: Are people who show physiological linkage to their partners in sympathetic nervous system responding also less stable in their own responses? Understanding this relationship has important implications for how social relationships impact affective functioning and health. Results using multilevel modeling demonstrated that the within-person correlation between linkage and stability was negative-the more dyad members were physiologically influenced by their interaction partners, the less stable they were in their own physiological responding. This work shows that physiological linkage can come at a cost to people's own stability, meaning our physiological states are more vulnerable to social influence ...
Scholars across domains in psychology, physiology, and neuroscience have long been interested in ... more Scholars across domains in psychology, physiology, and neuroscience have long been interested in the study of shared physiological experiences between people. Recent technological and analytic advances allow researchers to examine new questions about how shared physiological experiences occur. Yet comprehensive guides that address the theoretical, methodological, and analytic components of studying these processes are lacking. The goal of this article is to provide such a guide. We begin by addressing basic theoretical issues in the study of shared physiological states by presenting five guiding theoretical principles for making psychological inferences from physiological influence-the extent to which one dyad member's physiology predicts the other dyad member's physiology at a future time point. Second, keeping theoretical and conceptual concerns at the forefront, we outline considerations and recommendations for designing, implementing, and analyzing dyadic psychophysiolog...
During interracial encounters, well-intentioned European Americans sometimes engage in subtle dis... more During interracial encounters, well-intentioned European Americans sometimes engage in subtle displays of anxiety, which can be interpreted as signs of racial bias by African American partners. In the present research, same-race and cross-race stranger dyads ( N = 123) engaged in getting-acquainted tasks, during which measures of sympathetic nervous system responses (preejection period, PEP) and heart rate variability were continuously collected. PEP scores showed that African American partners had stronger physiological linkage to European American partners who evidenced greater anxiety-greater cortisol reactivity, behavioral tension, and self-reported discomfort-which suggests greater physiological responsiveness to momentary changes in partners' affective states when those partners were anxious. European Americans showed physiological linkage to African American and European American partners, but linkage did not vary as a function of their partner's anxiety. Using physio...
Journal of experimental psychology. General, Jul 11, 2017
Mothers and their babies represent one of the closest dyadic units and thus provide a powerful pa... more Mothers and their babies represent one of the closest dyadic units and thus provide a powerful paradigm to examine how affective states are shared, and result in, synchronized physiologic responses between two people. We recruited mothers and their 12- to 14-month-old infants (Ndyads = 98) to complete a lab study in which mothers were initially separated from their infants and assigned to either a low-arousal positive/relaxation condition, intended to elicit parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) reactivity, or a high-arousal negative/stress task, intended to elicit sympathetic nervous system (SNS) reactivity. Upon reunion, infants were placed either on their mothers' laps (touch condition) or in a high chair next to the mother (no-touch condition). We then examined if the babies SNS and/or PNS responses changed from their baseline levels and how the dyads' physiological responses-both PNS and SNS responses-synchronized over time as a function of mothers' affect manipulati...
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2016
Does government stability shift the way White and Black Americans represent and make voting decis... more Does government stability shift the way White and Black Americans represent and make voting decisions about political candidates? Participants judged how representative lightened, darkened, and unaltered photographs were of a racially ambiguous candidate ostensibly running for political office (Studies 1-3). When the governmental system was presented as stable, White participants who shared (vs. did not share) the candidate's political beliefs rated a lightened photo as more representative of the candidate, and Black participants who shared (vs. did not share) the candidate's political beliefs rated a darkened photo as more representative (Studies 1-3). However, under conditions of instability, both Whites and Blacks who shared (vs. did not share) the candidate's political beliefs rated a lightened photo as more representative (Study 3). Representations of (Studies 2 and 3) and actual differences in (Studies 4a and 4b) skin tone predicted intentions to vote for candidates, as a function of government stability and participants' race. Further evidence suggested that system stability shifted the motivations that guided voting decisions (Study 4a and 4b). When the system was stable, the motivation to enhance one's group predicted greater intentions to vote for lighter skinned candidates among Whites, and greater intentions to vote for darker skinned candidates among Blacks. When the system was unstable, however, lacking confidence in the sociopolitical system predicted intentions to vote for lighter skinned candidates among both Whites and Blacks. Implications for political leadership and social perception are discussed.
The myth of racial color blindness: Manifestations, dynamics, and impact., 2016
Even though minorities comprise 37% of the U.S. population (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012), an astound... more Even though minorities comprise 37% of the U.S. population (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012), an astounding 30% of Americans interact exclusively with family members, friends, and coworkers who are of their own race (Reuters, 2013). Given these statistics, it is perhaps not surprising that despite increasingly favorable views of racial integration, interracial inter actions in the United States continue to be anxiety provoking (
Cultural diversity & ethnic minority psychology, 2014
The white male norm hypothesis (Zárate & Smith, 1990) posits that White men's race and gender... more The white male norm hypothesis (Zárate & Smith, 1990) posits that White men's race and gender go overlooked as a result of their prototypical social statuses. In contrast, the intersectional invisibility hypothesis (Purdie-Vaughns & Eibach, 2008) posits that people with membership in multiple subordinate social groups experience social invisibility as a result of their non-prototypical social statuses. The present research reconciles these contradictory theories and provides empirical support for the core assumption of the intersectional invisibility hypothesis-that intersectional targets are non-prototypical within their race and gender ingroups. In a speeded categorization task, participants were slower to associate Black women versus Black men with the category "Black" and slower to associate Black women versus White women with the category "woman." We discuss the implications of this work for social categorical theory development and future intersectional...
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 2009
We conducted a longitudinal study involving 734 college students over a three-month period that i... more We conducted a longitudinal study involving 734 college students over a three-month period that included the 2008 U.S. presidential election. The study investigated factors such as respondents' personality characteristics and ideological proclivities in predicting perceptions of the major candidates and both stability and change in voting preferences for Barack Obama and John McCain. Previous research on personality and political orientation suggests that Openness to New Experiences is positively associated with liberal political preferences, whereas Conscientiousness is positively associated with conservative preferences; we replicated these results in the context of the current study. Several ideological factors also predicted conversion to Obama's candidacy. These included respondents' degree of self-reported liberalism, perceptions of their parents as liberal (versus conservative), and lower scores on measures of authoritarianism and political system justification (i...
Personality & social psychology bulletin, Jan 27, 2014
In three studies, we examined (a) whether conservatives possess a stronger desire to share realit... more In three studies, we examined (a) whether conservatives possess a stronger desire to share reality than liberals and are therefore more likely to perceive consensus with politically like-minded others even for non-political judgments and, if so, (b) whether motivated perceptions of consensus would give conservatives an edge in progressing toward collective goals. In Study 1, participants estimated ingroup consensus on non-political judgments. Conservatives perceived more ingroup consensus than liberals, regardless of the amount of actual consensus. The desire to share reality mediated the relationship between ideology and perceived ingroup consensus. Study 2 replicated these results and demonstrated that perceiving ingroup consensus predicted a sense of collective efficacy in politics. In Study 3, experimental manipulations of affiliative motives eliminated ideological differences in the desire to share reality. A sense of collective efficacy predicted intentions to vote in a major ...
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2014
Integrating theory on close relationships and intergroup relations, we construct a manipulation o... more Integrating theory on close relationships and intergroup relations, we construct a manipulation of similarity that we demonstrate can improve interracial interactions across different settings. We find that manipulating perceptions of similarity on self-revealing attributes that are peripheral to the interaction improves interactions in cross-race dyads and racially diverse task groups. In a getting-acquainted context, we demonstrate that the belief that one's different-race partner is similar to oneself on self-revealing, peripheral attributes leads to less anticipatory anxiety than the belief that one's partner is similar on peripheral, nonself-revealing attributes. In another dyadic context, we explore the range of benefits that perceptions of peripheral, self-revealing similarity can bring to different-race interaction partners and find (a) less anxiety during interaction, (b) greater interest in sustained contact with one's partner, and (c) stronger accuracy in perceptions of one's partners' relationship intentions. By contrast, participants in same-race interactions were largely unaffected by these manipulations of perceived similarity. Our final experiment shows that among small task groups composed of racially diverse individuals, those whose members perceive peripheral, self-revealing similarity perform superior to those who perceive dissimilarity. Implications for using this approach to improve interracial interactions across different goal-driven contexts are discussed.
Interactions between members of different groups are substantially more challenging cognitively, ... more Interactions between members of different groups are substantially more challenging cognitively, emotionally, and socially than are exchanges between members of the same group. This chapter considers how these processes form a psychological basis for divergent intergroup perspectives. In particular, perceptions of membership in different social categories influence evaluations and expectations of others. These processes create initial biases that may systematically be reinforced by the ways people behave (often automatically and unconsciously) toward others, how they interpret others' behaviors, and the different goals they have in intergroup interaction. Efforts to appear unbiased can also sometimes backfire, contributing to miscommunication and increasing tension. Nevertheless, divergent group perspectives and consequent misunderstandings, tension, and conflict are far from inevitable. Structural, contextual, and psychological interventions can promote mutual understanding and...
Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 2014
The present longitudinal study examined the complex role of race-including racial attitudes and v... more The present longitudinal study examined the complex role of race-including racial attitudes and visual representations of race-in White Americans' responses to Obama during the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Consistent with prior research, participants who perceived Obama as darker skinned were less likely to vote for him and generally evaluated Obama less positively. It is important to note, however, that these effects were stronger among Whites with more egalitarian expressed racial attitudes. Moreover, this pattern occurred over and above effects of political orientation and remained stable over a 2-month period, including pre-and postelection. Implications of these findings for understanding the complex and persistent influence of race in politics are considered.
Physician racial bias and patient perceived discrimination have each been found to influence perc... more Physician racial bias and patient perceived discrimination have each been found to influence perceptions of and feelings about racially discordant medical interactions. However, to our knowledge, no studies have examined how they may simultaneously influence the dynamics of these interactions. This study examined how (a) non-Black primary care physicians' explicit and implicit racial bias and (b) Black patients' perceived past discrimination affected physicianepatient talk time ratio (i.e., the ratio of physician to patient talk time) during medical interactions and the relationship between this ratio and patients' subsequent adherence. We conducted a secondary analysis of self-report and video-recorded data from a prior study of clinical interactions between 112 low-income, Black patients and their 14 non-Black physicians at a primary care clinic in the Midwestern United States between June, 2006 and February, 2008. Overall, physicians talked more than patients; however, both physician bias and patient perceived past discrimination affected physicianepatient talk time ratio. Non-Black physicians with higher levels of implicit, but not explicit, racial bias had larger physicianepatient talk time ratios than did physicians with lower levels of implicit bias, indicating that physicians with more negative implicit racial attitudes talked more than physicians with less negative racial attitudes. Additionally, Black patients with higher levels of perceived discrimination had smaller physicianepatient talk time ratios, indicating that patients with more negative racial attitudes talked more than patients with less negative racial attitudes. Finally, smaller physicianepatient talk time ratios were associated with less patient subsequent adherence, indicating that patients who talked more during the racially discordant medical interactions were less likely to adhere subsequently. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed in the context of factors that affect the dynamics of racially discordant medical interactions.
Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2013
Previous research suggests that the perception of anxiety in intergroup interactions can be detri... more Previous research suggests that the perception of anxiety in intergroup interactions can be detrimental to relationship formation. However, the underlying processes through which this occurs remain unclear. The present longitudinal study, which studied same- and different-race/ethnicity roommates over 6 weeks, investigated whether perceived partner anxiety moderates two types of processes previously shown to facilitate relationship development: (a) tracking accuracy, the relationship between perceivers’ assessments of their partner’s interest in remaining roommates and the partner’s stated interest and (b) positive directional bias, representing overestimation of partners’ relationship interest. Under high levels of perceived anxiety, both accuracy and directional bias were generally low, independent of the dyad type. In contrast, when perceived anxiety was relatively low, Whites and minorities in cross-race dyads and Whites in same-race dyads showed a positive directional bias in t...
Intergroup interactions between racial or ethnic majority and minority groups are often stressful... more Intergroup interactions between racial or ethnic majority and minority groups are often stressful for members of both groups; however, the dynamic processes that promote or alleviate tension in intergroup interaction remain poorly understood. Here we identify a behavioral mechanism—response delay—that can uniquely contribute to anxiety and promote disengagement from intergroup contact. Minimally acquainted White, Black, and Latino participants engaged in intergroup or intragroup dyadic conversation either in real time or with a subtle temporal disruption (1-s delay) in audiovisual feedback. Whereas intergroup dyads reported greater anxiety and less interest in contact after engaging in delayed conversation than after engaging in real-time conversation, intragroup dyads reported less anxiety in the delay condition than they did after interacting in real time. These findings have theoretical and practical implications for understanding intergroup communication and social dynamics and ...
Emotions are not simply concepts that live privately in the mind, but rather affective states tha... more Emotions are not simply concepts that live privately in the mind, but rather affective states that emanate from the individual and may influence others. We explored affect contagion in the context of one of the closest dyadic units, mother and infant. We initially separated mothers and infants; randomly assigned the mothers to experience a stressful positive-evaluation task, a stressful negative-evaluation task, or a nonstressful control task; and then reunited the mothers and infants. Three notable findings were obtained: First, infants’ physiological reactivity mirrored mothers’ reactivity engendered by the stress manipulation. Second, infants whose mothers experienced social evaluation showed more avoidance toward strangers compared with infants whose mothers were in the control condition. Third, the negative-evaluation condition, compared with the other conditions, generated greater physiological covariation in the dyads, and this covariation increased over time. These findings ...
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Papers by Tessa West