Collaborative Research: Individual Differences in Executive Functions and Expressions of Racial Biases

“这项奖励是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。”本合作项目概述了一系列研究，调查执行功能（EFs）的个体差异在隐性种族偏见表达中的作用。执行功能指的是调节思想和行为的高阶控制过程。虽然一个人在基于实验室的内隐偏见任务中的表现通常被解释为他/她潜在的自动偏见的直接表现，但最近的初步证据表明，在所有这些任务中的表现都涉及执行控制过程，例如压倒优势或前强反应。本项目研究团队认为，内隐偏见任务评估的种族偏见是一个复杂的结构，受自动偏见和外语能力个体差异共同影响。他们将开展的研究旨在通过对英语能力和种族偏见表达之间的关系进行大规模的个体差异研究，大力验证这一新兴理论观点。本研究的目的有三个：调查种族偏见的行为表现在多大程度上与相关但可分离的英语能力的个体差异相关；研究与认知控制相关的几个神经认知过程作为EF能力影响种族偏见表达的机制；并确定EF能力的个体差异是否会缓和暂时消耗执行功能的操作的影响。这项工作将涉及5名合作者，包括三个地理位置的近500名研究参与者。该项目在理论上与现有工作的不同之处在于，当前的研究采用了EF的多成分观点，而不是将EF视为单一的能力，这表明它可以分解为相关但可分离的子成分，如抑制、更新和转移。通过检查内隐偏见的行为和神经认知（ERP）指数，该项目有可能提供第一个系统和全面的内隐偏见关系分析。

"This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)."This collaborative project outlines a series of studies investigating the role of individual differences in executive functions (EFs) in expression of implicit racial bias. Executive functions refer to higher-order control processes that regulate thought and action. Although an individual's performance on laboratory-based implicit bias tasks is typically interpreted as a straightforward manifestation of his/her underlying automatic bias, recent preliminary evidence suggests that performance on all such tasks implicates executive control processes, such as the overriding of dominant or pre-potent responses. According to the team of researchers involved in this project, racial bias, as assessed by implicit bias tasks, is a complex construct jointly affected by automatic bias and individual differences in EF abilities. The research they will carry out seeks to vigorously test this emerging theoretical view by conducting a large-scale individual differences study of the relationship between EF abilities and expressions of racial bias. The aim of this research is threefold: to investigate the extent to which behavioral manifestations of race bias are associated with individual differences in related but separable EF abilities; to investigate several neurocognitive processes associated with cognitive control as mechanisms through which EF abilities affect expression of race bias; and to determine whether individual differences in EF abilities moderate the impact of manipulations that temporarily deplete executive functioning. The work will involve 5 collaborators and include nearly 500 research participants at three geographic locations. What sets this project apart theoretically from existing work is that rather than treating EF as a unitary ability, the current research adopts a multi-component view of EF that suggest it can be decomposed into correlated yet separable subcomponents, such as inhibition, updating, and shifting. By examining both behavioral and neurocognitive (ERP) indices of implicit bias, this project has the potential to provide the first-ever systematic and comprehensive analysis of the EF-bias relationship.