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

“该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。“这个合作项目概述了一系列研究，调查执行功能（EF）的个体差异在表达隐性种族偏见中的作用。 执行功能是指调节思想和行动的高阶控制过程。 虽然一个人的表现在实验室为基础的内隐偏见任务通常被解释为一个简单的表现，他/她的潜在的自动偏见，最近的初步证据表明，在所有这些任务的表现涉及执行控制过程，如压倒优势或优势的反应。根据参与该项目的研究团队的说法，种族偏见，通过内隐偏见任务进行评估，是一个复杂的结构，受到自动偏见和EF能力个体差异的共同影响。 他们将开展的研究旨在通过对EF能力与种族偏见表达之间的关系进行大规模的个体差异研究，来大力测试这一新兴的理论观点。 本研究的目的有三个方面：调查种族偏见的行为表现与相关但可分离的EF能力的个体差异的相关程度;调查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耗尽执行功能的操纵的影响。 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。 该项目与现有研究的理论区别在于，目前的研究采用了执行功能的多成分观点，而不是将执行功能视为一种单一的能力，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。通过研究内隐偏见的行为和神经认知（ERP）指标，该项目有可能提供有史以来第一次系统和全面的EF偏见关系的分析。

"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.