Collaborative Research: Investigating Underlying Mechanisms and Behavioral Consequences of Emotion-Induced Implicit Prejudice

这个合作研究项目的目标是研究偶然情绪加剧群体间偏见、刻板印象和歧视行为的条件。在群体间情境中，偶然情绪是指个体在遇到外群体成员之前可能经历的情感状态，其唤起与本群体无关。因此，这些状态不同于整体情绪，整体情绪是指当人们反思或遇到外部群体时直接引起的情感状态。研究人员提出了一个理论模型，该模型指定选择性注意作为偶然情绪和随后的判断和行动偏见之间最有可能的中介。本提案的主要目标是在三组研究中测试所提出模型的准确性。第一组研究检验了选择性注意假说。这些研究考察了偶然情绪是否会导致个体关注与被激活情绪刻板印象相关的群体成员，以及这种关注是否特别关注群体中与情绪相关的特征。这些研究还考察了附带情绪是否会增加与目标群体明确相关的情绪（整体情绪），并关注了目标群体中个人附带情绪的特定特征。第二组研究验证了偶发情绪对目标群体非原型成员的感知的影响大于原型成员的假设。第三组研究的重点是附带情绪的行为后果。这些研究检验了偶然情绪对注意力和内隐偏见的影响可能导致歧视行为的假设。重要的是，该项目将通过加强两个具有不同专业知识的实验室之间的合作来建立科学基础设施：研究情感和内隐社会认知。该项目还将为代表性不足的少数民族成员提供许多接受科学研究培训的机会。

The goal of this collaborative research project is to examine the conditions under which incidental emotions exacerbate intergroup prejudice, stereotyping, and discriminatory behavior. In the intergroup context, incidental emotions refer to affective states that individuals may be experiencing immediately before they encounter outgroup members and whose evocation is unrelated to these groups. As such, these states are different from integral emotions, which refer to affective states that are directly evoked by an outgroup when people reflect on or encounter them. The investigators propose a theoretical model that specifies selective attention as the most likely mediator between incidental emotion and subsequent bias in judgments and action. The primary goal of the present proposal is to test the veracity of the proposed model in three sets of studies. The first set of studies examines the selective attention hypothesis. These studies examine whether incidental emotions cause individuals to focus on members of groups stereotypically associated with the activated emotion, and whether this attention is focused particularly on emotion relevant features of the groups. These studies also examine whether incidental emotion increases emotions explicitly tied to the target group (integral emotion) and a focus on incidental emotion specific features of individuals in the target group. The second set of studies tests the hypothesis that incidental emotion affects perceptions of non-prototypical members of target groups more than prototypic members. The third set of studies focus on the behavioral consequences of incidental emotion. These studies examine the hypothesis that the effect of incidental emotions on attention, and implicit biases can cause discriminatory behaviors. Importantly, this project will build scientific infrastructure by strengthening collaborations between two labs with different expertise: the study of emotion and implicit social cognition. This project will also provide many opportunities for members of underrepresented minorities to be trained in scientific research.