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检查条件下，附带的情绪加剧群体间的偏见，刻板印象和歧视行为。在群际语境中，附带情绪是指个体在遇到外群成员之前可能会经历的情感状态，其唤起与这些群体无关。因此，这些状态与整体情绪不同，整体情绪是指当人们反思或遇到外群体时，由外群体直接诱发的情感状态。研究人员提出了一个理论模型，该模型将选择性注意指定为偶然情绪与随后的判断和行动偏差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的模型的准确性。第一组研究检验了选择性注意假设。这些研究检查是否偶然的情绪导致个人专注于与激活的情绪刻板相关的群体成员，以及这种注意力是否特别集中在群体的情绪相关特征上。这些研究还探讨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），并关注目标群体中个体的附带情绪具体特征。第二组研究检验了这一假设，即附带情绪对目标群体中非原型成员的感知的影响大于原型成员。 第三组研究集中在附带情绪的行为后果。这些研究验证了附带情绪对注意力的影响以及内隐偏见会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：情绪和内隐社会认知的研究。这一项目还将为代表性不足的少数群体成员提供许多机会，使他们能够接受科学研究方面的培训。

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.