Developing Effective Strategies for Confronting Racial Bias in Interpersonal Interactions

社会、行为和经济科学司提供博士后研究奖学金，为最近的博士毕业生提供获得额外培训的机会，在知名科学家的赞助下获得研究经验，并扩大他们在本科和研究生训练之外的科学视野。博士后奖学金的进一步设计是为了帮助新科学家指导他们跨越传统学科线的研究工作，并利用他们自己独特的研究资源、地点和设施，包括在国外的研究地点。本博士后奖学金资助一位在社会心理学领域研究种族偏见的新兴学者。关于种族偏见在社会中的运作有很多观点，然而，人们经常回避关于种族问题的对话，因为他们可能会感到紧张和不舒服。事实上，在关于种族偏见的谈话中，意见分歧通常会引起防御、愤怒和退缩。以他人为中心的情绪会抑制换位思考和下游态度和行为的改变。这个研究项目结合了社会心理学在面对种族偏见、自我调节和种族间互动方面的研究，以确定缓和这些防御情绪的策略。更具体地说，这个项目探讨了白人在关于偏见的对话中如何回应不同风格的反馈（即对抗）。此外，这个项目明确地测试了自我调节训练是否提供了洞察力？他自己的种族偏见倾向会改善白人吗？对对抗的反应。更深入地了解对抗目标在面对面互动中的感受和反应，以及这种感受和反应是否因对抗者的种族或个人使用的风格而有所不同，可以为在致力于种族平等和社会变革时吸引多数群体盟友提供信息。这项工作的另一个好处是，它适用于创建多样性和包容性研讨会，以促进自我驱动的变革，而不是导致以他人为中心（即防御）的反应，从而导致反弹。总之，这项研究将提供关于如何面对和讨论种族偏见的实用知识，这些知识将激励个人走向社会变革，并促进对当今种族偏见的相关性和普遍性的相互理解。年代的社会。本研究通过探讨人们对不同类型的种族偏见对抗的反应，推动了社会心理学理论的发展。在自我决定理论和偏见的自我调节模型的基础上，四个实验从经验上测试了白人对强调遵守社会规范（即控制策略）的对抗与强调遵守个人平等主义标准（即自主支持策略）的对抗的反应。第一项研究使用自由回忆范式来探索白人是否会自发地区分自主支持和控制对抗，以及这如何影响他们对种族偏见对抗者的态度、行为和看法。随后的实验测试了来自对抗者（即共同的种族群体）和来自自我（即强调同一种族的训练）的安全提示是否有效？种族偏见倾向和自我调节)缓和了控制种族偏见对抗的负面反应。最后一项研究模拟了现实世界中有关种族的对话，考察了白人对面对面对抗的反应，以及（来自他人和自己的）安全提示是否会鼓励对抗目标出现更积极、可察觉的差异。年代的行为。总而言之，本研究通过确定种族偏见对抗何时以及为何会干扰自我调节过程，并通过创造干预方法来鼓励未来群体间接触的参与，扩展了过去的工作。

The Directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences offers postdoctoral research fellowships to provide opportunities for recent doctoral graduates to obtain additional training, to gain research experience under the sponsorship of established scientists, and to broaden their scientific horizons beyond their undergraduate and graduate training. Postdoctoral fellowships are further designed to assist new scientists to direct their research efforts across traditional disciplinary lines and to avail themselves of unique research resources, sites, and facilities, including at foreign locations. This postdoctoral fellowship award supports a rising scholar in the field of social psychology researching racial bias. There are many perspectives about the operation of racial bias in society, and yet, people often shirk away from conversations about racial issues-of-the-day because they can be tense and uncomfortable. Indeed, disagreement during conversations about racial bias typically engenders defensiveness, anger, and withdrawal?other-focused emotions that inhibit perspective-taking and downstream attitudinal and behavioral change. This research program combines social psychological scholarship on confronting racial bias, self-regulation, and interracial interactions to identify strategies that will temper these feelings of defensiveness. More specifically, this project explores how Whites respond to different styles of feedback (i.e., confrontation) during conversations about bias. Additionally, this project explicitly tests whether self-regulation training that provides insight into one?s own propensity for racial bias will improve Whites? reactions to confrontation. Achieving greater insight into how confrontation targets feel and respond in face-to-face interactions, and whether this differs based on the race of the confronter or the style that individual uses, can inform ways to engage majority group allies when working toward racial equality and social change. An additional benefit of this work is its applicability for creating diversity and inclusion workshops that promote self-driven change, instead of ones that result in other-focused (i.e., defensive) reactions that can lead to backlash. Taken together, this research will provide practical knowledge about how to confront and discuss racial bias in ways that will motivate individuals toward social change and foster mutual understanding of the relevance and prevalence of racial bias in today?s society.The present studies advance social psychological theory by exploring how people respond to different types of racial bias confrontation. Building on self-determination theory and the self-regulation model of prejudice, four experiments empirically test how Whites respond to confrontation that emphasizes compliance with social norms (i.e., a controlling strategy) compared to confrontation that emphasizes compliance with personal egalitarian standards (i.e., an autonomy-supportive strategy). The first study uses a free-recall paradigm to explore whether Whites spontaneously distinguish between autonomy-supportive and controlling confrontations, and how this affects their attitudes, behavior, and perceptions of racial bias confronters. The subsequent experiments test whether safety cues from the confronter (i.e., shared racial group) and safety cues from the self (i.e., training that emphasize one?s propensity for racial bias and self-regulation) temper negative reactions to controlling racial bias confrontation. The final study mimics real-world conversations about race by examining how Whites respond to face-to-face confrontation, and whether safety cues (from others, and the self) encourage more positive, perceivable differences in the confrontation target?s behavior. In sum, the present research extends past work by identifying when and why racial bias confrontation interferes with self-regulatory processes, and by creating ways to intervene to encourage engagement in future intergroup contact.