Developing Effective Strategies for Confronting Racial Bias in Interpersonal Interactions

社会、行为和经济科学局提供博士后研究奖学金，为新近毕业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，并在本科生和研究生培训之外拓宽他们的科学视野。博士后奖学金的进一步设计是为了帮助新科学家引导他们的研究努力跨越传统的学科界限，并利用独特的研究资源、地点和设施，包括在国外。这一博士后奖学金支持了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，人们经常回避关于当今种族问题的对话，因为他们可能会紧张和不舒服。事实上，在关于种族偏见的对话中，分歧通常会产生防御、愤怒和退缩--这些情绪集中在其他方面，阻碍了观点的选择和下游的态度和行为变化。这项研究计划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学术知识，以确定将缓和这些防御情绪的策略。更具体地说，这个项目探索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，这个项目明确测试了自我调节训练是否会改善白人？S自己的种族歧视倾向？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，以及这是否会因对抗者的种族或个人使用的风格而有所不同，这可以为在努力实现种族平等和社会变革时吸引多数群体盟友的方法提供参考。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，而不是导致可能导致反弹的以他人为重点的(即，防御性的)反应。综上所述，这项研究将提供如何面对和讨论种族偏见的实践知识，以激励个人走向社会变革，并促进对当今社会中种族偏见的相关性和普遍性的相互理解？S。本研究通过探索人们如何应对不同类型的种族偏见对抗来推动社会心理学理论的发展。基于自我决定理论和偏见的自我调节模型，四个实验实证地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标准(即支持自主的策略)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自发地区分支持自主和控制的对抗，以及这如何影响他们对种族偏见对抗的态度、行为和感知。随后的实验检验了来自对抗者(即共同种族群体)的安全线索和来自自我的安全线索(即强调一种-S种族偏见倾向和自我调节的训练)是否缓和了对控制种族偏见对抗的负面反应。最后一项研究模仿了真实世界中关于种族的对话，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-S行为-更积极、更可感知的差异。总之，本研究扩展了过去的工作，确定了种族偏见对抗何时以及为什么会干扰自我调节过程，并创造了干预的方法，以鼓励参与未来的群体间接触。

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.