Emergence of Implicit Bias during Adolescent Development

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7. PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT The proposed research investigates how implicit racial bias develops and can be counteracted among racial majority adolescents. Racial majority adults’ implicit bias toward lower-status racial groups perpetuates societal inequalities in health (e.g., via subpar medical care), wealth (e.g., via biased hiring), and well-being (e.g., via discriminatory social interactions). Developmental research identifies adolescence as a critical time to address implicit racial bias before it becomes entrenched in adulthood. The broader goals of this project are to elucidate the social-cognitive processes underlying majority adolescents’ implicit racial bias and to design interventions to counteract this bias. These goals align with NICHD’s priority to understand social and cognitive factors related to the development of (biased) reasoning. While implicit bias has negative consequences for minority groups, such bias may also decrease racial majority adolescents’ intergroup contact and relationships, which are critical for developing social-cognitive skills (e.g., cognitive flexibility) that facilitate adaptive adjustment in a multicultural society. The central hypotheses of this study are: (1) adolescents with more exposure to African Americans will have greater social-cognitive skills to individuate (i.e., perceive them as unique individuals) and humanize them (i.e., attribute human mental states), and in turn will develop less implicit racial bias, and (2) directly teaching adolescents to individuate and humanize African American people will reduce implicit bias. The specific aims are: (1) to examine how peers and media influence adolescents’ implicit racial bias through the development of the tendency to individuate and humanize African American people, and (2) to conduct an intervention integrating individuation and humanization interventions to reduce adolescents’ implicit bias in the long-term. Regarding methods, Aim 1 will be a yearlong, three-wave correlational study examining longitudinal links between racial majority adolescents’ a) exposure to African Americans, b) individuation and humanization of African American people, and c) implicit racial bias. Aim 2 will be a 2x2 intervention study (Individuation [yes, no] x Humanization [yes, no]) in which participants will read first-person narratives from African American adolescents and view corresponding photographs; the intervention conditions will vary in whether they promote individuation (by training subjects to differentiate the target African American adolescents) and humanization (e.g., by including emotional stories in the narratives). The study will assess implicit bias 3 months later to examine long-term effects. This project is theoretically and methodologically innovative and is expected to be significant because it will advance the development of empirically-validated strategies to reduce societal racial inequalities. The accompanying three-year postdoctoral training plan will take place predominantly in the psychology department at the University of California, San Diego. The trainee will be provided mentorship from leading psychologists in implicit racial bias research, training in state-of-the-art theoretical and methodological approaches, and a formal postdoctoral training program to launch her independent academic career.