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Social Psychology Commons

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Stereotypes

Law and Race

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social Psychology

Do Racial Stereotypes Contribute To Medical Misdiagnosis Of Child Abuse? Investigating Tunnel Vision In The Emergency Room, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Kimberly M. Bernstein, Katherine S. Wahrer Jan 2020

Do Racial Stereotypes Contribute To Medical Misdiagnosis Of Child Abuse? Investigating Tunnel Vision In The Emergency Room, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Kimberly M. Bernstein, Katherine S. Wahrer

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

Despite growing recognition that misdiagnoses of child abuse can lead to wrongful convictions, little empirical work has examined how the medical community may contribute to these errors. Previous research has documented the existence and content of stereotypes that associate race with child abuse. The current study examines whether emergency medical professionals rely on this stereotype to fill in gaps in ambiguous cases involving Black children, thereby increasing the potential for misdiagnoses of child abuse. Specifically, we tested whether the race-abuse stereotype led participants to attend to more abuse-related details than infection-related details when an infant patient was Black versus White. …


Stereotype Threat And Racial Differences In Citizens’ Experiences Of Police Encounters, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Bette L. Bottoms, Phillip Atiba Goff Jan 2015

Stereotype Threat And Racial Differences In Citizens’ Experiences Of Police Encounters, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Bette L. Bottoms, Phillip Atiba Goff

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

We conducted 2 studies to investigate how cultural stereotypes that depict Blacks as criminals affect the way Blacks experience encounters with police officers, expecting that such encounters induce Blacks to feel stereotype threat (i.e., concern about being judged and treated unfairly by police because of the stereotype). In Study 1, we asked Black and White participants to report how they feel when interacting with police officers in general. As predicted, Blacks, but not Whites, reported concern that police officers stereotype them as criminals simply because of their race. In addition, this effect was found for Black men but not Black …