Social Psychology Commons^™

The Effect Of Imagined Intergroup Contact On Heterosexism, Laurel Mertz

Master's Theses

Heterosexism and other forms of prejudice against the LGBTQ community remain prevalent across the world. Thus, the study of how to reduce heterosexism has become a much more common and necessary domain of research in recent years. Previous research has demonstrated mixed results of the effect of imagined intergroup contact on heterosexism. the current study sought to evaluate various contexts in which imagined intergroup contact would decrease or increase levels of both implicit and explicit heterosexist attitudes. I predicted that individuals who imagined winning a basketball game with a gay teammate would display more positive attitudes toward gay men whereas …

Does Maga Affect Legal Decision Making In A Criminal Case?, Jaelyn M. Nixon

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) slogan was embedded with underlying ideologies that are perceived by some individuals as promoting strict laws, policies, and punishments (Goldstein & Hall, 2017). Specifically, he is notorious for his support of capital punishment on more than one occasion (Richard, 2018). Punishment decision making can be influenced by an individual’s belonging to social categories that may have been formed based on political beliefs, gender, and other social criteria (Kahan et al., 2009). Additionally, racial disparities within the legal system persist and are known to be maintained through racially biased punishment decision making. Our research …

Imagined Contact Intervention With An American Muslim Target, Jamie Williams

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Recent studies have shown that imagining contact with a member of a differing social group can reduce prejudice toward said group. This type of prejudice intervention, known as an imagined contact intervention, can be beneficial when direct contact with the outgroup is not feasible. This study adds to existing research on imagined contact interventions by replicating a simple version of the intervention by Husnu and Crisp (2010) and assessing attitudes toward an American Muslim out-group. This study extends the research of Husnu and Crisp (2010) by using American participants as opposed to British participants and also uses an online distribution …

How Prototypicality Influences Inferences And Discrimination Towards Gay Men, Adam Beam

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

I assessed the influence prototypicality has on judgements individuals make about gay men. It has been demonstrated that individuals make inferences regarding a person’s traits and group membership based upon a person’s perceived prototypicality (Ambady, Hallahan, & Conner, 1999; Stephan & Stephan, 1989; Wilkins, Kaiser, and Rieck, 2010). I hypothesized that highly prototypical gay men would be perceived to be more identified with the gay community, possess more negative stereotypes of gay men, engage in more activities associated with the gay community, receive less positive feelings from others, and experience more discrimination. Additionally, perceived group identification and negative stereotyping were …

How Diet Choices And Weight Change Person Perception, Nicole Tibbits

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Previous studies have explored the negative perceptions of overweight targets along with the specific physical and psychological characteristics commonly used to describe them. The current study extends this literature by experimentally investigating the effect that both weight and diet choices have on the characteristics attributed to an individual. Participants were exposed to one of four scenarios that involved exposure to an image (overweight or average) and a short description of the target with the diet manipulation (healthy or unhealthy) embedded. As expected, overweight targets with unhealthy diets were rated lowest on perceptions of physical health and independent of weight, targets …

Anti-Fat Bias Of Occupational Therapy Students, Carli Friedman, Laura H. Vanpuymbrouck

Journal of Occupational Therapy Education

Anti-fat biases in healthcare providers can result in substandard and decreased care, and also result in health disparities. There are very few studies that examine occupational therapists’ attitudes towards fat people and implications on practice. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore the implicit fat prejudice of occupational therapy students. The authors also sought to understand how this prejudice related to the occupation-based models/frames of reference with which students professionally identified. To do so, 58 occupational therapy students from three Midwestern universities, all of whom recently completed their first year of professional occupational therapy education, completed the Weight …

Ambivalent Prejudice In News Media: Does Social Hierarchy Threat Change How We View Reporters?, Rebecca E. Burchette

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Despite research demonstrating the importance of news media, there remains a gap in the literature on how the reporter influences the perception of the information. This current experiment aims to fill that gap by evaluating how reporter race and social hierarchy threat alters perceptions of both the reporter and the information. White participants read an article with content that indicated that the current racial hierarchy is either under threat or likely to continue; the article was written by either a Black or White reporter. Participants then completed measures of perceptions of warmth and competence of the reporter, acceptance levels towards …

White-Identifying Populations' Perceptions Of Muslims In The United Kingdom And United States, Ashley Gilliam

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Much of Western society is engaging with complex ideas and events such as multiculturalism, immigration, assimilation, and terrorism. The United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US) are relevant to this larger discussion considering the 2016 finalization of the ‘Brexit’ decision to leave the European Union and the recent travel restriction policies in the US targeting some countries with Islam as majority religious affiliation. Given these events, my larger research question addresses how majority populations view minority groups. Several studies have provided a view of how Muslims in the West form their own identities (Hopkins, 2011; Modood & Ahmad, 2007; …

Prejudice, Jonathan M. Gallimore

PSY 350 PR - Gallimore - Fall 2018

This activity - Prejudice - is designed to expose students' explicit prejudices.

This activity should help students understand that everyone holds prejudices and to launch a discussion about the source of prejudice – especially ways to reduce it. Often, superordinate goals are a great way to bring together disparate groups, so the class does spend time talking about goals that may unite humanity.

This activity uses a worksheet, “Acceptability of Prejudice,” from http://breakingprejudice.org/teaching/group-activities/acceptability-of-prejudice.html The worksheet was adapted by Mary Kite and Elizabeth Tobin from a 2002 article by Crandell, Eshleman, and O’Brien.

Prejudice, Jonathan M. Gallimore

PSY 101 PR - Gallimore - Fall 2018

This activity - Prejudice - is designed to expose students' explicit prejudices.

This activity should help students understand that everyone holds prejudices and to launch a discussion about the source of prejudice – especially ways to reduce it. Often, superordinate goals are a great way to bring together disparate groups, so the class does spend time talking about goals that may unite humanity.

This activity uses a worksheet, “Acceptability of Prejudice,” from http://breakingprejudice.org/teaching/group-activities/acceptability-of-prejudice.html The worksheet was adapted by Mary Kite and Elizabeth Tobin from a 2002 article by Crandell, Eshleman, and O’Brien.

Multiculturalism, Colorblindness, And Prejudice: Examining How Diversity Ideologies Impact Intergroup Attitudes, David Sparkman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The present research examined an underlying psychological process of the effect of diversity ideologies on prejudice among Whites. In one study, I tested whether colorblindness vs. multiculturalism affected perceptions of similarity vs. difference, outgroup perspective taking, and, in turn, prejudice. Using an experimental design, 341 total White participants from both an undergraduate (n = 151) and non-student adult sample (n = 190) were randomly assigned to a standard colorblind or multicultural condition. Participants then completed various measures of perceived similarities vs. differences (visual, interpersonal), outgroup perspective taking (egocentrism, perspective-taking scenario), and prejudice (explicit racial bias, symbolic racism). Results suggest the …

Influence Of Stereotyping And Prejudices On Perceptions Of Superheroes, Emily A. Sanchez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Fictional superheroes possess characteristics that can be identified with on a human level (e.g., gender and race); however, their superhuman nature may lead them be evaluated as a distinct outgroup. The current study attempted to assess how racial and gender attitudes may affect perceptions of superheroes and how other participant characteristics may impact ratings. The current study found that gender and race influenced evaluations of perceived attributes of superhero drawings. Figures depicted with an unnatural skin tone were rated less favorably. Although, there were no differences between ratings of Black and White heroes, Black heroes were consistently rated higher, particularly …

Influence Of Stereotyping And Prejudices On Perceptions Of Superheroes, Emily A. Sanchez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Fictional superheroes possess characteristics that can be identified with on a human level (e.g., gender and race); however, their superhuman nature may lead them be evaluated as a distinct outgroup. The current study attempted to assess how racial and gender attitudes may affect perceptions of superheroes and how other participant characteristics may impact ratings. The current study found that gender and race influenced evaluations of perceived attributes of superhero drawings. Figures depicted with an unnatural skin tone were rated less favorably. Although, there were no differences between ratings of Black and White heroes, Black heroes were consistently rated higher, particularly …

The Impact Of Regulatory Fit On Confrontations Of Bias, Rayne Bozeman

Dissertations

Anti-Black racism remains a major problem in contemporary American life, with deleterious consequences for Blacks. White allies possess social power to change the status quo by confronting racism. Although confrontation reduces biased behavior and prejudiced attitudes, many people refrain from spontaneously confronting. Persuasive appeals may encourage ally confronting. When these appeals are strategically framed in a manner that matches people’s regulatory orientation, they are expected to experience a sense of fit, which makes them feel better about the tasks they are engaged in. Two studies tested whether experiencing regulatory fit would enhance the persuasiveness of a pro-confrontation message. Participants were …

What's Wrong With Being Single: Lowered Relational Value Bias Toward Single People, Darian Farrell

Master's Theses

This study examined the perceived relational value of single individuals (compared to that of coupled individuals). I hypothesized that, participants would be more likely to make the conjunction fallacy in the single condition vs. the coupled condition, when asked whether or not it was more likely that the target person from the condition was a single teacher vs. teacher. The data supported my hypothesis: participants in the single condition were significantly more likely to make the conjunction fallacy than participants in the coupled condition. My study also tested whether or not the need to belong acted as a moderator for …

Thinking About Race: How Group Biases Interact With Ideological Principles To Yield Attitudes Toward Government Assistance, Frank John Gonzalez

Department of Political Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

When are people more likely to evaluate race-targeted government assistance based on ideological principles rather than racial prejudice? In order to answer this question, it is necessary to understand the mechanisms by which prejudice influences political attitudes. In this dissertation, I develop a theoretical model for explaining how deep-seated, automatic group biases interact with higher-order, ideological principles in order to influence attitudes toward race-targeted government assistance. I suggest group-based principles are more important than individualistic values or ingroup favoritism in explaining race-targeted policy attitudes. I argue that when people evaluate race-targeted policies, controlled neural processes translate automatic neural processes into …

Religious Discrimination In Courtroom Oaths, Shannon M. Griffith

Theses and Dissertations

The current study investigated whether trust in Atheists moderates the relationship between prejudice against Atheists and belief in a hypothetical Atheists’ witness testimony. Pilot studies revealed that participants do not innately label witnesses who affirm as Atheists and determined that there was no significant difference between ratings of belief in Atheists witnesses in comparison to Christian witnesses. Responses from 185 MTurk participants confirmed that belief in witnesses did not significantly differ between Atheists and Christians. Furthermore, trust did not moderate the relationship between prejudice against Atheists and belief in the Atheist witness. These studies furthered research in distrust against Atheists …

The Justification Of Prejudice Toward Childfree Women, Annalucia Bays

Theses and Dissertations

Previous research suggests that women without children are perceived negatively by others and experience adverse outcomes in various settings. This study investigated psychosocial justifications of prejudice toward childfree women. Participants (N = 891) completed measures of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), the internal (IMS-S) and external (EMS-S) motivations to respond without sexism, and prejudice toward childfree women (i.e., perceived disadvantages of being childfree, evaluations of childfree women, and perceptions of childfree women’s warmth). Most participants also completed one or more justification measures of hostile sexism (HS), benevolent sexism (BS), gender-specific system justification (GSSJ), and femininity ideology. Results indicated that greater RWA …

Effects Of Mortality Salience On Anti- Atheist Prejudice: A Terror Management Perspective, Cassidy J. Keim

Honors College Theses

Terror Management Theory argues that mortality salience is an important motivator in how people behave throughout their lives, and can influence how prejudiced individuals become. In this study we triggered participants’ mortality salience to test this claim, as well as measured the attitudes of prejudice have for atheists compared to homosexuals to see if they differ. Mortality salience did not have an effect on prejudice in this experiment, but anti-atheist prejudice was significantly higher than anti-homosexual prejudice. Although these findings are small, they confirm a need for continued research on prejudice against religious minorities, such as atheists, and how to …

Representations And Discourse About Religion And Chinese Descendants In 2012 Jakarta’S Election, Idhamsyah Eka Putra

The Qualitative Report

The aim of this paper is to analyze rhetorical rejections from Muslims, a majority group, who refused a non-Muslim Chinese candidate in the 2012 Jakarta gubernatorial election. The study focuses to explore (1) the social representations of the Chinese and how it was used to attack the Chinese candidate and (2) a construction process of a “new” social representation on how a religious teaching was constructed to have nothing to do with negative sentiments or hatred. The field study focused on analyzing the sequential events related to the sermon of a prominent Islamic figure, his denial of the hate contents …

Prejudice Toward Atheists In The United States As Related To Perceived Prevalence, Wanda D. Brooks

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

By manipulating mortality salience (MS) in place of life-threatening events to stimulate death-related thoughts, the current research contributes to the body of research supporting Terror Management Theory. It was hypothesized that religious participants should exhibit cultural worldview defense by scoring higher in anti-atheist prejudice following the MS manipulation than would those in the control condition. Further, this research extends the current research into Terror Management Theory as a cause for conflict among out-groups and explores its effects on cultural worldviews in the area of prejudice toward atheists. This includes examining how the perception of an increasing prevalence of atheists contributes …

"Getting Ahead" Versus "Getting Along": Examining The Role Of Agency And Communion In Prejudice, Courtney A. Lunt

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The topic of prejudice has been extensively studied by psychologists, but there has been no work directly examining whether agency (“getting ahead”) and communion (“getting along”) influence prejudiced attitudes. Across three studies we examined whether these dimensions differentially motivate prejudiced attitudes towards immigrants and Syrian refugees. We expected that agency would positively predict prejudice for those low in communion but not for those high in communion and that a self-threat would amplify this effect. Additionally, we examined unmitigated agency (focus on agency to the exclusion of communion, distinct from high agency and low communion as separate factors) as it has …

The Role Of Intentions In Conceptions Of Prejudice: An Historical Perspective, Patrick S. Forscher, Patricia G. Devine

Psychological Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this chapter, we will draw on previous treatments of the history of prejudice research (Devine, 1995; Duckitt, 1992; Milner, 1983) to conduct an historical review of how events in both the real world and the research world have shaped researchers’ conceptualizations of the intentionality of prejudice. We argue that, while early research focused on the intentional aspects of prejudice, modern research focuses more exclusively on the unintentional aspects of prejudice. As a result of the modern overattention to the unintentional aspects of prejudice, researchers have ignored the possibility that some people are motivated to express prejudice (Forscher & Devine, …

Examining The Role Of Threat Processing In Memory Consolidation And Prejudice Formation, Stephanie Marie Reyes

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Memory is a flexible system that integrates new incoming information into existing memory representations (Stickgold & Walker, 2007). Through sleep and over time, memories become stable via consolidation processes (Payne, Stickgold, Swanberg & Kensinger, 2008). Prejudice formation can occur through the consolidation of stereotype schemas. In a previous study Latino participants learned positive and negative trait information about in-group and out-group members (Enge, Lupo & Zárate, 2015). At test, participants responded more quickly to out-group targets paired with negative traits than in-group pairings with these traits. Findings indicate that participants also responded more quickly to in-group targets paired with positive …

“God Hates Fags”—The Use Of Religion As Justification For Prejudice Towards Homosexuals, Michelle S. Fabros

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The Westboro Baptist Church and Phelps family are notorious for their signs proclaiming anti-homosexuality epithets such as “God Hates Fag,” and references to Biblical verses to revile homosexuality (e.g., Romans 1:24-27). Although the homonegativity bias that Westboro patrons and many traditional Christians express is often understood as being rooted in religion, I proposed the possibility that religion can be a justification rather than source of homonegativity. That is, although religion typically is seen as the source of prejudice towards LGBT+ people, I argued that this relationship might work in reverse. I examined under which conditions this “reverse” phenomena might occur …

Controlling The Influence Of Stereotypes On One’S Thoughts (Preprint Title: Controlling Implicit Bias: Insights From A Public Health Perspective), Patrick S. Forscher, Patricia G. Devine

Psychological Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Research on reducing or controlling implicit bias has been characterized by a tension between the two goals of reducing lingering intergroup disparities and gaining insight into human cognition. The tension between these two goals has created two distinct research traditions, each of which is characterized by different research questions, methods, and ultimate goals. We argue that the divisions between these research traditions are more apparent than real and that the two research traditions could be synergistic. We attempt to integrate the two traditions by arguing that implicit bias, and the disparities it is presumed to cause, is a public health …

The Motivation To Express Prejudice, Patrick S. Forscher, William T.L. Cox, Nicholas Graetz, Patricia G. Devine

Psychological Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Contemporary prejudice research focuses primarily on people who are motivated to respond without prejudice and the ways in which unintentional bias can cause these people to act inconsistent with this motivation. However, some real-world phenomena (e.g., hate speech, hate crimes) and experimental findings (e.g., Plant & Devine, 2001; 2009) suggest that some expressions of prejudice are intentional. These phenomena and findings are difficult to explain solely from the motivations to respond without prejudice. We argue that some people are motivated to express prejudice, and we develop the motivation to express prejudice (MP) scale to measure this motivation. In seven studies …

Bystander Confronting Of Anti-Black Racism: Effects Of Belonging Affirmation And Confrontation Training, Rayne Bozeman

Master's Theses

Confronting has the potential to reduce prejudice, especially when implemented by a non-target group member. Not knowing how to respond and fearing social rejection have been identified as barriers to confronting in previous studies. The current study tests whether providing training to confront prejudice and affirming the need to belong helps individuals overcome these barriers. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three training conditions: prejudice confrontation training (PCT), rude comment training (RCT), or no training control group (NT). Participants were also randomly assigned to one of two belonging conditions: belonging affirmation or control. Participants were then asked to imagine …

Delicious Justice: Schadenfreude Toward Atheists Bound For Hell, Maxine Najle

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

In the wake of the death of a prominent atheist figure in 2011, an especially unsavory side of anti-atheist prejudice became evident as many celebrated the death of a prominent atheist, rejoicing that he would be in hell. The current study explores how these attitudes reveal a sense of schadenfreude in anti-atheist prejudice previously unexplored in the literature. Potential origins of this schadenfreude are discussed, and a study to experimentally explore this phenomenon was carried out. Using the repeated taste-test paradigm, this study gave participants atheist primes and hell primes between identical drinks and measure perceived taste after these manipulations, …

Effects Of Negative Media On Evangelical Christians' Attitudes Toward Evangelism, Linda Hoover

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This study examined how negative media influenced Evangelical Christians and their attitude toward evangelism practices. Using self-questionnaires, participants identified their level of in-group identification and type of internalized motivation for engaging in religious practices. After viewing a negative media clip about the professional football player, Tim Tebow, and his public expression of faith, 412 Evangelical Christians rated their fear of negative evaluation about engaging in evangelism. A control group of 31 participants completed questionnaires but received no media exposure. Consistent with previous research, the current study found that media exposure activated internalized social norms and feelings of oughtness, which were …