Brian S. Lowery

Social influence effects on automatic racial prejudice.

Although most research on the control of automatic prejudice has focused on the efficacy of deliberate attempts to suppress or correct for stereotyping, the reported experiments tested the hypothesis that automatic racial prejudice is subject to common social influence. In experiments involving actual interethnic contact, both tacit and expressed social influence reduced the expression of automatic prejudice, as assessed by two different measures of automatic attitudes. Moreover, the automatic social tuning effect depended on participant ethnicity. European Americans (but not Asian Americans) exhibited less automatic prejudice in the presence of a Black experimenter than a White experimenter (Experiments 2 and 4), although both groups exhibited reduced automatic prejudice when instructed to avoid prejudice (Experiment 3). Results are consistent with shared reality theory, which postulates that social regulation is central to social cognition.

Priming Unconscious Racial Stereotypes About Adolescent Offenders

Two studies examined unconscious racial stereotypes of decision makers in the juvenile justice system. Police officers (Experiment 1) and juvenile probation officers (Experiment 2) were subliminally exposed to words related to the category Black or to words neutral with respect to race. In a presumably unrelated task, officers read 2 vignettes about a hypothetical adolescent who allegedly committed either a property crime (shoplifting from a convenience store) or an interpersonal crime (assaulting a peer). The race of the offender was left unstated and the scenarios were ambiguous about the causes of the crime. Respondents rated the hypothetical offender on a number of traits (e.g., hostility and immaturity) and made judgments about culpability, expected recidivism, and deserved punishment. They also completed a self-report measure of conscious attitudes about race. As hypothesized, officers in the racial prime condition reported more negative trait ratings, greater culpability, and expected recidivism, and they endorsed harsher punishment than did officers in the neutral condition. The effects of the racial primes were not moderated by consciously held attitudes about African Americans. The implications of the findings for racial disparity in the juvenile justice system and for changing unconscious stereotypes were discussed.

Self-stereotyping in the context of multiple social identities.

This research examines self-stereotyping in the context of multiple social identities and shows that self-stereotyping is a function of stereotyped expectancies held in particular relationships. Participants reported how others evaluated their math and verbal ability and how they viewed their own ability when their gender or ethnicity was salient. Asian American women (Experiment 1) and European Americans (Experiment 2) exhibited knowledge of stereotyped social expectancies and corresponding self-stereotyping associated with their more salient identity. African Americans (Experiment 3) exhibited some knowledge of stereotyped social expectancies but no corresponding self-stereotyping. Correlational evidence and a 4th experiment suggest that self-stereotyping is mediated by the degree to which close others are perceived to endorse stereotypes as applicable to the self.

Long-term Effects of Subliminal Priming on Academic Performance

This research examines the temporal range of subliminal priming effects on complex behavior. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were subliminally primed with words either related or unrelated to intelligence before completing a practice exam, administered 1 to 4 days before an actual course midterm. Results revealed that the intelligence primes increased performance on the midterm compared to neutral primes. Experiment 1 demonstrated that being told that the priming task was designed to help exam performance moderated the effect of the intelligence primes. In Experiment 2, practice test performance mediated the effect of the primes on midterm performance. These experiments demonstrated that subliminal priming may have long-term effects on real-world behavior, and demonstrates one means by which long-term priming effects may occur.

Deny, Distance, or Dismantle? How White Americans Manage a Privileged Identity

Social scientists have traditionally argued that whiteness—the attribute of being recognized and treated as a White person in society—is powerful because it is invisible. On this view, members of the racially dominant group have the unique luxury of rarely noticing their race or the privileges it confers. This article challenges this “invisibility thesis,” arguing that Whites frequently regard themselves as racial actors. We further argue that whiteness defines a problematic social identity that confronts Whites with 2 psychological threats: the possibility that their accomplishments in life were not fully earned (meritocratic threat) and the association with a group that benefits from unfair social advantages (group-image threat). We theorize that Whites manage their racial identity to dispel these threats. According to our deny, distance, or dismantle (3D) model of White identity management, dominant-group members have three strategies at their disposal: deny the existence of privilege, distance their own self-concepts from the White category, or strive to dismantle systems of privilege. Whereas denial and distancing promote insensitivity and inaction with respect to racial inequality, dismantling reduces threat by relinquishing privileges. We suggest that interventions aimed at reducing inequality should attempt to leverage dismantling as a strategy of White identity management.

Appeasement Whites’ Strategic Support for Affirmative Action

This article explores the possibility that dominant-group members will attempt to appease subordinate groups to protect the hierarchy. In four studies, we find that (a) prohierarchy Whites perceive more intergroup threat when they believe ethnic minorities hold Whites in low regard, (b) prohierarchy Whites respond to ethnic minorities’ low regard for Whites by increasing their support for redistributive policies (e.g., affirmative action), (c) the increase in support only occurs when prohierarchy Whites perceive the hierarchy to be unstable, and (d) prohierarchy Whites perceive the hierarchy to be more stable if they believe Whites support redistributive policies. These results suggest that prohierarchy dominant-group members’ support for redistributive policies can stem from a concern about maintaining the hierarchical status quo, and provides evidence that support for redistributive policies can be a hierarchy-enhancing strategy.

Race, Ideology, and the Tea Party: A Longitudinal Study

The Tea Party movement, which rose to prominence in the United States after the election of President Barack Obama, provides an ideal context in which to examine the roles of racial concerns and ideology in politics. A three-wave longitudinal study tracked changes in White Americans’ self-identification with the Tea Party, racial concerns (prejudice and racial identification), and ideologies (libertarianism and social conservatism) over nine months. Latent Growth Modeling (LGM) was used to evaluate potential causal relationships between Tea Party identification and these factors. Across time points, racial prejudice was indirectly associated with movement identification through Whites’ assertions of national decline. Although initial levels of White identity did not predict change in Tea Party identification, initial levels of Tea Party identification predicted increases in White identity over the study period. Across the three assessments, support for the Tea Party fell among libertarians, but rose among social conservatives. Results are discussed in terms of legitimation theories of prejudice, the “racializing” power of political judgments, and the ideological dynamics of the Tea Party.

When inequality matters: The effect of inequality frames on academic engagement.

Research indicates that, among women and ethnic minorities, perceived inequality reduces the association between self-esteem and academic outcomes. The present studies demonstrate that the perception of social inequality does not always induce subordinate-group disengagement. Rather, inequality framed as dominant-group advantage allows subordinate groups to remain engaged and causes dominant groups to disengage. Experiments 1-3 demonstrate that academic inequality framed in terms of ingroup disadvantage causes Black, Latino, and female students to disengage, but inequality framed in terms of White or male advantage does not. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrate the same effect for Whites and men--inequality framed in terms of the ingroup (i.e., advantage) causes disengagement, but inequality framed as outgroup disadvantage does not.

Keeping Minorities Happy: Hierarchy Maintenance and Whites’ Decreased Support for Highly Identified White Politicians:

We test the hypothesis that, to avoid provoking minorities, Whites will withhold their support for White political candidates who are highly identified with their race. In Study 1, we found that White Republicans were less supportive of White candidates the higher the perceived White identity of the candidate due to beliefs that such candidates would provoke racial minorities. In Study 2, we replicated this effect with a manipulation of candidates’ White identity. Study 3 found that Whites reported less support for high-identity candidates when they were led to believe that the hierarchy was unstable rather than stable. Consistent with our hypothesis that those who have the most to lose are most likely to avoid provoking minorities, in Study 4, we found that Whites with high subjective socioeconomic status (SES) varied their support for provocative White candidates as a function of hierarchy stability, whereas those with low subjective SES did not.

Herd Invisibility: The Psychology of Racial Privilege

Despite overwhelming evidence of its existence, White privilege has received relatively little attention in psychological science. However, given the chronic and pervasive benefits tied to racial privilege, it stands to reason that living with such privilege affects Whites’ everyday psychology. Here, we explore this psychology of privilege, connecting Whites’ everyday experiences and behaviors to underlying motivations (i.e., innocence and maintenance) shaped by their privileged position in the social hierarchy. We shed light on Whites’ use of strategies designed to protect their sense of innocence and, importantly, the consequences of these individual actions in aggregate. Specifically, we aim to resolve the tension between Whites’ motivated blindness in response to evidence of privilege and their everyday experience of privilege as invisible. We argue that privilege is not inherently invisible; rather, Whites use cloaking strategies to address the discomfort associated with naked privilege. We further suggest that individuals acting to protect their own innocence leads to the emergence of invisibility at the societal level. A herd invisibility results, protecting both the innocence and privileges of individual Whites, but without their necessarily having to act on individual innocence or maintenance motivations.