Curtis D. Hardin

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.

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.

The Contact Hypothesis Revisited Status Bias in the Reduction of Implicit Prejudice in the United States and Lebanon

Although 50 years of research demonstrate that friendly intergroup contact reduces intergroup prejudice, the findings are based solely on self-reported, explicit prejudice. In two parallel experiments examining intergroup contact and prejudice—between Whites and Blacks in the United States (Experiment 1) and between Christians and Muslims in Lebanon (Experiment 2)—we examined whether intergroup status differences moderate contact effects on implicit prejudice, as well as explicit prejudice. Both experiments replicated the standard effect of contact on explicit prejudice. They also demonstrated that intergroup contact reduces implicit prejudice among low-status groups. In Experiment 1, the implicit prejudice of Blacks toward Whites (but not Whites toward Blacks) was reduced as a function of friendly contact. In Experiment 2, the implicit prejudice of Muslims toward Christians (but not Christians toward Muslims) was reduced as a function of friendly contact.

Differential Use of the Availability Heuristic in Social Judgment

Three experiments demonstrate that chronic applicability regulates the use of two types of information associated with the availability heuristic. In Experiment 1, participants used subjective experience of ease of retrieving behavioral instances when judging out-groups but used the number of behaviors retrieved when judging in-groups. In Experiment 2, manipulating the diagnosticity of experience of ease affected out-group but not in-group judgment. When experience of ease was diagnostic, results replicated Experiment 1; however, when experience of ease was nondiagnostic, the number of behaviors recalled was used in both in-group and out-group judgment. In Experiment 3, participants used the experience of ease to judge close friends but the number of behaviors retrieved to judge casual acquaintances. Results are consistent with the hypothesis that chronic patterns of information use and immediate situational cues define the applicability of accessible information to the judgment at hand.

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.

Malleability of "Ratio" Judgments of Occupational Prestige

Subjects judged ratios and differences of the prestige of occupations. To test the invariance of ratio judgments, different groups were exposed to different numerical examples of ratios

Affect and Memory in Retrospective Reports

Retrospective reports have long served as the warhorses of experimental and nonexperimental psychologists, although in both classic and contemporary discussions of method, the validity of retrospective reports to understand human thought has been questioned (Ericsson & Simon, 1980; James, 1890/1950; Nisbett & Wilson, 1977). Psychological data are often obtained as verbal reports from subjects about an event that occurred in their past, for example, “Whom did you vote for in the last election?” or “How friendly is the person described earlier in the experiment?” Implicit in the research enterprise that characterizes contemporary psychology is the assumption that retrospective reports are informative about mental processes and the actions that they guide. Verbal, retrospective self-reports have served as the tool to understanding human values, beliefs, attitudes, attributions, emotions, perceptions, thought, memory, personality, motives, and goals and as indicators of past and future behavior. As such, retrospective report data have defined the central epistemological questions about psychological knowledge: What can the subject know about the past? How can the subject report about it?

O. J. Simpson as Shared (and Unshared) Reality: The Impact of Consensually Shared Beliefs on Interpersonal Perceptions and Task Performance in Different- and Same-Ethnicity Dyads

Shared reality theory postulates that interpersonal relationships are regulated by the degree to which people share experiences and beliefs (Hardin & Higgins, 1996). To assess consequences of shared (and unshared) reality for interpersonal relationships, we examined the effects of the 1990s Simpson trial on actual interpersonal interactions in same- and different-ethnicity dyads. In 3 experiments (conducted directly following, 5 years after, and 10 years after the trial), people who had been primed with Simpson participated in cooperative problem-solving tasks. Because the trial represented a dimension of belief discrepancy between Blacks and Whites but a dimension of shared beliefs within the two ethnic groups, shared reality theory predicts that activating memories of the trial would affect interpersonal interactions differently depending upon ethnic composition of dyads. As predicted, thoughts of Simpson caused decrements in quality of interpersonal perceptions and behaviors for different-ethnicity dyads but increases for same-ethnicity dyads. In addition, in a 4th study, we found that consensus predicted liking among partners in the previous 3 experiments and that these effects were significant in the expected direction for both same- and different-ethnicity pairs.

Opportunities for Sharpening the Stereotype Inoculation Model

In the past two decades, research on stereotypes has begun to focus not only on the perspectives of those who stereotype others but also on the perspective of the targets of stereotypes (e.g., see Carvallo & Pelham, 2006; Crocker & Major, 1989; Jost, Pelham, & Carvallo, 2002; Maddox, 2004; Shih & Sanchez, 2005; Sinclair, Huntsinger, Skorinko, & Hardin, 2005; Sinclair, Hardin, & Lowery, 2006). In the target article, Nilanjana Dasgupta builds on this trend by tackling a timely, imposing, and extremely important question: What role do ingroup members play in the development and maintenance of the self-concepts of stigmatized group members? More specifically, to what degree, and by what mechanisms, can ingroup role models buffer stigmatized group members from the barrage of potent social messages that otherwise undermine their stereotype-relevant performance, their self-efficacy, and their motivation to pursue counterstereotypic career paths? By focusing on the connection between stereotypes and self-evaluation, this article paves the way toward another very important function, which is to build a bridge between work on stereotypes and work on the self-concept. We view this ambitious effort to connect stereotypes and the self as the most important contribution of the stereotype inoculation model. However, building structurally sound bridges, whether across physical or theoretical divides, is impressive precisely because it is so difficult. In this commentary, we summarize some theoretical perspectives and empirical findings that could further inform—and potentially strengthen—the theoretical bridge that Dasgupta summarizes in this timely and inspiring target article. We do so in two ways. First, we suggest some theoretical mechanisms through which high-achieving ingroup members might lead to the kind of positive self-concept effects Dasgupta has documented. Second, we identify two important families of self-concept motives that may moderate when different kinds of self-evaluative processes occur during the kinds of self-evaluative processes documented by Dasgupta and colleagues.

The Practical Turn in Psychology

Parker alleges that Wittgensteinian presuppositions of essentialism and relativism obscure the role of social power in linguistic discourse. Not only is this claim self-contradictory, it is wrong in each of its component counts. Strands of essentialism in Wittgenstein’s early writings were skewered effectively in his own later philosophy. Although Parker is not alone in charging Wittgenstein with relativism, we argue that a careful reading of Wittgenstein’s work belies such a claim. This is because the meaning of a given language-game is fixed by patterns of ongoing social interaction among people who share a particular ‘form of life’. Against Parker, we show that Wittgenstein’s (anti-)philosophy is in fact largely congenial to Marx’s (anti-)philosophy, with both writers allied against the doctrines of individualism, subjectivism, mentalism, idealism and metaphysicalism. Although it may be true that Wittgenstein the person was relatively silent about issues of social and political power, Parker has failed to establish that Wittgensteinian metatheory is incompatible with the analysis of power in social discourse. In sum, we argue that Wittgenstein, like Marx, was a social materialist (rather than a social constructionist) whose writings articulate the foundations of mind and meaning in terms of concrete social practice.