Danielle M. Young

The Influence of Female Role Models on Women’s Implicit Science Cognitions

Can female science professors benefit women? Women’s negative implicit cognitions about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines impact performance in these fields, marking implicit associations as a space for potential change to improve women’s participation in STEM. Examining college student science majors (N = 320, 63% women) enrolled in chemistry and engineering courses, our study investigates how meaningful contact with female role models impacts women’s implicit cognitions about STEM. We used the Implicit Association Test to measure attitudes toward science, identification with science, and gendered stereotypes about science, and we compared students with female versus male professors. Our study first demonstrates both direct and indirect paths between implicit cognitions and women’s career aspirations in STEM. Next, when female professors were seen as positive role models, women automatically identified with science and stereotyped science as more feminine than masculine. Moreover, viewing professors as positive role models was associated with pro-science career aspirations and attitudes (both implicit and explicit), for men and women alike. The findings suggest that female science professors benefit women provided students identify with them as role models. We conclude that female STEM professors not only provide positive role models for women, but they also help to reduce the implicit stereotype that science is masculine in the culture-at-large. We further discuss how shifting implicit gendered stereotypes about science can impact women’s investment in a science career.

At the crossroads of race: racial ambiguity and biracial identification influence psychological essentialist thinking.

Racial essentialism refers to the widely held belief that race is a biological, stable, and natural category. Although research finds very little evidence that race has biological underpinnings, racial essentialist beliefs persist and are linked to negative outgroup consequences. This study initially demonstrates that label and visual ambiguity concurrently inform racial categorization. It then tests whether exposure to racially ambiguous targets (a) challenges essentialism when ambiguous targets are labeled with biracial categories and (b) reinforces essentialism when ambiguous targets identify with monoracial categories. The results showed that White perceivers (N = 84) who were exposed to racially ambiguous, biracially labeled targets showed reductions in their essentialist thinking about race, whereas perceivers who were exposed to racially ambiguous, monoracially labeled targets showed increases in their essentialist beliefs.

Vigilance in the discrimination-stress model for black americans

Objective: Daily events of discrimination are important factors in understanding health disparities. Vigilant coping, or protecting against anticipated discrimination by monitoring and modifying behaviour, is an understudied mechanism that may link discrimination and health outcomes. This study investigates how responding to everyday discrimination with anticipatory vigilance relates to the health of Black men and women. Methods: Black adults (N = 221) from the Detroit area completed measures of discrimination, adverse life events, vigilance coping, stress, depressive symptoms and self-reported health. Results: Vigilance coping strategies mediated the relationship between discrimination and stress. Multi-group path analysis revealed that stress in turn was associated with increased depression in men and women. Self-reported health consequences of stress differed between men and women. Conclusions: Vigilance coping mediates the link between discrimination and stress, and stress has consequences for health outcomes resulting from discrimination. More research is needed to understand other underlying contributors to discrimination, stress and poor health outcomes as well as to create potential interventions to ameliorate health outcomes in the face of discrimination-related stress.

Exposure to Racial Ambiguity Influences Lay Theories of Race

Biological lay theories of race have proven to have pernicious consequences for interracial relations, yet few studies have examined how intergroup contact itself (particularly with those who naturalistically challenge these conceptions) affects beliefs about race. Three studies (a correlational study, an interaction study, and an experimental study) examine whether exposure to racially ambiguous individuals reduces Whites’ biological lay theories of race across time. Study 1 demonstrates that increased exposure to racial ambiguity across 2 weeks reduced White individuals’ biological lay theories. Study 2 shows that Whites who interacted in a laboratory setting with a racially ambiguous individual were less likely to endorse biological lay theories, an effect that sustained for 2 weeks. Study 3 finds that the reduction in biological lay theories after exposure to racial ambiguity is mediated by the tendency for Whites’ lay theories of race to conform to beliefs they presume racially ambiguous individuals hold.

Confronting as autonomy promotion: Speaking up against discrimination and psychological well-being in racial minorities

Few studies have considered confrontation in the context of coping with discriminatory experiences. These studies test for the first time whether confronting racial discrimination is associated with greater psychological well-being and physical health through the promotion of autonomy. In two separate samples of racial minorities who had experienced racial discrimination, confrontation was associated with greater psychological well-being, and this relationship was mediated by autonomy promotion. These findings did not extend to physical health symptoms. These studies provide preliminary evidence that confrontation may aid in the process of regaining autonomy after experiencing discrimination and therefore promote well-being.

Biracial perception in black and white: How Black and White perceivers respond to phenotype and racial identity cues.

Objectives: This study investigates how racial identity and phenotypicality (i.e., racial ambiguity) shape the perception of biracial individuals in both White and Black perceivers. We investigated complex racial categorization and its downstream consequences, such as perceptions of discrimination. Method: We manipulated racial phenotypicality (Black or racially ambiguous) and racial identity (Black or biracial) to test these cues’ influence on Black and White race categorizations in a sample of both White (n = 145) and Black (n = 152) identified individuals. Results: Though racial identity and phenotypicality information influenced deliberate racial categorization, White and Black participants used the cues in different ways. For White perceivers, racial identity and phenotypicality additively influenced Black categorization. For Black perceivers, however, racial identity was only used in Black categorization when racial ambiguity was high. Perceived discrimination was related to White (but not Black) perceivers’ distribution of minority resources to targets, however Black categorization related to perceived discrimination for Black perceivers only. Conclusion: By demonstrating how Black and White individuals use identity and phenotype information in race perceptions, we provide a more complete view of the complexities of racial categorization and its downstream consequences.

Innocent until primed: mock jurors' racially biased response to the presumption of innocence.

Background Research has shown that crime concepts can activate attentional bias to Black faces. This study investigates the possibility that some legal concepts hold similar implicit racial cues. Presumption of innocence instructions, a core legal principle specifically designed to eliminate bias, may instead serve as an implicit racial cue resulting in attentional bias. Methodology/Principal findings The experiment was conducted in a courtroom with participants seated in the jury box. Participants first watched a video of a federal judge reading jury instructions that contained presumption of innocence instructions, or matched length alternative instructions. Immediately following this video a dot-probe task was administered to assess the priming effect of the jury instructions. Presumption of innocence instructions, but not the alternative instructions, led to significantly faster response times to Black faces when compared with White faces. Conclusions/Significance These findings suggest that the core principle designed to ensure fairness in the legal system actually primes attention for Black faces, indicating that this supposedly fundamental protection could trigger racial stereotypes.

Loss and loyalty: Change in political and gender identity among Clinton supporters after the 2016 U.S. presidential election

Abstract How do voters’ identities change after a candidate’s defeat? A longitudinal, within-subjects study used Hillary Clinton’s loss in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to explore social identity theory’s (SIT) tenet that threats to self-relevant groups motivate further connection to and affirmation of the group. Two independent samples (university students and adults on Mechanical Turk) were assessed before and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election. After Hillary Clinton’s defeat, those who reported voting for Clinton affirmed their political and gender identities in several ways, such as increasing their identification with Clinton. These ecologically valid results are consistent with SIT, and suggest supporters affirm their identities following a threat such as the defeat of their candidate during a high-stakes election. We discuss the implications of these findings within the context of the increasingly polarized U.S. electorate.