Jonathan W. Kunstman

Selective Responses to Threat The Roles of Race and Gender in Decisions to Shoot

Extensive work over the past decade has shown that race can bias perceptions and responses to threat. However, the previous work focused almost exclusively on responses to men and overlooked how gender and the interaction of race and gender influence decisions regarding use of force. In the current article, two studies examine the implications of gender (Study 1) and both race and gender (Study 2) for decisions to shoot criminal suspects on a computerized simulation. In Study 1, participants were biased away from shooting White female suspects compared to White male suspects. In Study 2, White participants showed a pronounced bias toward shooting Black men but a bias away from shooting Black women and White ingroup members, providing evidence of a behavioral threat-related response specific to outgroup men stereotypically associated with aggression. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Dispositional Anxiety Blocks the Psychological Effects of Power

A growing body of research demonstrates that power promotes a fundamental orientation toward approach and agency. The current studies suggest that this tendency is moderated by dispositional anxiety. In two experiments, high levels of dispositional anxiety blocked the psychological effects of power. Although people low in anxiety responded to a power prime with greater willingness to take risks, those high in anxiety did not (Experiment 1). Similarly, whereas those low in social anxiety responded to power with increased sexual attraction toward a confederate, individuals high in social anxiety failed to show the same effect (Experiment 2). In both studies, the interaction between power and anxiety was statistically mediated by perceptions of reward. Although power enhanced people’s perceptions of reward, this effect was eliminated by high levels of dispositional anxiety. This research provides insight into how, and in whom, power promotes approach and agentic behavior.

Interactions in Black and White: Racial differences and similarities in response to interracial interactions

The current work examined Black and White people’s expectancies for interracial interactions. Across two studies, we found that Black people, compared to White people, had more positive past interracial contact, which statistically explained Black compared to White people’s greater self-efficacy for interracial interactions. This self-efficacy, in turn, contributed to less of a desire to avoid future interracial interactions (Study 2) and partially accounted for race differences in actual amounts of subsequent interracial contact (Study 1). However, Black participants also had heightened concerns about being the target of bias in interracial interactions, which contributed to responses to imagined future interactions. These findings suggest that cultural experiences affect individuals’ expectancies for interracial interactions and that these expectancies, in turn, have consequences for the quality and quantity of interracial contact.

Minority Perceptions of Whites’ Motives for Responding Without Prejudice The Perceived Internal and External Motivation to Avoid Prejudice Scales

Whites’ nonprejudiced behavior toward racial/ethnic minorities can be attributionally ambiguous for perceivers, who may wonder whether the behavior was motivated by a genuine internal commitment to egalitarianism or was externally motivated by desires to avoid appearing prejudiced to others. This article reports the development of a scale that measures perceptions of Whites’ internal and external motives for avoiding prejudice (Perceived Internal Motivation Scale/Perceived External Motivation Scale [PIMS/PEMS]) and tests of its internal, test–retest, discriminant, convergent, and predictive validity among ethnic minority perceivers. Minorities perceived Whites as having internal and external motives for nonprejudiced behavior that were theoretically consistent with but distinct from established measures of minority-group members’ concerns in interracial interactions. Tests of the predictive validity of PIMS/PEMS showed that when a White evaluator praised the mediocre essay of a minority target, minorities who were high PEMS and low PIMS were most likely to regard the feedback as inauthentic and derogate the quality of the essay.

What Lies Beneath? Minority Group Members’ Suspicion of Whites’ Egalitarian Motivation Predicts Responses to Whites’ Smiles

Antiprejudice norms and attempts to conceal racial bias have made Whites’ positive treatment of racial minorities attributionally ambiguous. Although some minorities believe Whites’ positivity is genuine, others are suspicious of Whites’ motives and believe their kindness is primarily motivated by desires to avoid appearing prejudiced. For those suspicious of Whites’ motives, Whites’ smiles may paradoxically function as threat cues. To the extent that Whites’ smiles cue threat among suspicious minorities, we hypothesized that suspicious minorities would explicitly perceive Whites’ smiles as threatening (Study 1), automatically orient to smiling White—as opposed to smiling Black—targets (Study 2), and accurately discriminate between Whites’ real and fake smiles (Study 3). These results provide convergent evidence that cues typically associated with acceptance and affiliation ironically function as threat cues among suspicious racial minorities.

White ≠ Poor Whites Distance, Derogate, and Deny Low-Status Ingroup Members

Throughout society, White people of low socioeconomic status (SES) face prejudice, often from racial ingroup members. The present research tested the ingroup distancing effect, which predicts that Whites’ negative reactions to low-SES ingroup members are motivated responses to perceived threats to their personal and group-level status. To cope with perceived status threats, White people psychologically and physically distance themselves from low-SES Whites. Four studies provide converging support for this theorizing. Among White participants, low-SES Whites elicited derogation, impaired racial categorization and memory, and inflated perceived personal status. White participants explicitly perceived low-SES Whites as greater status threats than low-SES Blacks, and these perceptions of threat predicted increased discomfort in anticipated social situations with low-SES White targets. Moreover, threatened status led Whites who strongly identified with their racial ingroup to physically distance themselves from a low-SES White partner. This research demonstrates that concerns with status motivate prejudice against ingroup members.

Black and White Lies: Race Based Biases in Deception Judgments

In six studies (N = 605), participants made deception judgments about videos of Black and White targets who told truths and lies about interpersonal relationships. In Studies 1a, 1b, 1c, and 2, White participants judged that Black targets were telling the truth more often than they judged that White targets were telling the truth. This truth bias was predicted by Whites’ motivation to respond without prejudice. For Black participants, however, motives to respond without prejudice did not moderate responses (Study 2). In Study 3, we found similar effects with a manipulation of the targets’ apparent race. Finally, in Study 4, we used eye-tracking techniques to demonstrate that Whites’ truth bias for Black targets is likely the result of late-stage correction processes: Despite ultimately judging that Black targets were telling the truth more often than White targets, Whites were faster to fixate on the on-screen “lie” response box when targets were Black than when targets were White. These systematic race-based biases have important theoretical implications (e.g., for lie detection and improving intergroup communication and relations) and practical implications (e.g., for reducing racial bias in law enforcement).

The Face of Suspicion

Because Whites use positivity to conceal bias, people of color may question whether Whites’ positivity is genuine. We predicted that those suspicious of Whites’ motives may mentally represent Whites as less trustworthy and more hostile than those low in suspicion. We tested these predictions using reverse correlation. First, we examined high- and low-suspicion Black participants’ mental representations of Whites using neutrally expressed (Study 1a) and smiling (Study 2a) White base faces. In Study 2b, we compared suspicious Black participants’ mental representations of Whites to a randomly generated control. In Study 2c, we extend these results to perceptions of smile authenticity and rule out a potential stimulus effect. The results suggest that compared to unsuspicious participants and controls, suspicious Black participants hold less trustworthy, less authentic, and sometimes more hostile representations of Whites. Suspicion’s effect on intergroup dynamics may therefore extend up the cognitive stream to the fundamental mental representations of Whites.

Miami University Deception Detection Database

In the present work, we introduce the Miami University Deception Detection Database (MU3D), a free resource containing 320 videos of target individuals telling truths and lies. Eighty (20 Black female, 20 Black male, 20 White female, and 20 White male) different targets were recorded speaking honestly and dishonestly about their social relationships. Each target generated four different videos (i.e., positive truth, negative truth, positive lie, negative lie), yielding 320 videos fully crossing target race, target gender, statement valence, and statement veracity. These videos were transcribed by trained research assistants and evaluated by naïve raters. Descriptive analyses of the video characteristics (e.g., length) and subjective ratings (e.g., target attractiveness) are provided. The stimuli and an information codebook can be accessed free of charge for academic research purposes from http://hdl.handle.net/2374.MIA/6067. The MU3D offers scholars the ability to conduct research using standardized stimuli that can aid in building more comprehensive theories of interpersonal sensitivity, enhance replication among labs, facilitate the use of signal detection analyses, and promote consideration of race, gender, and their interactive effects in deception detection research.

Poisoned Praise: Discounted Praise Backfires and Undermines Subordinate Impressions in the Minds of the Powerful

High-power people frequently receive compliments from subordinates, yet little is known about how high-power people respond to praise. The current research addresses this gap in the empirical literature by testing the primary hypothesis that high-power people discount others’ praise more than equal- and low-power people. Secondary hypotheses also tested whether high-power people’s tendency to discount positive feedback would paradoxically heighten negative perceptions of others. Evidence from two experiments (one preregistered) reveals that high-power participants discounted feedback from others more than low- and equal-power participants. However, high-power people’s tendency to discount feedback only produced negative partner perceptions when positive feedback, but not neutral feedback, was discounted. These results suggest that compliments may sometimes backfire and lead high-power people to discount praise and form negative impressions of subordinates.