African Americans are a population particularly at risk from a wide array of health-related behaviors, including violence, addictions, and non- adherence to dietary regimes. This research will document African Americans' dual identity, based on African American and dominant White stereotypes, and demonstrate its nonconscious consequences for African Americans' perceptions of others and self, with the long-term objective of fostering a healthier, less conflicted collective identity. These studies will measure these stereotypes among African Americans and Whites, and each group's knowledge of the other group's stereotypes. Then their effects as unconscious primes on impressions of self and others will be examined. Can subliminal exposure to stereotype concepts affect subsequent impressions? These studies will also investigate whether inter-racial social contexts can prime African Americans' perceptions, performance, and the standards. That is, do African Americans with a strongly divided identities behave differently on private tasks in all-White versus all-Black groups?
