Hidden Emotions in Prejudice

Vanman, Eric

Abstract

Despite changes in U.S. society in recent decades, racial conflict and discrimination are still prevalent. And as the ethnic diversity of the U.S. population increases, so too does the potential for conflict. To address this issue, theory and research in social psychology has focused largely on beliefs, stereotypes, and other cognitive aspects that might underlie prejudice. More recent and empirical work, however, has argued that a consideration of prejudice solely as a """"""""phenomenon in the mind rather than in the guts"""""""" has its limits. Therefore the major goal of the proposed research is to apply recent research on emotions to prejudice. An increased understanding of emotional processes, in conjunction with existing knowledge about stereotypes and cognitive biases, should allow for more effective interventions aimed at reducing prejudice. The proposed research examines self-reports and physiological recordings of emotional responses to outgroup members while both social context and voluntary attempts to suppress one's own prejudiced responses are manipulated. This research builds on studies that have revealed physiological evidence of negative biases toward outgroups in situations where individuals reported having no such biases. Facial EMG will be recorded at muscle sites commonly involved in facial expression of positive and negative affect (i.e., brow and cheek) while participants (who vary in ethnicity) view racially- relevant stimuli, such as pictures and film clips. In Experiment 1, I will investigate whether facial EMG recorded while participants view ingroup and outgroup targets varies as function of social situation and underlying prejudice. In Experiment 2, I will investigate the extent to which participants can voluntarily inhibit or suppress their facial responses (by measuring both facial EMG and overt behavior via a videorecording) when presented with a racially-charged stimulus. This stimulus will consist of a video clip of a Black man and a White woman kissing romantically. The results of these two experiments should assist in more effective interventions to reduce contemporary forms of prejudice.