Prejudice and Discrimination: Social Psych Research

In class over the next couple of days, we'll be exploring the social and cognitive factors that lead to prejudice and discrimination. We're going to attempt to answer a few questions about these issues through our work, including:

What evidence is there that prejudice and discrimination persist in modern life?
To see how social scientists explore these issues, we'll read this article.

Secondly, we'll attempt to figure out why prejudice and discrimination appear even when people readily acknowledge such things are wrong and consciously believe they (personally) do not harbor such inclinations?

One area of research that has suggested answers to this second question is the use of Implicit Association Tests, which are described by your text on p. 782. In order to get a sense of how these tests measure implicit bias, you'll have time to complete one in class.

Project Implicit Assignment

Discrimination and prejudice, though much less a part of public life than they once were, are still ugly realities in our world. Where do these harmful and erroneous thought (and behavior) patterns come from and why do they persist?

One theory currently being explored by researchers at Harvard University, the University of Virginia, and the University of Washington is that we learn associations (perhaps unconsciously) between certain images and general feelings or attitudes. It is hypothesized that, even if we explicitly report no preference for say, white faces over black ones, perhaps through learning our brains actually behave differently. The exercises at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/ are meant to test subjects' implicit (unspoken, unconscious) attitudes about different images.

The idea is that, if you have a more difficult time matching positive words like "love" and "good" with black faces (or females, or presidential candidates) as compared to white ones, your brain may be sabotaging your professed egalitarian beliefs and revealing your true, albeit hidden, feelings. What does this mean? That's a topic for class discussion...

Refer to the directions on the handout you received in class for the requirements for this project, particularly the written reflection portion. Due Friday, May 1.