Since the shooting of unarmed African immigrant Amadou Diallo by New York City police officers in 1999, the controversy over racial profiling in law enforcement has captured the attention of the American public, and prompted social psychologists to focus on the incidence of racial bias in policing. Yet to date there has been little collaboration between researchers and law enforcement agencies, meaning that the findings of these studies are unknown to the people who could best apply them.
Supplemental Appropriation: May 2006, $24,461
The prospect of meeting someone from another group can cause anxiety – no matter how the person is different from us. Not only might we fear hostility from another group’s members or feel prejudiced against them, but we may worry about our own ability to perform adequately in the interaction. As a result, people can become wary of interactions with those different from themselves and avoid such contact. This can lead to group segregation and missed opportunities for fruitful multicultural exchange.
According to the Census, approximately 90,000 Iraqi-born immigrants lived in the United States in 2000 and more than one third of them had been granted refugee status. Many of these recent refugees from Iraq witnessed violence under Saddam Hussein’s regime or suffered because of war, resulting in trauma that that may affect their adaptation to American society. People often show the symptoms of trauma differently depending on their cultural background.
Proponents of multiculturalism extol the ability of diverse groups to learn from the varied experiences and backgrounds of their individual members. While it is true that with broader perspectives, diverse groups may be able to think more innovatively and solve problems more effectively, it could also be the case that heterogeneous groups experience more conflict and have greater difficulty in reaching consensus. With support from the Foundation, psychologist Samuel Sommers will examine the influence of racial and gender diversity on group decision-making.
The 2000 U.S. Census reports that 1.2 million inhabitants of the United States identify themselves as having Arab ancestry. Yet the Arab American Institute, A U.S. Census Information Center, estimates that approximately two-thirds of Americans with Arab ancestry do not self-identify as such, either because they do not want to be identified as Arabs or because they do not see why it is important to identify as Arabs in the census. Negative depictions and stereotypes of Arabs as terrorists often lead Arab children to internalize anti-Arab attitudes or become ashamed of their Arab origins.
Racial marginalization contributes to significant educational gaps between white and minority students. Among the many factors that may contribute to the minority achievement gap, “stereotype threat” appears especially troubling. Experimental evidence demonstrates that when students fear that their performance on a test will confirm a negative stereotype, they tend to underperform in a manner consistent with the stereotype.
Stanford psychologist Claude Steele and his colleagues have shown that the test performance of minority students deteriorates when they believe that others will judge any lapse in their performance as confirming negative stereotypes about their group. While the detrimental impact of stereotype threat has been well documented in laboratory experiments, we know less about how it affects the performance of students in actual classrooms over long periods of time.
Tracie Stewart (Georgia State University) will use this award from Russell Sage Foundation to explore how to reduce implicit stereotypes and bias between groups through a technique she developed called “situational attribution training.” This technique attempts to shift people away from using stereotyped explanations of the behavior of others and more toward an appreciation of situational causes. Repeated exposure to situational attribution training has shown a reduction in automatic stereotyping by helping to establish new cognitive habits that do not rely on stereotypes.
In a recent report by the New York Times, the U.S. Census Bureau now projects that by 2042, the majority of the U.S. population will be made up of minority groups. Learning to live and work in diverse communities is an increasingly important life skill. Recognizing the need for students to increase their comfort in racially and ethnically mixed groups, college campuses across the nation now use interventions such as diversity training and pairing roommates of different races to influence their students’ racial attitudes and cognitive performance in diverse groups.
On March 3, 1991, Rodney King was the victim in an excessive force case committed by Los Angeles police officers. The police officers were tried but acquitted, which fueled the 1992 Los Angeles Riots and created a persistent climate of suspicion between law enforcement agencies and minority communities around the country.