When police officers are on duty, they often must make life or death decisions in an instant, with little but their intuition and experience to guide them. But recent high-profile cases where officers have shot unarmed black men have raised the question of whether split second decisions by police are influenced by unconscious racial biases that dispose them to be more aggressive in dealing with blacks than whites.
Friendships between members of different racial groups are often seen as a way to break down stereotypes. However, such friendships are potentially challenging, because they may manifest society-wide tensions on an inter-personal level. Researchers know little about how interracial friendships work, how they differ from same-race bonds, what makes them successful and gratifying, and what kinds of obstacles they may face.
The pressure to perform well can be an anxiety-producing process. That pressure is especially acute when one believes that failure will confirm negative stereotypes about one's group. Social psychologists dub this phenomenon "stereotype vulnerability" and often cite it as an impediment to progress for minority groups.
In the last two decades, students of race relations in the United States have broadened their focus beyond exclusively studying historically disadvantaged groups, and have begun also to examine whites. Understanding what it means to be white requires knowledge about the advantages implicit in being a member of a society's dominant racial group. For example, people tend to perceive of whites as more trustworthy and competent than people from other racial groups, based on nothing more than skin color.
For many years, research in social psychology has sought to explain how tensions arise between groups. This line of study has been dominated by a cognitive perspective, which suggests that people treat out-group members different than in-group members because they have certain beliefs about those who are different from them. Yet it may well be that inter-group difficulties result not from feelings about members of different groups, but from feelings about oneself that arise in inter-group contexts.
Ethnographic research has suggested that youth from immigrant families who identify with their parents’ cultural origins tend to be more attached to school and attain greater academic success than their peers who assume more Americanized identities. It is unclear, however, what might cause this association between ethnic identity and school success.
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.