Motivation to end racism relies on 'yes we can' approach
2010-11-30
(Press-News.org) If you're trying to end racism, it's not enough to get people to understand that racism is still a problem. You also have to make them feel like they can do something about it, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Tracie L. Stewart of Georgia State University was inspired to conduct the study by work she's done on evaluating a popular diversity training program. She found that the program reduced many white participants' bias in the short term, which was good. "But some white participants later reported that the exercise left them with feelings of guilt and self-directed anger about continuing racial inequality," she says. "Others talked about how they left feeling helpless about changing institutionalized racism." And people who feel helpless don't feel motivated to bring about change. So she and her colleagues, Ioana M. Latu and H. Ted Denney of Georgia State and Nyla R. Branscombe of the University of Kansas, wanted to see if they could change how people act by making them believe their efforts would be successful.
For the experiment, they recruited 82 white university student participants. In a fictional cover story, each participant was told about a pattern of racial inequality at their university, particularly in regard to African American students having fewer African American faculty role models. They were then asked to write a letter to the university administration, expressing the need to hire more African American professors. But first, the experimenter said something about whether the effort was likely to work, ending with, "I'd guess that there's probably a 95 percent chance that our efforts will affect the administration's hiring practices." Other participants were told there was a 50 percent chance of success, and some were told 5 percent.
After hearing that introduction, the participant wrote the letter, filled out some questionnaires, and, finally, was given a chance to take some anti-discrimination flyers out of a folder. The experimenter left the room—so that the volunteer wouldn't feel obligated to take more flyers than they wanted to—then later counted the remaining flyers to see how many the volunteer had taken.
People who believed there was a high chance of success took more flyers, evidence that they were willing to take more action to fight racism. These people also had more positive attitudes toward African Americans. Interestingly, the researchers also found that white participants' guilt about how their group benefits from inequality wasn't bad; instead, it was inspiring them to action. But participants only felt guilty if they believed that they could be efficacious in fighting institutional racism. Participants who felt low efficacy to make a difference rejected feelings of guilt and, consequently, exhibited less positive racial attitudes and less engagement in antidiscrimination action. The next step, Stewart says, is to incorporate this sense of efficacy into diversity training programs, to get people out there and acting.
###See Tracie Stewart explain the study here: http://www.youtube.com/user/PsychologicalScience#p/u/5/q6SZlAPS90g
The APS journal Psychological Science is the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology. For a copy of the article "Yes We Can! Prejudice Reduction Through Seeing (Inequality) and Believing (in Social Change)" and access to other Psychological Science research findings, please contact Keri Chiodo at 202-293-9300 or kchiodo@psychologicalscience.org.
END
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2010-11-30
ROCHESTER, Minn. - A team of Mayo Clinic researchers has found that patients with broken heart syndrome, also known as apical ballooning syndrome (ABS), have blood vessels that don't react normally to stress. These results offer clues to the cause of this rare syndrome and may help with efforts to identify patients who are more vulnerable to mental stress so that appropriate therapies can be developed. The study is published online in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Apical ballooning syndrome affects mainly postmenopausal women, and a few men. The symptoms ...
2010-11-30
How do individuals often cope with reentry from prison to society?
Too frequently with avoidance, says Lindsay Phillips, assistant professor of psychology at Albright College in Reading, Pa. and author of the forthcoming paper, "Prison to Society: A Mixed Methods Analysis of Coping with Reentry," to be published by the International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology.
"There is a defined process experienced by participants, which is initial optimism about release, followed by craving substances, facing practical barriers, or feeling overwhelmed," ...
2010-11-30
RIVERSIDE, Calif. – You pick up a bottle of pomegranate juice at the store because you've learned that, although it costs more than most juices, it is replete with antioxidants that bring health benefits. But wait: Is the juice you've purchased really pomegranate juice? Or is the product label you have carefully read promising more than it delivers?
A chemist at the University of California, Riverside is determined to find out. Cynthia Larive, a professor of chemistry, is playing detective by applying chemical tests to juice products sold as pomegranate juice or pomegranate ...
2010-11-30
CORAL GABLES, FL (December 7, 2010)— Previous research has shown that when women are in their most fertile phase they become more attracted to certain qualities such as manly faces, masculine voices and competitive abilities. A new study by University of Miami (UM) Psychologist Debra Lieberman and her collaborators offers new insight into female sexuality by showing that women also avoid certain traits when they are fertile.
The new study shows that women avoid their fathers during periods of peak fertility. The findings are included in a study entitled "Kin Affiliation ...
2010-11-30
URBANA – The University of Illinois scientists who linked eating tomatoes with a reduced risk of prostate cancer have developed a tool that will help them trace the metabolism of tomato carotenoids in the human body. And they've secured funding from the National Institutes of Health to do it.
"Scientists believe that carotenoids—the pigments that give the red, yellow, and orange colors to some fruits and vegetables—provide the cancer-preventive benefits in tomatoes, but we don't know exactly how it happens," said John W. Erdman, a U of I professor of human nutrition.
The ...
2010-11-30
With the emergence of an epidemic of obesity and type 2 diabetes (DM) throughout the world, the association of lifestyle habits that may affect the risk of metabolic diseases is especially important. Most prospective studies have shown that moderate drinkers tend to have about 30% lower risk of developing late onset diabetes than do non-drinkers, and moderate drinkers also tend to be at lower risk of developing metabolic syndrome (MS). A cross-sectional analysis of 6172 subjects age 35 -75 in Switzerland related varying levels of alcohol intake to the presence of DM, ...
2010-11-30
Through an innovative use of cell phone records, researchers at UCLA, the University of Miami and Cal State, Fullerton, have found that women appear to avoid contact with their fathers during ovulation.
"Women call their dads less frequently on these high-fertility days and they hang up with them sooner if their dads initiate a call," said Martie Haselton, a UCLA associate professor of communication in whose lab the research was conducted.
Because they did not have access to the content of the calls, the researchers are not able to say for sure why ovulating women ...
2010-11-30
DURHAM, N.C. – As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency weighs whether to define coal ash as hazardous waste, a Duke University study identifies new monitoring protocols and insights that can help investigators more accurately measure and predict the ecological impacts of coal ash contaminants.
"The take-away lesson is we need to change how and where we look for coal ash contaminants," says Avner Vengosh, professor of geochemistry and water quality at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment. "Risks to water quality and aquatic life don't end with surface water contamination, ...
2010-11-30
DURHAM, N.C. – Long a staple of nature documentaries, the somewhat bizarre development of a grub-like pink marsupial embryo outside the mother's womb is curious in another way.
Duke University researchers have found that the developmental program executed by the marsupial embryo runs in a different order than the program executed by virtually every other vertebrate animal.
"The limbs are at a different place in the entire timeline," said Anna Keyte, a postdoctoral biology researcher at Duke who did this work as part of her doctoral dissertation. "They begin development ...
2010-11-30
DURHAM, N.C. -- Humans are known to play it safe in a situation when they aren't sure of the odds, or don't have confidence in their judgments. We don't like to choose the unknown.
And new evidence from a Duke University study is showing that chimpanzees and bonobos, our closest living primate relatives, treat the problem the same way we do.
In studies conducted at the Tchimpounga Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Republic of Congo and Lola ya Bonobo Sanctuary in Democratic Republic of Congo, researchers found the apes prefer to play it safe when the odds are uncertain.
Graduate ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Motivation to end racism relies on 'yes we can' approach
