In this thesis, I examine implicit measures of empathy towards members of both the racial in-group and racial out-group. In study 1, McMaster students completed the Intergroup Emotional Go/No-Go Task to measure affective empathy towards racial in-group and racial out-group faces. Although, there was a significant effect of emotion, there was no significant effect of racial group suggesting that participants either showed similar levels of affective empathy towards both racial in-group and racial out-group members, or the Intergroup Emotional Go/NoGo task was not sensitive enough to detect the intergroup effect on affective empathy. In study 2, McMaster students completed the Intergroup Empathy Selection Task to measure motivation to engage in cognitive empathy towards both racial in-group and racial out-group faces. White participants were equally likely to empathize with faces that resembled their racial out-group compared to their racial in-group. However, Asian participants were significantly more likely to empathize with faces that resembled their racial in-group than their racial out-group. These findings provide insight into potential implicit measures of both affective and cognitive empathy, as well as reinforce our current understanding of how intergroup dynamics effect empathy. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / Research currently measures empathy using self-report methods in which we rely on the participant to accurately judge their ability to empathize. Unfortunately, there are social factors that affect one's own evaluation of themself. For example, one may want to appear socially desirable and therefore, will exaggerate their ability to empathize to appear as a, "good person." Non-self-report measures of empathy are a possible solution, however, such methods require further research to determine if they are accurate measures of empathy. In this thesis, I examine two non-self-report measures of empathy: "The Emotional Go/NoGo Task, and, "The Empathy Selection Task," which are tasks where the participant is required to respond to an emotional face (target). Generally, we have more empathy for those of our own race than for those of another race. One step in determining the accuracy of these non-self-report measures of empathy, is to see if they can measure this difference in empathy based on the race of the target. "The Emotional Go/NoGo Task," did not show this difference, but, "The Empathy Selection Task," did show this difference.

Highly publicized media events involving African American men and the use of deadly force by police officers have occurred between 2013 and 2014. These events have emphasized the need to examine the influence of implicit bias training on police officers' decision-making processes. During the past two decades, Community Oriented Policing Services has invested several billion dollars in training programs designed to eliminate racial bias within the law enforcement community. The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine how implicit-bias training influences the decision-making processes of police officers. More specifically, this study examined the perceptions of police officers regarding the practical value of implicit-bias training and how the training influences their cultural awareness, knowledge, and skills. An online questionnaire containing open-ended questions was administered to 32 sworn, full-time police officers who interact daily with members of diverse communities. The data were coded using evaluation coding, magnitude coding, and descriptive coding. This form of coding assisted in identifying attitudes and stereotypes as well as the impact of implicit bias training police officers' cultural awareness, knowledge, and skills. Participants reported that implicit bias training made them better prepared to manage their biases while interacting with diverse communities. The findings of this study will provide police agencies and law enforcement training facilitators with the tools they need to improve future training outcomes. Successfully training police officers on how to manage implicit bias during the decision-making process will reduce the potential for stereotyping.

Many cognitive resources contribute towards the appraisal of stressors. Of these, self-efficacy (SE) is widely acknowledged to play a significant role in protecting adolescents from the effects of stress (Bandura, 1997). This study investigated that relationship through the use of a quasi-experimental methodology (Cook & Campbell, 1979) utilising an untreated Control group of 44 adolescent, female participants and an Experimental group of 70 additional participants, all of whom were volunteers drawn from the Sixth Form of a single participating school. The members of both participant groups took part in two rounds of testing, between which the members of the Experimental group were exposed to a significant academic stressor (one or more public A-level examinations). During both test phases, all participants completed the 10- item Perceived Stress Scale self-report (Cohen & Williamson, 1988), the Examination Self-Efficacy Scale instrument (Schwarzer & Jerusalem, 1995) and a bespoke Implicit Association Test (Greenwald et al., 1998) designed to measure implicit stressor appraisal. Significant trends were identified by means of ANCOVA, correlation and regression analyses, and the resulting data were interpreted in terms of a dual process model of stress (Compas, 2004). Results not only concurred with those of previous studies (e.g. Betoret, 2006; Vaezi & Fallah, 2011) by demonstrating a strongly negative correlation between acute academic stress and academic SE, but provided new evidence to suggest that the ‘protective’ effect of SE occurs via a buffering mechanism at the level of preconscious stressor appraisals (Bargh, 1990), which limits the effect of acute stress exposure on preconscious stressor appraisals (e.g. Luecken & Appelhans, 2005).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Psychology and Dept. of Linguistics, June 1999. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

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Jag har märkt att mina elever har vissa kunskaper som de inte lärt sig under traditionella läroformer; i skolan eller någon annanstans. Det kan vara att de har en känsla för hur film eller musik är uppbyggd, vad som är en snygg bildkomposition, för hur språket talas eller skrivs, eller hur man ska bete sig i olika situationer. Utan att vi är medvetna om det verkar vi ha en intuition och magkänsla inför vissa företeelser i vår vardag. Vad är det då för typ av lärande som sker när vi inte tänker att vi lär oss och inte heller alltid vet att vi kan vissa saker? Vad vi har att göra med är alltså någon form av omedveten process; ett slags implicit lärande. Syftet med denna uppsatsen är att titta lite närmare på denna process; vad det finns skrivet och tänkt om denna form av lärande tidigare och vilka ytterligare frågor det kan väcka. Utifrån olika teoretiska resonemang görs ett försök att kartlägga ett implicit lärande som sker när vi inte försöker lära oss något; i en icke-intenderad process. Målet är att belysa läroprocessen utifrån a) samspelsprocessen (hur det sociala och kulturella kontexten påverkar vilka implicita schema vi bär på), b) den psykiska och mentala processen som sker vid implicit lärande, c) resultatet av processen/vad bär vi med oss och d) framplockningsprocessen (hur implicita kunskaper kan göras explicita). I ett avslutande stycke förs ett resonemang kring vilken typ av pedagogisk relevans forskning om implicit lärande kan tänkas ha och vilka vinster man eventuellt kunde göra genom mer forskning kring denna process.

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published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Educational Psychology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

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