archives@tulane.edu / Online dating applications provide a space for users to meet sexual partners through a streamlined approach. The profiles often include a place for users to add a short description or biography. Some users choose to include racially identified preferences or requirements in their online profiles. This phenomenon, known as sexual racism, poses a problem for racial minorities who are often excluded or not preferred due to their racial identity (Callander, Holt, and Newman, 2015). In the present study, 136 participants who identified as straight and white evaluated the character of a gay or straight man who depicted sexual racism in his profile. Consistent with research by Thai, Stainer, and Barlow (2019), I predicted perpetrators of sexual racism would be viewed more negatively than users who did not include sexual racism in their dating profiles. Perpetrators who expressed sexual racism were viewed as less warm, less competent, less moral, more prejudiced. They were also liked much less than the control. Drawing on research from the higher moral obligation hypothesis (Fernandez, Branscombe, Saguy, Gomez, & Morales, 2013), I also predicted an interaction of sexual orientation and sexual racism such that participants would rate a gay perpetrator more negatively than a straight perpetrator in dating profiles that include sexual racism with minimal difference of sexual orientation in the control. There were no significant findings related to sexual orientation. Despite disagreement over the acceptability of sexual racism by lay people, the present research suggests users who include sexual racism are viewed more negatively by other white people. / 1 / Maya Cohen

It is important to explore prejudice to understand and learn how to decrease it. There is a central belief that “personal knowledge reduces prejudice.” Does a person who has personal knowledge of prejudice, for example, those of minority status have less prejudice towards others? There has been considerable research on the prejudice that the majority might feel towards minorities but there is limited research on minorities’ prejudice towards others. The current study focuses on the relationship between a person of self-perceived minority statuses and her or his feelings of prejudice towards others (e.g. minorities and mainstream). Previous research had found a positive correlation between fundamentalism and prejudice. This study investigated that relationship and a positive correlation was found. Another aspect that has been studied in previous research, dealing with prejudice and self reports, is social desirability. This study investigated the relationship between social desirability and multiple minority statuses and no statistical significance was found. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was utilized to investigate the relationship between multiple minority statuses and prejudice. The analysis showed no statistical significance on the relationship between multiple minority statuses and prejudice. There is still a lot about prejudice that remains unknown. This area of research should be investigated further to better understand minority prejudice, which in turn might lead us to overcome its negative effects.

archives@tulane.edu / Conventional wisdom suggests people must be willing to admit a problem exists before they can hope to solve it. This may be especially true in the case of implicit prejudice. Unlike explicit prejudice, which is conscious and deliberate, implicit prejudice is often unconscious and counter to what people intend. In addition, implicit prejudice is undesirable and leads people to respond defensively when told they have such prejudice. In this dissertation, I investigated whether social norms that encourage people to admit prejudice and exert effort to control it can be used to increase people’s willingness to admit their own implicit prejudice. In three experiments, participants watched (Experiments 1 and 2) or read about (Experiment 3) other people’s reactions to implicit attitude feedback. Then, participants were told they have an implicit bias favoring Whites over Blacks and responded to questions assessing defensiveness and willingness to admit prejudice. Experiments 1 and 2 found that seeing others acknowledge prejudice decreased people’s defensiveness to feedback about their own implicit attitudes and increased willingness to admit personal prejudice. Experiment 3 manipulated social norms with summary information about a referent group and found that while learning most other people deny prejudice caused participants to believe denying was more normal, overall, the manipulation had little influence on defensiveness or willingness to admit prejudice. Together, these experiments suggest that social norms can influence people’s willingness to admit personally prejudiced implicit attitudes, but to be effective, the example set by others must be vivid. / 1 / Aaron Moss

Past research has demonstrated that empathy can reduce prejudicial attitudes as it leads people to share a sense of common identity with other cultural groups (Stephan & Finlay, 1999) or by arousing feelings of injustice (Finlay & Stephan, 2000). However, the current volume of research largely centers around administering empathy-inducing scenarios to participants and then assessing levels of prejudicial attitudes as opposed to examining initial levels of empathy. In addition, there is a lack of research regarding modern prejudicial attitudes towards individuals of Aboriginal descent. The present study examines the predictive value of ethnocultural empathy, age, gender, and social desirability on the levels of those prejudicial attitudes. One hundred and sixty eight undergraduate students from the University of Saskatchewan completed a questionnaire, including the Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy (Wang, Davidson, Yakushko, Savoy, Tan, & Bleier, 2003), the Prejudiced Attitudes Towards Aboriginals Scale (Morrison, 2007), and Form C of the Marlowe Crowne Social Desirability Scale (Reynolds, 1982). <p>The multiple regression analysis revealed that ethnocultural empathy and age were predictive of modern prejudicial attitudes toward Aboriginals. Participants with higher levels of ethnocultural empathy reported reduced levels of modern prejudicial attitudes. However, contrary to expectation, gender was not a significant predictor variable. Practical applications and limitations of these findings are discussed as well as directions for future research.

Past research has demonstrated that empathy can reduce prejudicial attitudes as it leads people to share a sense of common identity with other cultural groups (Stephan & Finlay, 1999) or by arousing feelings of injustice (Finlay & Stephan, 2000). However, the current volume of research largely centers around administering empathy-inducing scenarios to participants and then assessing levels of prejudicial attitudes as opposed to examining initial levels of empathy. In addition, there is a lack of research regarding modern prejudicial attitudes towards individuals of Aboriginal descent. The present study examines the predictive value of ethnocultural empathy, age, gender, and social desirability on the levels of those prejudicial attitudes. One hundred and sixty eight undergraduate students from the University of Saskatchewan completed a questionnaire, including the Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy (Wang, Davidson, Yakushko, Savoy, Tan, & Bleier, 2003), the Prejudiced Attitudes Towards Aboriginals Scale (Morrison, 2007), and Form C of the Marlowe Crowne Social Desirability Scale (Reynolds, 1982). <p>The multiple regression analysis revealed that ethnocultural empathy and age were predictive of modern prejudicial attitudes toward Aboriginals. Participants with higher levels of ethnocultural empathy reported reduced levels of modern prejudicial attitudes. However, contrary to expectation, gender was not a significant predictor variable. Practical applications and limitations of these findings are discussed as well as directions for future research.

No description available.

No description available.

This investigation was designed to add to and clarify, somewhat, the results of previous studies concerning the relationship between rigidity and ethnocentrism. A manifest rigidity scale, based on theory, was utilized to clarify existing confusion over what constitutes rigidity.

with Dr. Philip Jenkins, Pennsylvania State University / Devlin Hall 008

Throughout the present dissertation, we have intended to present and understand better a particular form of prejudice, namely, infra-humanization. Indeed, before being able to act upon prejudice reduction, we need to understand it. Infra-humanization is the tendency to perceive members of outgroups as less human than members of the ingroup. Infra-humanization is a process that has been largely studied in the last few years, however, a number of questions remained unclear. Specifically, we concentrated our work on the search of potential variables and conditions that could influence the process.