CAREER: Implicit Motivation to Control Prejudice and Discrimination: Psychological Causes, Interventions, and Policy Implications

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

This CAREER project will investigate the psychological construct, Implicit Motivation to Control Prejudice (IMCP), a deeply internalized, largely nonconscious egalitarian orientation. Support for the notion of IMCP comes from the confluence of three established lines of research. First, research has shown that stereotypes and prejudice can reside outside of conscious awareness and give rise to unintended discriminatory behavior. Second, people vary meaningfully in their explicit motivation to control prejudice, as measured using overt questionnaires. Finally, recent research has also shown that people's goals and motives (e.g., to be accurate, to achieve) can operate outside of consciousness. Consequently, motivation to control prejudice should also be able to occur nonconsciously (i.e., implicitly). This is important because only an implicit motivation to control prejudice would effectively serve to inhibit spontaneous, unintended discrimination. The research holds promise to explain why there are differences in spontaneous discriminatory behavior across people, time, and situations. The research examines the generality of the effects of IMCP by testing highly relevant, high impact populations, like police and judges. Unintended, spontaneous biased behaviors are cause for concern, and they have generally been thought to be uncontrollable and therefore inevitable. However, the researcher has developed a method to measure IMCP, finding that it relates negatively to the tendency to engage in discriminatory behavior even when conscious cognitive resources are depleted. Because the researcher teaches courses in the psychology and public policy units, the research on IMCP, and classroom activities and projects derived from that, will effectively enhance instruction across two relevant audiences. Ultimately, findings from this work will lead to the development of interventions to enhance implicit motivation to control prejudice, in the service of reducing discrimination and improving intergroup relations.