Discrimination and Stereotyping experiments

    Two University of Kansas psychology professors are researching discrimination and stereotyping to discover the ways in which people communicate and interpret discriminatory remarks.
    The professor's conclusions will be published in scholarly articles to become part of scientific knowledge in the field when they have finished.
    "What's different about this project is that it looks more specifically at how stereotype's guide people's communications about others, and how others 'decode' or interpret these communications with reference to stereotypes," said Dr. Monica Biernat, who has been studying the psychology of bias for 15 years and hopes her work, and that of others, might help to reduce its incidence in America.
    Biernat's experiments begin with people looking at academic accomplishments or the grades of a fictional student, who is described as being some kind of minority.
    A subject is asked to share his or her impression of the student with another individual. If the subjects are told the student is a minority, they tend to say nicer things than if the student is not a minority. This may be an effort on the person's part to come across as non-prejudice, Biernat said.
    Biernat also experiments with having people read a description of a student, and guess their grade point average. The interpreters often guess that minority students have worse GPAs, indicating that they are influenced by stereotypes.
    The experiments results indicate that what is considered good for a student who is a minority is communicated and interpreted as something different from what is considered to be good for a student who is not.
    Communication can mask stereotypes, Biernat said, allowing them to be perpetuated. The process of communicating stereotypes exists. What Biernat and Sesko are trying to learn more about are the mechanisms behind the process. For example, how motivation factors into these communications. Or whether people are aware of the language they are using.
    "I think what is most interesting is that people seem to be really good at communicating stereotypes in language without necessarily being explicit about it," said Amanda Sesko, a doctoral student working alongside Biernat. "And somewhat more interesting is that other people are really good at interpreting what that means."
    In a separate, but related study, Professor Nyla Branscombe is researching how outside validation of one's experience of discrimination affects one's interpretation of that experience.
Branscombe focuses on discrimination against women. The first experiments began with simply discovering what, if anything, an individual might do when faced with discrimination.
    "The trouble is most experiences of discrimination happen when a person is alone, and are very likely to be under reported. We hope to get women to come out about their experiences of discrimination." Branscombe said.
    Branscombe's first experiments involved women volunteers from psychology classes at KU, who were told they were being interviewed to see if they qualified to join a group of people with better thinking skills who were more upwardly mobile.
    In the experiment, a male judge told each woman - explicitly or subtly - that they were not worthy to be in the group. The researchers measured the emotional experience with a questionnaire and what the women being discriminated against would do about it, if they would do anything.
    Tracey Cronin, a third year PhD student working with Branscombe said the first experiments led to a second experiment. The idea in the second experiment was to see if validation from a friend matters.
    "We want to know if the information from in-group members shape our interpretation of events." Cronin said.
    In the second experiment, women were asked to imagine they went to a promotion interview where a man said sexist things about them, and promoted another man to the job instead of them. In half the cases, the women discuss the experience with a friend who said they experienced the same discrimination. In the other half, the women's friend said they did not feel there was any discrimination.
    As Branscombe and Cronin expected, women who were validated by their friend felt more discriminated against, less afraid to complain and felt stronger about doing so.
    The women whose friends said there was no discrimination felt more fear of the cost of complaining, thought the event was less discriminatory and felt like they had less power to make anything change.

Branscombe's experiments resulted in two sets of information from the subjects. The higher the numbers, the stronger the subjects felt about different parts of the experience of discrimination. For example, alone, subjects were more concerned with the costs of complaining, but having shared their experience, subjects felt more strongly that they could take individual or group actions.

"Participants in the shared experience condition were more likely to perceive their experience as a discrimination event, more so than participants in the alone condition. Also, participants in the shared experience condition were less likely to be concerned about the social costs associated with complaining about the situation. Participants who reported less concern about the social costs of complaining and who perceived the event as discriminatory were also more likely to report feeling as if they could actually do something about it to change the situation. Participants who felt more efficacious (they could effectively do something about it) were less likely to passively accept the unfair decision, and more likely to challenge the situation by taking actions such as reporting the behavior to someone higher up in the company, or seeking redress through formal channels such as the legal system." Tracey Cronin said.