Status, group membership, and evaluative judgments: psychological and biological influences on explicit biases
Date
2023
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Threat is a primary driver of intergroup stereotypes and conflict. When people believe that their ingroup is threatened, whether that threat is a realistic threat to their group’s power and well-being or a symbolic threat posed by another group’s competing perspective on the world, prejudiced and negative beliefs about others and subsequent discrimination can arise. The stereotypical threat associated with a person’s country of origin and that person’s socioeconomic status may critically shape how they are perceived in the context of admissions to job training programs in the United States. This dissertation aims to address the basic psychological and biological mechanisms by which group membership, status, and stress influence three processes involved in making admissions recommendations: impression formation, decision making, and memory. Study 1 revealed that applicant country of origin and status interacted to shape brain activity in regions associated with salience detection and mentalizing; specifically, high-status ingroup applicants were associated with increased activity in right amygdala and bilateral temporoparietal junctions, while the status of outgroup applicants did not significantly affect activity in these regions. Study 2 found independent effects of applicant status and country of origin. High- status applicants received more positive admissions recommendations but were remembered less accurately than low-status applicants. When perceivers were not stressed, both ingroup and low-threat outgroup applicants received more positive recommendations than high-threat outgroup applicants. However, when stressed, this preference was specific only to ingroup applicants. Perceiver stress, applicant country of origin and applicant status therefore critically shape the processes involved in evaluating applicants to U.S.-based job training programs.
Description
Keywords
Intergroup threat, Social neuroscience, Social status, Positive admissions, Socioeconomic status