Interracial Contact Training Shapes Racial Bias in Implicit Evaluations

• Zoe Davidson-Hawes, Psychology, University of Delaware
• Margaret Welte, Psychology, University of Delaware

• Jennifer Kubota, Psychological & Brain Sciences, University of Delaware
• Jasmin Cloutier, Psychological & Brain Sciences, University of Delaware

The indirect ways we assess and respond to stimuli are known as implicit evaluations, and they often reflect valenced associations we hold. People tend to display a racial bias in implicit evaluations favoring own-race individuals. However, previous studies suggest that experimentally manipulated interracial contact through training can reduce this bias. Training that promotes individuation (encoding others based on identity-specific characteristics), including that based on counterstereotypic information, may be particularly effective at decreasing racial bias in implicit evaluations.

The current study investigates how different forms of experimentally manipulated contact with other-race individuals impact racial bias in implicit evaluations among self-identified White perceivers. During two weeks of training, participants in the perceptual individuation condition learn to associate perceived Black faces with a unique randomized two-letter identifier. In the knowledge-based individuation conditions, participants learn to associate perceived Black faces with a positive or neutral statement describing a personal quality or behavior. Before and after training, participants complete the Affect Misattribution Procedure with a novel set of perceived Black and White faces to assess implicit evaluative bias.

Prior research shows that self-identified White perceivers display pro-White implicit racial bias, but that this bias can decrease after contact training. As such, we predict that participants will display increased positive evaluations following perceived White face images compared to perceived Black face images, and that this difference in evaluations will lessen from pre- to post-training. We also hypothesize that positive knowledge-based individuation will be more effective than neutral knowledge-based individuation and perceptual individuation at decreasing the difference in evaluations between perceived Black and perceived White face images from pre- to post-training. The results of this study will highlight whether experimentally manipulated individuation experience with other-race faces shapes racial bias in implicit evaluations, which may inform the design and application of future training interventions.