Research
Bias Reduction Strategies
I examine theoretically-derived strategies and assess their effectiveness at increasing awareness of and motivation to self-regulate one's own personal biases. I am interested in examining how and why certain strategies might be effective at not just the personal level but also how effective they might be at increasing recognition and motivation to combat systemic bias. I am interested in employing a variety of methods to understand bias reduction strategies' influence on personal and systemic bias outcomes including the use of virtual reality (VR).
Harnessing Confrontations to Improve Minorities' Wellbeing
In one line of research, we are investigating how confrontations of bias influence perceptions of norms around bias expression in a local environment and feelings of safety and well-being among targets of bias. We find consistent evidence that confrontation is a powerful means of establishing anti-bias norms among nontargets. Additionally, we find that confrontations when affirmed by others increases feelings of identity safety among Black and White participants. In related research, we are investigating how nontarget’s responses to confrontations of microaggressions might also influence identity safety and well-being among targets.
Elucidating Confrontation Outcomes
Guided by a new theoretical model developed my Monteith et al. (2022), we are exploring the moderators and mediators of outcomes associated with confrontation: bias reduction and social costs. For example, we find that confrontations that occur publicly or privately reduce bias to the same extent, while social costs are best deterred by private confrontations. This research provides novel findings concerning how confrontation and response mode affects feelings of negative self- and negative other-directed affect, social costs, and biased responding.
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