What’s the harm? : perceptions and experiences of implicit and intentional bias

What does it feel like to be on the receiving end of a person’s implicit or intentional bias? There is an ongoing debate in academic and non-academic circles about the harm bias does. One view is that because implicit bias is perceived as less blameworthy (Daumeyer et al., 2019), it might also be experienced as less harmful. However, another view is that because impact is more critical than intention (Williams, 2020), implicit bias that has the same impact might hurt the same as (or even more than) intentional bias. Setting aside the question of whether implicit behavior is less wrong, I ask what is the experience of psychological harm of those with marginalized identities targeted by such behaviors? In a programmatic series of experiments, I ask whether implicit bias and intentional bias are experienced as similarly or differentially harmful. I use a theoretically derived approach to develop tightly controlled vignettes that manipulate two types of unbiased, two types of implicitly biased, and two types of intentionally biased behavior. I validate these scenarios for testing perceptions of stereotyping across five different social identity groups (Study 1, N = 205). I then ask whether vignettes of implicit and intentional gender bias are perceived as differentially harmful by women (Study 2, N = 302). Finally, I sought to replicate my findings by having people recall their experience of harm from lived experiences of implicit and intentional bias (Study 3, N = 138). Across these studies, both implicit and intentional bias (with equal impact) were more harmful than unbiased behavior (Study 2 - 3). When hypothetical instances of bias were intentional (vs. implicit), women anticipated more pain but similar levels of exclusion (Study 2). When recalling instances (controlling for impact), intentional bias was again experienced as more painful but similarly exclusionary as implicit bias (Study 3). Together, this research reveals that both forms of bias are perceived and experienced as harmful, but implicit bias was experienced as somewhat less painful than intentional bias. By understanding the consequences for the way bias unfolds, we may better mitigate the psychological harm from instances of bias.Arts, Faculty ofPsychology, Department ofGraduat

Teaching the what, why, and how of academic integrity: Naturalistic evidence from college classrooms

The ways in which instructors discuss (or do not discuss) academic integrity are a crucial part of students’ education. Using naturalistic observations of discussions about academic integrity in STEM classes, the present research assesses current teaching practices, highlights potential gaps in these approaches, and points to areas for further development of educational strategies. This OSF project provides supplementary materials and resources for the research project

The dark side of body positivity

Previous research has shown that body positive content, while having beneficial effects (increased body appreciation, increased positive mood, and so on), also increases state self-objectification in women. Since self-objectification limits the cognitive resources we can use to perform tasks, we seek to investigate: if body positive content increases self-objectification, can it have the same negative effects on our cognitive resources, as self-objectification does? We will be comparing the effects of body positive messages and non-body-related positive messages on cognitive and attentional performance. We expect that participants are more likely to have depleted cognitive resources and thus poorer performance when exposed to body positive content rather than non-body-related positive content and the control condition.Arts, Faculty ofPsychology, Department ofUnreviewedFacultyGraduateUndergraduat