In the Eye of the Interviewer

Though unemployment was low across the United States at 3.3% in 2019, it was almost double that for Black people at 5.4% in 2019 (https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpsee_e16.htm). Because the interviewer’s attention to the eyes of a job candidate produces a better understanding of the candidate, it is possible that identifying racial bias in eye contact during the interview process could reduce racial disparities in unemployment. We will investigate how attention to the candidate’s eyes moderates race and gender disparities in hiring decisions. Participants will look at either a White man, Black man, White woman, or Black woman who is ostensibly a job candidate while listening to a supposed recording of that candidate during a job interview. Notably, participants will listen to the same male voice recording regardless of the race of the man and will listen to the same female voice recording regardless of the race of the woman. While participants listen to the recording, we will track where their eyes focus. We predict for the White male candidate high attention to the candidate’s eyes during the interview will lead to high interview scores, whereas low attention to the eyes will lead to low scores. For the White female candidate, we predict less attention to the eyes than the White male candidate, as well as lower interview scores. For the Black male and female candidates, we expect low interview scores, but no difference based on attention to the eyes. Future research should examine what causes racial disparities in attention to the eyes

How Warmth and Competence Stereotypes Predict Political Party Support

People use stereotypes and party affiliation when making voting decisions (Leeper, 1991). Voters are also known to support the political party they view positively (Graham, Nosek, & Haidt, 2012). How do stereotypes influence political party support? Since warmth and competence are used to evaluate social groups (Cuddy et al. 2008), we examined how the warmth and competence stereotypes associated with political parties were related to voter support. We surveyed participants using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (n = 361). Participant’s ages ranged from twenty to seventy-three years old. These participants rated Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and Libertarians on competence, warmth, and support (Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gosling, 2011). We expect to find that competence and warmth for a political party (and their interaction) aids in predicting support for that party. To support our initial hypothesis we would need to find in our regressions that the more extensively a party was rated as warm or competent, the more participants support the party. Future research could take more political parties into account, such as the Green Party, or apply these predictive models to individual candidates. Research could also be expanded to examine using communion and agency towards parties as a predictive measure of elections

Intersecting race and gender stereotypes:Implications for group-level attitudes

Two studies examined the relationship between explicit stereotyping and prejudice by investigating how stereotyping of minority men and women may be differentially related to prejudice. Based on research and theory related to the intersectional invisibility hypothesis (Purdie-Vaughns & Eibach, 2008), we hypothesized that stereotyping of minority men would be more strongly related to prejudice than stereotyping of minority women. Supporting our hypothesis, in both the United Kingdom (Study 1) and the United States (Study 2), when stereotyping of Black men and women were entered into the same regression model, only stereotyping of Black men predicted prejudice. Results were inconsistent in regard to South Asians and East Asians. Results are discussed in terms of the intersectional invisibility hypothesis (Purdie-Vaughns & Eibach, 2008) and the gendered nature of the relationship between stereotyping and attitudes

Measuring cognitive control and reducing racial bias with fNIRS

To investigate factors that could reduce the disproportionate killings of Black Americans by police officials, this research examines if cognitive control moderates the impact of stereotype-reduction training on stereotype activation. Participants in the counter-stereotypic training condition selects cell phones when presented with images of Black individuals and selects guns when presented with images of White individuals, whereas participants in the stereotype-maintenance condition made the opposite selections. The cognitive control is inferred from functional near-infrared spectroscopy (FNIRS) BOLD (blood oxygen level-dependent) responses in the prefrontal cortex during the training and implicit stereotyping tasks. We predicted that stereotype-reduction training would be most effective among participants that exert cognitive control during the training and implicit stereotyping tasks. The present study aims to provide insight into neural activity involved in stereotype-reduction training and further the understanding of individual differences that may moderate effects of bias training

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