The Relationship Between Implicit Attitudes and Displayed Behaviors

Abstract As society has progressed, there has been increased discussion surrounding prejudice, discrimination, and bias, and, therefore, also further recognition of the universality of internalized bias (Mitchell, 2013). The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is a test that was developed to measure then strength of the unconscious relationship individuals hold between various groups of people and the stereotypes associated with said group (About the IAT, n.d.). In a demonstration of the IAT by the creators, Anthony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji, it was found that within the group of participants that were administered the test, 90 to 95 percent of the individuals displayed a significant level of implicit bias based upon their results (Schwartz, 1998). As these finding suggest that a majority of people internalize bias to some degree, our study aimed to investigate whether there is a relationship between the level of internalized biases that people display within the IAT and a display of biased or prejudiced behavior that is consistent with their results. To determine whether attitudes would be predictive of behaviors, we sampled a group of college students and administered two versions of the IAT (Gender-Career and Gender- Science). Following competition of these tests, participants were asked if they would like to sign up for a Women in S.T.E.M. club newsletter, which served as a means of observable measure of prejudiced behavior. Data is currently being collected and results will be presented at SURS. It was found that, -------. These findings suggest that ----

Material World: The Effects of Meditation Content on Materialistic Values

In the twenty-first century, Western cultures are highly materialistic and defined by consumeristic goals to garner as much “stuff” as possible (Berger, 2015). This constant pursuit has demonstrable adverse effects on personal and social well being (Bahl et al., 2016; Wang, et al., 2017), while overconsumption also has devastating impacts on the global environment. Previous studies found a negative relationship between levels of mindfulness and levels of materialism (Nagpaul & Pang, 2015; Watson, 2019), indicating the potential for mindfulness to combat otherwise materialistic behaviors. Furthermore, previous research demonstrated gratitude interventions led to lower scores on materialism (Chaplin, et al., 2018), indicating the significance of meditation content on one’s materialistic values. Following literature that meditation increased a person’s suggestibility (Gloede, et al., 2021), experiencing a ‘material abundance’ meditation may promote increased materialistic values. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between mindfulness meditation content and materialistic values through an experimental manipulation. We hypothesized participants who experienced a ‘material abundance’ meditation would show the highest materialistic values, followed by those who experienced a ‘body scan’ meditation, and lastly, those who experienced a ‘gratitude’ meditation would show the lowest materialistic values