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It is well known that we utilize internalized representations (or schemas) to direct our eyes when exploring visual stimuli. Interestingly, our schemas for human faces are known to reflect systematic differences that are consistent with one's level of racial prejudice. However, whether one's level or type of racial prejudice can differentially regulate how we visually explore faces that are the target of prejudice is currently unknown. Here, White participants varying in their level of implicit or explicit prejudice viewed Black faces and White faces (with the latter serving as a control) while having their gaze behaviour recorded with an eye-tracker. The results show that, regardless of prejudice type (i.e., implicit or explicit), participants high in racial prejudice examine faces differently than those low in racial prejudice. Specifically, individuals high in explicit racial prejudice were more likely to fixate on the mouth region of Black faces when compared to individuals low in explicit prejudice, and exhibited less consistency in their scanning of faces irrespective of race. On the other hand, individuals high in implicit racial prejudice tended to focus on the region between the eyes, regardless of face race. It therefore seems that racial prejudice guides target-race specific patterns of looking behaviour, and may also contribute to general patterns of looking behaviour when visually exploring human faces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective This project was directed at examination of the potential reciprocal relationship between empathy and social dominance orientation ( SDO), with the purpose of testing the predictions from Duckitt's highly influential dual process model of prejudice, and further examining the validity of the mere effect view of social dominance orientation. Method To examine this relationship, the authors employed cross-lagged structural equation modeling with manifest variables across two studies using large samples from different parts of the world. Study 1 consisted of data from two waves of 389 (83% female) Belgian university students, with each wave separated by 6 months. Study 2 consisted of two waves of data from a national probability sample of 4,466 New Zealand adults (63% female), with each wave separated by a 1-year interval. Results Results supported our expectation of a reciprocal longitudinal relationship between empathy and SDO. Moreover, the results also revealed that SDO's effect on empathy over time tended to be stronger than empathy's effect on SDO over time, countering the predictions derived from the dual process model. Conclusions These results represent the first time the possible reciprocal effects of empathy and SDO on one another have been examined using panel data rather than less appropriate cross-sectional analysis. They suggest the need to reexamine some key assumptions of the dual process model and further question the mere effect view of SDO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the fact that few people appear to endorse negative stereotypes of Blacks, such stereotypes are widely disseminated in our culture. Consequently, such stereotypes can have pervasive consequences on one's impressions of African Americans, even by low-prejudice Whites and by Blacks themselves. Thus, we predicted that student judgments of intellectual competence would be more important when students were making global performance evaluations of Black faculty than of White faculty. Furthermore, to the extent that intellectual competence is more salient in the judgment of Black faculty, such judgments should be essentially the same among Black and White students, and for low- and high-prejudice students. For the most part, analyses of instructor evaluations at a major American university supported these expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conditioning studies on humans and other primates show that fear responses acquired toward danger-relevant stimuli, such as snakes, resist extinction, whereas responses toward danger-irrelevant stimuli, such as birds, are more readily extinguished. Similar evolved biases may extend to human groups, as recent research demonstrates that a conditioned fear response to faces of persons of a social out-group resists extinction, whereas fear toward a social in-group is more readily extinguished. Here, we provide an important extension to previous work by demonstrating that this fear-extinction bias occurs solely when the exemplars are male. These results underscore the importance of considering how gender of the target stimulus affects psychological and physiological responses to out-group threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many methods for reducing implicit prejudice have been identified, but little is known about their relative effectiveness. We held a research contest to experimentally compare interventions for reducing the expression of implicit racial prejudice. Teams submitted 17 interventions that were tested an average of 3.70 times each in 4 studies (total N = 17,021), with rules for revising interventions between studies. Eight of 17 interventions were effective at reducing implicit preferences for Whites compared with Blacks, particularly ones that provided experience with counterstereotypical exemplars, used evaluative conditioning methods, and provided strategies to override biases. The other 9 interventions were ineffective, particularly ones that engaged participants with others' perspectives, asked participants to consider egalitarian values, Or induced a positive emotion. The most potent interventions were ones that invoked high self-involvement or linked Black people with positivity and White people with negativity. No intervention consistently reduced explicit racial preferences. Furthermore, intervention effectiveness only weakly extended to implicit preferences for Asians and Hispanics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]