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Summary: Ambiguous racism task |
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| Posted by: | Gordon Hodson |
| Title/Position: | Assistant Professor |
| School/Organization: | Brock University |
| Sent to listserv of: | SPSP, SPSSI, SESP |
| Date posted: | December 5th, 2005 |
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Dear Colleagues,
Last week, I posted the following message:
----- Original Message -----
Dear Colleagues,
In an upcoming study, we would like to provide participants with false feedback on a prejudice measure (i.e., that they are relatively low or high in prejudice, compared to their peers). For this study, we'd like the "test" to be not computer based. We have considered using paper and pencil self-report measures, but we feel that it is less credible to inform a participant that they are high [low] in prejudice if they clearly reported very low or high responses on the scale.
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I received many insightful and useful comments. I not only wish to thank respondents, but to comment on the value of these lists and thank those who moderate these discussions.
Below I will list the responses.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions, or if you'd like contact information for any of the postings I've listed.
Thanks again,
Gordon Hodson
Brock University.
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i suspect that the racial arguments scale (RAS; Saucier & Miller,
PSPB, 2003) could be used to provide false feedback about how much racial bias people are displaying. some of the items might need to be made even more ambiguous but it seems like you could develop a believable explanation to fit most response patterns.
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hi Gordon,
I think you might be able to use the Stereotypic Explanatory Bias (SEB) materials for this purpose. It's paper and pencil, but quite indirect, and therefore lacking in face validity. Denise Sekaquaptewa is the main person using these materials, so you might want to email her to get the absolute latest version. I've attached the version I have. Denise et al. have a few papers in JESP using the SEB as a bona-fide measure of prejudice.
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There's a Spencer, Fein, Strahan and Zanna (may still be in press) which essentially told people that in the subject pool pre-test they had done at the start of term, they had scored high in racism and low in racial tolerance
Margo Monteith had a 1993 JPSP where, in one study, she gave people some vague scales then told them they were more prejudiced than their own internal standards said they should be... In another study she had this elaborate routine for convincing people they had behaved in a prejudice way towards a gay scholarship applicant (I've pasted a lengthy description in below)...
[they] had participants assign a score to a law school applicant reflecting his qualifications, and then recommend him (or not) for a scholarship based on this score. In one condition the applicant was portrayed as gay, had marginal credentials, and was required to meet a higher cut-off score before being recommended for a scholarship. In another condition he was portrayed as heterosexual, with slightly better credentials, and the required cut-off was lower. Most participants then found themselves rejecting the candidate when he was gay, but not when he was straight. Then the experimenter explained that the study was about whether people's evaluations of others are influenced by knowledge of sexual orientation. She explained that sometimes the candidate was presented as gay and sometimes as straight but the materials were "otherwise identical," and that:
"If we find that people who thought the applicant was gay make more negative evaluations than people who thought he was heterosexual, it would indicate that prejudice was operating. In other words, if the ratings of the gay applicant are substantially lower than those of the heterosexual applicant, we would take it as evidence of prejudice toward the gay applicant."
They found that participants who had been in the gay-reject condition felt negative self-directed affect. These participants also scored higher on self-focus, and spent a longer time reading a subsequent essay about anti-gay prejudice.
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You might try Anne Maas's "famous people" task--how many people of group x can you name who are famous? Bernadette Park also has a task where participants read passages and cancel words (forget the details). I don't recommend Patricia Devine's "should-would" vignettes, first, because they do not produce a reliable difference, and second, they don't predict much. I guess the key thing is to ask what you mean by "ambiguous". In some theories, ambiguity implies conflict and a range of outcomes due to the conflict, in others, it means "vague", and there are various points in between.
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What about a stroop-type test? This can be done with several sheets of card and a stop-watch. The test would essentially involve person names grouped according to ethnicity by card, and you simply time how long it takes participants to read-off the colours (obviously, you would need to control for issues of familiarity, etc between card contents).
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hi gordon, one thing you could do is adapt an ambiguous measure i've used in the past--i used it to categorize participants based on their "creativity" level, but i can see how you could adapt it. i've asked them write a paragraph and have a coder come in to "code" it in front of them, and provide them with a score. i can see how you could adapt this, saying we'd like you to write about perhaps an racist incident in the past (you can decide how important it is to label it as such), and tell them we have a scoring criteria used in past research. then provide false feedback as to their level of racism. we are careful to explain "percentiles" to them (so the coder comes in and fakes using a caclulator) so that they are aware, even if they've scored "low" they could be higher than anyone else in the group.
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I think the RAS will be perfect for your needs. [Saucier, D. A. &
Miller, C. T. (2003). The Persuasiveness of Racial Arguments as a Subtle Measure of Racism. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 1303-1315.] It has the added advantage of actually measuring implicit prejudice (so you could create a 2 by 2--actual prejudice and perceived prejudice). Once the logic of the test is explained to subjects, I think it will be convincing, and since the scoring is complicated, subjects won't be able to know how they did.
On a related note, I'd be curious to see how you justified this
deception to your IRB. Would you mind sending me the rationale you used?
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Roger has some insight on some work under review. You can contact him below:
Roger Giner-Sorolla
Centre for Research in Group Processes
Department of Psychology
Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NP
United Kingdom
tel. (44) 1227 823085
fax (44) 1227 827030
remove (44), add 0 at beginning of number if calling within UK
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