The LTP Lab examines how 1) lay beliefs about prejudice affect low- and high-status group members’ performance, behavior, and health, 2) how and when prejudice confrontations reduce prejudice and impact the health of confronters, and 3) how environmental cues shape attention and anticipated treatment. The LTP Lab leverages multiple methodologies, including behavioral, implicit cognition, and physiological, to examine basic and applied questions about how people perceive, experience, and combat prejudice in their day to day lives.
Lay Theories of Prejudice
How do lay theories of prejudice, theories everyday people have about the ways prejudice operates in themselves, others, and society broadly, influence how and when members of stigmatized groups anticipate facing discrimination?
Past research from the LTP Lab has found that White women anticipate negative gender-based treatment from an individual with negative attitudes towards Black Americans, and Black and Latino men anticipate more positive treatment at companies with gender-inclusive bathrooms and gender diversity awards due to a lay theory that prejudices co-occur.
The LTP Lab is currently exploring how such lay theories are learned, how lay theories influence attention to identity threat cues, and how lay theories impact intraminority coalitions.
Prejudice Confrontations
Do prejudice confrontations influence perpetrator's future expressions of prejudice and impact the health of confronters?
Past LTP Lab research has found that after being confronted, perpetrators used fewer stereotypes about multiple stigmatized groups one week later due to prolonged rumination and has proposed that confrontations serve as an active coping strategy.
The LTP Lab is currently exploring attentional bias to prejudice and diversity messages by individuals who have been confronted for making stereotypical remarks, as well as how prejudice confrontation styles influence confronters' rumination and cardiovascular recovery.
Ecological Influences
How and why do environments shape how members of high and low status social groups anticipate being treated?
Past LTP Lab research has found that proximal diversity increases women's anticipated treatment and access to mentorship in a homogenous (White male) STEM environment.
The LTP Lab is currently exploring how environmental diversity and prejudice cues shift attention of members of stigmatized groups and when such cues produce social tuning effects.
