
Samuel GaertnerUniversity of Delaware | UDel UD · Department of Psychology
Samuel Gaertner
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Introduction
Publications
Publications (166)
The concept of implicit bias – the idea that the unconscious mind might hold and use negative evaluations of social groups that cannot be documented via explicit measures of prejudice – is a hot topic in the social and behavioral sciences. It has also become a part of popular culture, while interventions to reduce implicit bias have been introduced...
This field experiment tested whether inducing common inclusive representations (i.e., one group, dual identity) during contact influences intergroup relations differently for ethnic majority and minority children by changing their metaperceptions and intergroup emotions differently. White ( N = 113) and Black ( N = 111) 8- to 10-year-old children w...
Social psychology highlights ingroup identity as an important determinant of intergroup attitudes and relations; however, research has demonstrated that its effects can be positive, negative, or nonexistent depending on how such identity is conceptualized. This research explores how national identity inclusiveness (Study 1) and centrality (Study 2)...
To provide information for educators, educational psychologists, school psychologists, and social psychologists, we conducted a quantitative meta-analytic test of n = 50 studies dating from 1995 to 2015 that evaluated the effects of in-school interventions on attitudes toward outgroup members (defined as members of different ethnic or religious bac...
In countries in which egalitarian principles represent central cultural values, intergroup bias may be expressed in subtle rather than blatant ways. This subtle bias is commonly expressed in terms of differential helping for ingroup and outgroup members. In this chapter, we attempt to illuminate ways that intergroup helping can perpetuate and reinf...
This study investigated the impact of different forms of group indispensability on majority collective action and social distance toward different immigrant groups. Specifically, we examined if perceived indispensability of different immigrant groups for the national identity, and the functioning of the society, (a) reduce social distance and (b) i...
This research further elaborated the concept of indispensability by developing and testing a new measure, the Functional and Identity Indispensability Scale (FIIS), to assess two dimensions on which groups can claim indispensability: functional indispensability and identity indispensability. In Study 1 we developed and validated the FIIS with a sam...
This chapter proposes a new, functional approach to the understanding of how effectively prejudice can be reduced among members of majority and minority groups. According to the functional perspective, derived from the Common Ingroup Identity Model, groups prefer and adopt the representation that most effectively promotes their group’s goals. Major...
In the United States, the 1960s and early 1970s were characterized by significant societal changes. The Civil Rights Movement and social, political, and moral forces stimulated these changes to address racism by White Americans toward Black Americans and achieve the nation's historical egalitarian ideals. With the Civil Rights legislation and other...
This article discusses how seemingly well-intended policies and interventions to reduce intergroup bias by emphasizing colorblindness through overarching commonalities between groups may, either unintentionally or strategically, inhibit efforts to address group-based inequities. First, we discuss the roots of bias in social categorization process,...
This study proposed a new perspective to look at the consequences of the formation of immigrant communities in globalized societies, by investigating the impact of two forms of group indispensability on majority attitudes towards immigrants. Specifically, it explored whether perceived indispensability of different immigrant groups to the national i...
Dovidio, J. F., Gaertner, S. L., Ufkes, E. G., Saguy, T., & Pearson, A. R. (in press). Included but invisible? Subtle bias, common identity, and the darker side of “we”. Social Issues and Policy Review.
Research has demonstrated that individuals with higher facial width-to-height ratios (fWHR) are consistently perceived negatively on numerous important interpersonal dimensions. In contrast, the current research posited that high fWHR individuals might be perceived as providing group advantages, and thus preferred in certain contexts. We examined h...
We conducted two studies involving two different age groups (elementary school children and adults) aimed at integrating imagined contact and common ingroup identity models. In the first study, Italian elementary school children were asked to imagine interacting with an unknown immigrant peer as members of a common group. Results revealed that comm...
Although overt racism still adversely affects the well-being and advancement of Black Americans, subtle racism also has a pervasive influence. Color-blind racism, a form of subtle racism, rationalizes the current disadvantaged status of Black Americans and institutionalizes practices that perpetuate the disadvantage. The present article, adopting a...
Substantial work in social psychology has focused on reducing intergroup conflict and promoting positive intergroup attitudes. These interventions to reduce intergroup bias frequently emphasize the importance of inclusiveness and overarching commonalities among groups. However, a strict focus on harmony may sometimes have the unintended consequence...
The current research reveals that while positive expectations about an anticipated intergroup interaction encourage generalization of positive contact to outgroup attitudes, negative expectations restrict the effects of contact on outgroup attitudes. In Study 1, when Blacks and Whites interacted with positive expectations, interaction quality predi...
We examined the influence of the social identity representation of an ethnic majority-group member on physiological responses during interactions with an ethnic minority-group member. Before engaging in a collaborative task with a Moroccan-Dutch confederate, native Dutch participants studied the advantages of a "one-group" representation that empha...
Around the world, members of racial/ethnic minority groups typically experience poorer health than members of racial/ethnic majority groups. The core premise of this article is that thoughts, feelings, and behaviors related to race and ethnicity play a critical role in healthcare disparities. Social psychological theories of the origins and consequ...
Although many anti-bias interventions try to overcome stereotypes by presenting positive and/or counterstereotypic members of the outgroup, people often subtype these members and refuse to see them as typical of the outgroup. Although subtyping has been shown to be a common phenomenon, it is unclear if preexisting attitudes moderate this process. T...
Previous research has established that a face's width-to-height ratio (fWHR) is pivotal in influencing observer evaluations, as individuals with a high fWHR are perceived as intimidating along multiple dimensions. Specifically, high-fWHR individuals are considered untrustworthy, aggressive, and prejudiced. Unlike other facial features involved in i...
Physician racial bias and patient perceived discrimination have each been found to influence perceptions of and feelings about racially discordant medical interactions. However, to our knowledge, no studies have examined how they may simultaneously influence the dynamics of these interactions. This study examined how (a) non-Black primary care phys...
Two experiments integrated research on the roles of common identity and social norms in intergroup orientations. Experiment 1 demonstrated that learning that ingroup members categorized the ingroup (Spaniards) and outgroup (Eastern European immigrants) within a common identity (European) produced more positive intergroup orientations toward immigra...
We present three studies examining whether male facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) is correlated with racial prejudice and whether observers are sensitive to fWHR when assessing prejudice in other people. Our results indicate that males with a greater fWHR are more likely to explicitly endorse racially prejudicial beliefs, though fWHR was unrelate...
Background:
Medical interactions between Black patients and non-Black physicians are less positive and productive than racially concordant ones and contribute to racial disparities in the quality of health care.
Objective:
To determine whether an intervention based on the common ingroup identity model, previously used in nonmedical settings to r...
This experiment explored whether the benefits of a complete recategorization and a dual identity might effectively be translated into an intervention program designed to reduce prejudice among European Portuguese and African Portuguese 9‐ to 11‐year‐old children. Participants interacted for 45 minutes in weekly sessions for a month. One month after...
Interactions between members of different groups are substantially more challenging cognitively, emotionally, and socially than are exchanges between members of the same group. This chapter considers how these processes form a psychological basis for divergent intergroup perspectives. In particular, perceptions of membership in different social cat...
Examines the progress of and challenges to the Common Ingroup Identity Model (CIIM), which identifies potential antecedents and outcomes of recategorization, for reducing intergroup bias through the presentation of research investigating concerning causes/conditions of group representations, consequences of a common ingroup identity and dual identi...
This chapter builds on the authors' concept of aversive racism as being typical of many people. Aversive racists are people who sincerely believe themselves to be unprejudiced, but who still harbor some negative feelings (often unconscious ones) toward ethnic minority groups. The authors report on a series of studies aimed at reducing people's auto...
While the persistent and widespread racial and gender inequalities that exist in the United States are almost certainly due to a combination of many different factors, one likely source of inequality is discrimination. As decades of research in social psychology suggest, this discrimination is often subtle and difficult to detect, and in some insta...
The concept of prejudice has profoundly influenced how we have investigated, explained and tried to change intergroup relations of discrimination and inequality. But what has this concept contributed to our knowledge of relations between groups and what has it obscured or misrepresented? How has it expanded or narrowed the horizons of psychological...
This research examined preferences for national- and campus-level assimilative and pluralistic policies among Black and White students under different contexts, as majority- and minority-group members. We targeted attitudes at two universities, one where 85% of the student body is White, and another where 76% of students are Black. The results reve...
The current research examines whether images presented alongside online articles might systematically vary in how political targets are presented. We focus our analyses on how presidents who either share or do not share political orientations with Internet media outlets are portrayed along the dimensions of warmth and competence, qualities highly p...
The limited face-recognition research involving targets categorizable on multiple dimensions has provided contradictory evidence as to how partial-ingroup members are processed and recognized. This research demonstrates that partial-ingroup members are recognized in a manner distinct from double-ingroup and double-outgroup targets. Specifically, wh...
Arizona Senate Bill 1070 requires law-enforcement officers to verify the citizenship of individuals they stop when they have a “reasonable suspicion” that someone may be unlawfully present in the United States. Critics of the law fear it will encourage racial profiling. Defenders of the law point out that the statute explicitly forbids most forms o...
The election of Barack Obama as President of the United States can have profound impact, currently and into the future, on Whites' racial attitudes by providing unprecedented virtual intergroup contact. The present chapter considers the extent and nature of contemporary racial attitudes and discusses how, drawing on fundamental psychological princi...
Earlier research suggests that despite President Obama's election, racial prejudice persists and continues to shape reactions to his presidency. The current work examines the role of Whites’ prejudice in shaping perceptions of Obama's Americanism, and ultimately evaluations of his performance. Specifically, this research proposes that “how American...
This experiment examined the effectiveness of one-group and dual-identity recategorization strategies on reducing intergroup bias among 180 European Portuguese and African Portuguese 9- and 10-year-old children. Results revealed that each of these recategorization strategies, relative to one that emphasized separate group identities, was successful...
Intergroup threat is regarded as a cause of negative outgroup attitudes; however, little research has attempted to examine ways of reducing intergroup threat. Two studies examine the effectiveness of a superordinate identity for reducing intergroup threat. It was predicted that when two groups were aware of a shared identity, intergroup threat woul...
This paper examines whether affirmative action is still needed, investigates why it may be needed in terms of contemporary racial attitudes, and considers ways of reducing intergroup conflict and tension surrounding this issue. Although the nature of contemporary bias is more subtle than traditional forms, this unintentional bias can produce barrie...
a b s t r a c t This research investigated the hypothesis that better recognition for own-race than other-race faces is a result of social categorization rather than perceptual expertise. More specifically, we explored how the salience of race or university group boundaries would affect recall of faces. Using a modified facial rec-ognition paradigm...
Medical interactions between Black patients and nonBlack physicians are usually less positive and productive than same-race interactions. We investigated the role that physician explicit and implicit biases play in shaping physician and patient reactions in racially discordant medical interactions. We hypothesized that whereas physicians' explicit...
Empathy has received increasing empirical attention in the study of intergroup relations. Much of this research has focused on the potential of interventions that generate empathy for improving intergroup attitudes and reducing intergroup bias. Specifically, this work typically explores how empathy mediates the effects of various manipulations, suc...
IntroductionSocial Categorization and Social BiasThe Common In-Group Identity Model and Intergroup Biascommon Identity and Prosocial BehaviorDual IdentitiesResponses to Expressed Identity: Prejudice and HelpingMechanisms and Moderatorsconclusion
Authors’ Introduction
Intergroup bias is one of the most actively researched topics in the field of social psychology. Hundreds of books and thousands of research articles have addressed this issue over more than half a century. Although the psychological roots of blatant prejudices are well documented, the development of more subtle and often unin...
Within the United States, declines in the overt expression of racial prejudice over several decades have given way to near universal endorsement of the principles of racial equality as a core cultural value. Yet, evidence of persistent and substantial disparities between Blacks and Whites remain. Here, we review research that demonstrates how the a...
The current study of Black patients focuses on how discrimination contributes to racial disparities in health. The authors used a longitudinal methodology to study how perceived past discrimination affects reactions to medical interactions and adherence to physician recommendations. In addition, they explored whether these reactions and/or adherenc...
The present article explores the complex role of collective identities in the development of intergroup biases and disparities, in interventions to improve orientations toward members of other groups, and in inhibiting or facilitating social action. The article revolves around the common ingroup identity model, examining general empirical support b...
One direct or indirect benefit of exploring the intricacies of prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination is the potential to learn how to reduce, eliminate, or reverse the processes that initiate and maintain these manifestations of intergroup conflict. Although psychologists have learned much about the intricacies of these phenomena, current eve...
An updated and condensed version of the landmark work on the psychological impact of prejudice and discrimination.
Spanning four volumes, the first edition of The Psychology of Prejudice and Discrimination provided a much-needed cornerstone work on one of the most crucial issues in the United States today. This updated and condensed edition of the...
Previous research on the common ingroup identity model has focused on how one's representations of members of the ingroup and outgroup influence intergroup attitudes. Two studies reported here investigated how learning how others, ingroup or outgroup members, conceive of the groups within a superordinate category affects intergroup bias and willing...
This paper explores the role of racial bias toward Blacks in interracial relations, and in racial disparities in health care in the United States. Our analyses of these issues focuses primarily on studies of prejudice published in the past 10 years and on health disparity research published since the report of the US Institute of Medicine (IOM) Pan...
The Contact HypothesisSocial Categorization/Social Identity TheoryCombining Contact and Categorization Theories: Alternative Models for Reducing Ingroup Bias and Intergroup DiscriminationHybrid Models: An Integration of ApproachesConclusions: Implications for Multicultural SocietiesReferences
This chapter examines the potential roles of intergroup representations, threat, and trust in the dynamics of intergroup relations between Whites and Blacks. It first explores the psychological processes that promote intergroup bias, threat, and distrust and may lead to intergroup conflict. Second, it examines ways of reducing intergroup bias. Thir...
This chapter discusses how social-psychological processes influence intergroup conflict and how these processes can be used in interventions aimed at improving relations between former adversaries. It reviews psychological theory and research that offers insights into these processes and suggest ways that this information can guide diplomatic inter...
This edited volume captures an exciting new trend in research on intergroup attitudes and relations, which concerns how individuals make judgments, and interact with individuals from different group categories, broadly defined in terms of gender, race, age, culture, religion, sexual orientation, and body type. This new approach is an integrative pe...
This chapter contains section titled:
Over 100 years ago, in his classic book, The souls of Black folk, W. E. B. DuBois (1903/1986) prophesized, “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” (p. 372)
DuBois offered this observation before the Wright brothers took the first powered flight, before automobiles were common,
and before most households in the Unite...
In the preceding chapter in this volume, we described our research on the dynamics of an unintentional, very subtle, yet pernicious
form of racism, that is, aversive racism. In the current chapter, we describe our attempts to examine a strategy intended
to motivate people to reduce this form of prejudice: the common ingroup identity model.
Other chapters in this volume describe the fragile nature of intergroup relations and illustrate vividly, with examples from Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and from the Holocaust during World War II, how neighbors who had been living in apparent harmony can suddenly become violent enemies. These chapters describe conditions such as political instab...
Drawing on the evidence of the role of social categorisation and identity in the development and maintenance of intergroup biases, research on the Common Ingroup Identity Model (Gaertner & Dovidio, 200035.
Gaertner , S. L. and Dovidio , J. F. 2000 . Reducing intergroup bias: The Common Ingroup Identity Model , Philadelphia, PA : The Psychology Pres...
Communicating basic behavioral science beyond the discipline: Reflections from social psychology Social psychology explores the very best of human behavior, such as self-sacrifice, altruistic action, attraction, and close relationships, as well as the very worst, such as prejudice, hatred, and interpersonal and intergroup conflict and aggression. F...
Since Hurricane Katrina made landfall, there have been accusations of blatant racism in the government's response, on the one hand, and adamant denials that race played any role at all, on the other. We propose that both perspectives reflect oversimplifications of the processes involved, and the resulting debate may obscure a deeper understanding o...
This study investigated the relationship between overt and subtle forms of racism with Whites' recommendations for capital sentencing of Black and White offenders convicted of murder. White participants (n= 104) viewed 5 other “jurors” (all Whites or 4 Whites and 1 Black) on videotape individually presenting their decisions to vote for the death pe...
To examine whether support for force in war is influenced by the proportionality of combatants' force and subjects' group membership with combatants, 215 American college students were exposed to a news transcript that factorially varied an Invading Country (U.S., England, U.S.S.R.), Invader's Tactics (moderate violence, high violence) and Defender...
This article examines the relationship between intergroup threat and negative outgroup attitudes. We first qualitatively review the intergroup threat literature, describing the shift from competing theories toward more integrated approaches, such as the integrated threat theory (ITT; W. G. Stephan and Stephan, 2000). The types of threats discussed...
This article describes our collaborative research on aversive racism and a strategy we developed to combat it, the Common Ingroup Identity Model. In addition, we reveal some details about our personal and professional relationship in pursuit of our scientific agenda. We begin by discussing evidence for the existence of aversive racism, a subtle, un...
In this chapter, we consider the fundamental importance of social identity both in terms of how people think about others and for personal well-being. The chapter reviews how social categorization and social identity impact people's responses to others and, drawing on our own work on the Common Ingroup Identity Model, examines how identity processe...
The aversive racism framework (S. L. Gaertner & J. F. Dovidio, 1986) suggests that bias against Blacks is most likely to be expressed by Whites when it can be explained or justified along non-racial grounds. The present experiment adopted a 2 (Evidence: admissible vs. inadmissible) × 2 (Defendant Race: White vs. Black) between subjects design, aski...
This chapter examines one form of contemporary racism, “aversive racism.” Aversive racism is characterized by a conflict between
the denial of personal prejudice and unconscious negative feelings and beliefs, which may be rooted in normal psychological
processes (such as social categorization). In the chapter, we review experimental evidence of the...
Racial biases are a fundamental form of social control that support the economic, political, and personal goals of the majority group. Because of their functionality, racial biases are deeply embedded in cultural values, such as in widely accepted ideologies that justify inequality and exploitation and institutional policies and practices). Althoug...
This chapter examines one form of contemporary racism, “aversive racism.” Aversive racism is characterized by a conflict between the denial of personal prejudice and unconscious negative feelings and beliefs, which may be rooted in normal psychological processes (such as social categorization). In the chapter, we review experimental evidence of the...
This chapter examines one factor that contributes to the current frustrations of black Americans: the operation of a subtle form of racism among individuals that is less overt but just as insidious as old-fashioned racism.
Despite encouraging trends in the intergroup attitudes of white Americans, there are still reasons for concern. One reason is...
The present work investigated mechanisms by which Whites' prejudice toward Blacks can be reduced (Study 1) and explored how creating a common ingroup identity can reduce prejudice by promoting these processes (Study 2). In Study 1, White participants who viewed a videotape depicting examples of racial discrimination and who imagined the victim's fe...
School integration, stimulated by the 1954 Brown v. Board of Educationdecision, has influenced students' social and educational experiences. Drawing on practice and theory, we focus on strategies for improving intergroup relations. In a series of sessions over four-weeks, 830 first and second grade children participated in Green Circle program acti...
This chapter examines psychological perspectives on intergroup relations, their implications for reducing bias and conflict, and their potential applications for enhancing social integration. Psychological research on social conflict, harmony, and integration has adopted one of two general perspectives. One perspective places an emphasis on functio...