Discrimination and prejudice are serious problems in our society. The desire for cognitive consistency is eminently influential on how such implicit and explicit attitudes translate into behavior...Show moreDiscrimination and prejudice are serious problems in our society. The desire for cognitive consistency is eminently influential on how such implicit and explicit attitudes translate into behavior and how attitudes change over different contexts. While it has been found that experiencing cognitive dissonance between discriminating behaviors and one’s values can lead to bias reduction, a recent study by Szekeres et al. (2022) also found the opposite: Inaction, or a failure to confront, in the face of witnessing prejudice, subsequently correlates with more discriminating attitudes. This effect was reported to be mediated by how much a person values confronting; it was specifically observed for respondents that valued confronting highly. The present paper aimed to test the robustness of this interaction of confronting importance with confronting behavior on attitude change across other subsamples. For this, three different resampling approaches instrumentalizing bootstrapping were employed that excluded different percentages of random respondents. The exclusions were either completely random or random within either extreme or central scoring participants. The comparison of the mean interaction coefficients and variances of the different resampling conditions showed that the mean interaction remained quite stable after resampling. Only excluding large percentages of extreme values led to somewhat of a drift to a larger interaction effect.Show less
This paper builds upon previous studies that have identified many factors that contribute to prejudice, including situational and personality factors. However, thus far there has been no...Show moreThis paper builds upon previous studies that have identified many factors that contribute to prejudice, including situational and personality factors. However, thus far there has been no investigation whether individual differences in threat sensitivity can interact with political ideology to predict a person’s degree of prejudice. This work seeks to fill in this gap by examining this relation. It was hypothesized that the relation between threat sensitivity and prejudice would be moderated by political ideology. Specifically, individuals would show greater prejudice against groups holding an opposing worldview, and this would be amplified for people with a higher (versus lower) threat sensitivity. This hypothesis was tested in an online survey, with British participants (N = 200). Contrary to our prediction, the results indicate no significant interaction effect of threat sensitivity and political ideology on prejudice. Further research on threat sensitivity and political ideology is needed to investigate whether and how it may affect prejudice.Show less
Michelle Obama faces public scrutiny over her race and use of African American Language. Research has demonstrated that African American Language (AAL) shoulders much prejudice and that Michelle...Show moreMichelle Obama faces public scrutiny over her race and use of African American Language. Research has demonstrated that African American Language (AAL) shoulders much prejudice and that Michelle Obama, as a black woman, has faced negative stereotypes due to her complexion. This study aims to establish a direct connection between Michelle Obama’s use of African American Language and her public image, based on a sentiment analysis of tweets. Building on existing work, this study asks how Michelle Obama’s African American Language use affects her public image and whether public perception is based on her use of AAL. In this context, the archaic use of African American Vernacular English is substituted with the use of African American Language. Based on a corpus of gathered tweets, a sentiment analysis was performed to determine online engagement based on mood. An analysis of the results demonstrated that positive online engagement could be connected to a decreased use of African American Language by Michelle Obama. The results indicate that Americans think more highly of Michelle when she speaks less “black.”Show less
