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untitled Research Article Cognitive Costs of Exposure to Racial Prejudice Jessica Salvatore and J. Nicole Shelton Princeton University ABSTRACT—This study examined how encountering racial prejudice affects cognitive functioning. We assessed per- formance on the Stroop task after subjects reviewed job files that suggested an evaluator had made nonprejudiced, ambiguously prejudiced, or blatantly prejudiced hiring recommendations. The cognitive impact of exposure to ambiguous versus blatant cues to prejudice depended on subjects’ racial group. Black subjects experienced the greatest impairment when they saw ambiguous evidence of prejudice, whereas White subjects experienced the great- est impairment when they saw blatant evidence of preju- dice. Given the often ambiguous nature of contemporary expressions of prejudice, these results have important im- plications for the performance of ethnic minorities across many domains. Social and legal norms in the United States discourage the overt expression of many kinds of prejudice. Ethnic bias, in partic- ular, is strongly sanctioned (Crandall, Eshleman, & O’Brien, 2002). Despite this, many ethnic minority groups continue to face discrimination, and even seemingly egalitarian behavior may mask prejudice (Monin & Miller, 2001). Contemporary forms of prejudice incorporate a mixture of negative and positive elements and are therefore more ambiguous and harder to cat- egorize than the straightforward antipathy of ‘‘old-fashioned’’ forms of prejudice. They pose a challenge to the core human need to understand the workings of the social world (Fiske, 2004). For optimal social functioning, people must accurately un- derstand others’ motivations. Previous research suggests that they will expend attention and effort to achieve this goal. Indeed, uncertainty about the cause of an event triggers diagnostic in- formation seeking—a careful, laborious deployment of atten- tion, designed to render an accurate causal assessment (e.g., Riley, 1998; Weary & Jacobson, 1997). Given that contemporary forms of prejudice are often subtle and ambiguous, targets of prejudice may experience cognitive impairment as they try to determine the cause underlying the negative events they en- counter in their lives. In the research reported in this article, we addressed the extent to which exposure to prejudice affects individuals’ cognitive functioning. The relative cognitive costs of exposure to ambiguous versus blatant prejudice should be related to individuals’ prior experience with prejudice. As a result, we addressed this issue separately for ethnic minorities (Blacks) and Whites. ETHNIC MINORITIES’ EXPERIENCES WITH PREJUDICE Some theoretical perspectives on coping with prejudice suggest that ethnic minorities should be relatively well equipped to deal with blatant forms of bias. C.T. Miller and Kaiser (2001), for example, argued that members of stigmatized groups develop adaptive strategies for coping with prejudice over time. These coping strategies may confer a psychological ‘‘immunity’’ that attenuates the negative consequences that would otherwise be associated with perceiving prejudice (see, e.g., Allison, 1998; Barrett & Swim, 1998). Similarly, the simple awareness that one’s group is stigmatized results in a form of psychological preparedness. Members of some ethnic minority groups grow up thinking of themselves as potential targets of prejudice. This stigma consciousness (Pinel, 1999) facilitates the recognition of overt prejudice. Psychological coping strategies cannot be activated, however, until targets can make an attribution to prejudice, and this may be quite challenging in an environment where prejudice is ambiguous. Hence, members of ethnic minorities are likely to experience uncertainty over the motivations behind negative treatment from others; indeed, such attributional ambiguity is one defining element of the experience of stigmatization (Crocker, Major, & Steele, 1998). Crocker and Major (1989) Address correspondence to Jessica Salvatore, School of Psychology, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4QG, United Kingdom, e-mail:
[email protected]. PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 810 Volume 18—Number 9Copyright r 2007 Association for Psychological Science argued that ambiguity serves a self-protective function because attributing negative treatment to discrimination rather than to one’s idiosyncratic personal qualities can buffer self-esteem. Attributional ambiguity may also influence affect and cognition, however, and it is unclear whether these consequences would be equally beneficial for members of stigmatized groups (see, e.g., Aronson & Inzlicht, 2004). Major, Quinton, and McCoy (2002) suggested that ambiguity ‘‘is not a benign psychological state,’’ but rather ‘‘is often highly distressing’’ and ‘‘consumes cognitive resources’’ (p. 259). For example, exposure to modern sexism, which is subtle and ambiguous, elicits anxiety and inaction in women, whereas old-fashioned sexism, which is blatant, results in hostility and engagement (Barreto & Ellemers, 2005). In addition, the efficiency of dyadic problem solving is reduced when dyads consist of a Black and a White who is an aversive racist (i.e., someone who tends to express ambivalent messages toward Blacks). Specifically, Dovidio (2001) found that dyads consisting of a Black and an aversive-racist White took slightly longer to solve a problem than did dyads consisting of a Black and a blatantly prejudiced White. The mixed messages and subtle racial bias displayed by aversive racists presumably in- terfered with the effectiveness of accomplishing the goal in the interaction more than did the consistently negative behavior displayed by blatantly prejudiced Whites. It is important for members of disadvantaged groups to be able to predict the likelihood of discrimination occurring in their immediate social environment, regardless of whether their own group would be the primary target. Uncertainty about others’ prejudice leaves marginalized individuals unable to discern which coping strategies would be most appropriate to the situation. Thus, members of disadvantaged groups may be especially motivated to expend cognitive effort to arrive at a satisfying attribution for ambiguously prejudiced behavior, causing depletion in their ability to focus on other cognitive tasks. In other words, when the evidence of racial bias is am- biguous, members of disadvantaged groups may be vulnerable to decreased performance on pressing cognitive tasks. There- fore, we predicted that exposure to ambiguous prejudice would prove more problematic for the short-term cognitive functioning of Black individuals than would exposure to blatant forms of prejudice. WHITE AMERICANS’ EXPERIENCES WITH PREJUDICE Past experiences with prejudice shape individuals’ coping skills, which, in turn, determine cognitive disruption following an en- counter characterized by prejudice. We suggest that there are group-level differences between members of disadvantaged versus advantaged groups in their experiences with prejudice. First, anti-White prejudice is so infrequent that Whites do not tend to think of themselves as potential targets of prejudice. Indeed, Pinel (1999) found that Whites are less stigma conscious than Blacks. Second, Whites are relatively unlikely to perceive prejudice (against either Whites or Blacks) under conditions of uncertainty. For example, Inman and Baron (1996) asked college students to rate the traits shown by actors in a series of vignettes that described ambiguously racist actions. Whites were less likely to label potentially racist acts as instances of prejudice than Blacks were, regardless of the target’s race. In signal- detection terms, the threshold at which members of traditionally advantaged groups make attributions to prejudice may be rela- tively high (cf. Barrett & Swim, 1998), both because these in- dividuals do not encounter bias very often and because the implications of prejudice are limited for them (Schmitt & Branscombe, 2002). These findings suggest that Whites are relatively insensitive to subtle cues of prejudice, regardless of the race that is targeted. Thus, we predicted that they would not experience cognitive disruption after exposure to ambiguous prejudice. Rather, we expected that Whites, in contrast to Blacks, would experience substantial disruption when exposed to blatant prejudice. Because overt racism is relatively rare (McConahay, 1986), Whites do not tend to develop the coping skills that would buffer them from cognitive disruption in such situations. OVERVIEW OF THIS STUDY The purpose of this study was to examine depletion in cognitive resources resulting from exposure to racial-prejudice cues. Subjects first reviewed (fictional) hiring recommendations that were blatantly or ambiguously motivated, or clearly not moti- vated, by racial prejudice. Then we assessed cognitive impair- ment with the Stroop (1935) color-naming task, which requires the selective deployment of attention. We predicted that this higher-level cognitive function would be depleted under different circumstances for White and Black individuals. That is, we expected Blacks’ Stroop performance would be worse in the ambiguous-prejudice condition than in the blatant-preju- dice condition because they would be forced to wrestle with attributional uncertainty in the former condition. In contrast, we expected that Whites would be unlikely to register the ambig- uous cues as potential indicators of prejudice (cf. Barrett & Swim, 1998). Rather, we expected their Stroop performance to be impaired in the blatant-prejudice condition because they would be unaccustomed to encountering prejudice in a profes- sional environment and would therefore lack strategies for coping with it. METHOD Subjects and Design Two hundred fifty-five Princeton University undergraduates participated in the study and were compensated with either Volume 18—Number 9 811 Jessica Salvatore and J. Nicole Shelton payment or partial credit toward a course requirement.1 Five subjects’ data were excluded because of procedural error (e.g., misunderstanding directions or experimenter error), leaving a final sample of 250 (122 Blacks, 128 Whites) in a 2 (subject’s race: Black, White) � 2 (evaluator’s race: Black, White) � 3 (prejudice condition: none, ambiguous, blatant) between-sub- jects factorial design. Procedure Upon arrival, subjects received a written description of the cover story for the first of two supposedly unrelated studies. This de- scription was in the form of a letter from the human-resources manager at an ostensibly real company. The letter asked for subjects’ help in deciding whether to change the way the com- pany made hiring decisions. Subjects learned that their task was to help the company decide whether it should adopt a new protocol in which human-resources officers would make col- laborative rather than solo hiring decisions. We told subjects that they would be evaluating some actual recent hiring deci- sions made at the company, either by one human-resources officer working alone or by a group. Upon providing informed consent, all subjects were told that they had been randomly assigned to the solo-officer condition. They then received a job description, plus a résumé file and an evaluation sheet for each of four ostensible job candidates, and rated each candidate’s level of qualification and hireability. Last, subjects received a file containing an information sheet about the human-resources officer and a set of his hiring recommendations. After they had looked over these materials, the experimenter apologized for not having the next questionnaire and suggested that they could do the second study while she obtained the forms. All subjects agreed to this arrangement and completed the ostensibly unre- lated Stroop task on a computer while the experimenter was absent. Afterward, subjects completed the manipulation checks and were debriefed. Materials Job Description The job-description sheet detailed the company’s search for an entry-level, full-time consultant whose job would be to address clients’ needs in the area of employee compensation. The job description included a list of job responsibilities, the promise of a competitive salary and benefits package, and a list of minimal required skills and abilities. All of the materials, including the job