Curtis Edward Phills

Introduction: Though Black Americans are twice as likely as White Americans to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease, they may be excluded from the mental representation of a person with dementia. Methods: Participants ( N = 143, median age = 19) created visualized mental representations of a person, a man, a woman, a Black man, or a Black woman diagnosed with dementia by repeatedly selecting which among 12 faces looked most like each target category. Results: The visualized representation of a person with dementia was more similar to the representation of a man and a Black woman than to a Black man and a woman, respectively. Discussion: These findings highlight how intersectionality shapes mental representations of dementia, revealing that certain combinations of marginalized identities are perceived differently rather than excluded entirely.

Previous research has studied the extent to which men are the default members of social groups in terms of memory, categorization, and stereotyping, but not attitudes which is critical because of attitudes’ relationship to behavior. Results from our survey (N > 5000) collected via a globally distributed laboratory network in over 40 regions demonstrated that attitudes toward Black people and politicians had a stronger relationship with attitudes toward the men rather than the women of the group. However, attitudes toward White people had a stronger relationship with attitudes toward White women than White men, whereas attitudes toward East Asian people, police officers, and criminals did not have a stronger relationship with attitudes toward either the men or women of each respective group. Regional agreement with traditional gender roles was explored as a potential moderator. These findings have implications for understanding the unique forms of prejudice women face around the world.

This paper addresses a critical gap in measuring and reducing implicit prejudice: biases against Black women and people with intersectional identities. Though social psychologists have published many methods to measure and interventions to reduce implicit prejudice against Black people, these methods often target biases against Black people or Black men rather than Black women. Thus, these methods may leave Black women out because the mental representations of Black women and Black men differ and the mental representation of Black people is more similar to the mental representation of Black men than Black women. This paper advocates for an intersectional approach to measuring and reducing implicit prejudice that accounts for the unique prejudices faced by Black women. Specifically, this paper argues that researchers should tailor their methods to account for how the mental representations of Black women and Black men differ including differences in stereotypic content and ambivalence. The paper concludes by acknowledging the difficulties related to developing long‐lasting interventions, the need to move beyond reducing implicit prejudice, and the value of studying the men and women of additional racial and ethnic groups and other intersections like sexual orientation and socioeconomic status.

Universities in the United States issue “timely warnings” when a sexual assault occurs on campus. Timely warnings should make campuses safer by communicating information that allows community members to make informed personal safety decisions. Unfortunately, these warnings often undermine that safety goal by centering the survivor's actions (i.e., walking alone at night) and characteristics (i.e., wearing revealing clothes), rather than or in addition to the perpetrator's actions (i.e., followed the survivor to their house) and characteristics (i.e., wearing a red shirt). The present research investigated whether including survivor‐focused details in timely warnings causes readers to view survivors as less intelligent (i.e., why else would they walk alone at night?) and more promiscuous (i.e., why else would they wear revealing clothes?). Among three distinct samples (registered voters, US undergraduates, US based MTurk participants), we manipulated whether timely warnings included survivor‐focused details. Survivor‐focused, versus not survivor‐focused, warnings caused participants to view survivors as less intelligent (all three samples) and more promiscuous (US undergraduates and US based MTurk participants). Participants also felt safer when timely warnings focused on the survivor. Notably, feeling safer related to believing survivors were less intelligent (US based MTurk participants). We discuss how survivor‐focused timely warnings may ironically make campuses less safe by discouraging survivors from reporting crimes. Materials, data, and analysis code are available online (https://osf.io/acnqb/?view_only=4c9dd1c7abcd4a6bbd2c68e8412fcbdd).

Objective: An impediment to an informed discussion of the impact that campus crime alerts have on college campuses is the dearth of research on the topic. This study explores the composition of campus crime alerts and the ways they convey and (re)produce meanings concerning victimization, perpetration, responsibility, and consent. Methods: This study uses an qualitative content analysis of a sample of 3,702 campus crime alerts from 55 universities in the United States. Results: Three themes (Central Actor, Overgendering, and Gratuitous Content) emerge. When the victim is portrayed as the alert subject using a passive voice and the crime is framed within a gendered, editorialized narrative, the alert focus shifts to the victim’s rather than the perpetrator’s identity and behaviors. Conclusions: The wording of alerts may compromise the safety of the campus community by reinforcing misguided expectations for behavior and shaping misleading perceptions of risk; considerations for best practices are explored.

Although stereotypes and prejudice are commonly regarded as conceptually distinct but related constructs, previous research remains silent on the processes underlying their relation. Applying the balance-congruity principle to the concepts (a) group, (b) valence, and (c) attribute, we argue that the valence of attributes contained in a group-stereotype shapes evaluations of the group, while prejudice toward a group influences which attributes are stereotypically associated with the group. Using fictitious (Experiments 1 and 3) and real (Experiments 2 and 4) groups, the current studies demonstrate that (a) experimentally induced changes in the valence of semantic attributes associated with a group (stereotypes) influence implicit prejudice toward that group (Experiments 1 and 2), and (b) experimentally induced changes in the valence of a group (prejudice) influence implicit stereotyping of that group (Experiments 3 and 4). These findings demonstrate a bidirectional causal relation between prejudice and stereotypes.

Despite current societal trends to encourage diversity, individuals often avoid acknowledging race, and we suggest also conflict, because of concerns about appearing prejudiced. The present research investigated the use of racial color and conflict blind strategies in an ambiguous negative intergroup context. In three studies, we assessed whether people acknowledged race and conflict using a novel ambiguous context task. Study 1 demonstrated that when describing an intergroup interaction with a photograph of Black and White males bumping into one another, only 27% of participants used racial labels and approximately half (53%) mentioned conflict. In Study 2, when participants described two White males in the same situation, significantly fewer participants mentioned conflict compared to when the photograph depicted a Black and White male actor, but rates of mentioning race were not different. Finally, in Study 3, when participants were instructed to use race when describing the actors, they mentioned conflict significantly less than when they were free to avoid racial labels. These latter results suggest that although racial color blindness may be used to appear unbiased, when this strategy is unavailable, people may resort to not referencing intergroup negativity. Together these findings indicate that racial color and conflict blindness may work in conjunction as compensatory strategies to appearing nonprejudiced.

Ableism, as it relates to mental illness, is a serious social issue that exists across nations and cultures. Implicit stigma caused by ableism can be especially problematic given that it is typically expressed subtly and automatically causing it to remain unnoticed and thus unchanged. This research illustrated across two studies that individuals have automatic ableist attitudes toward mental illness, yet the expression of stigma depends on the combination of their implicit and explicit attitudes. Furthermore, Study 2 was the first to demonstrate an effective intervention designed to specifically target implicit stigmatizing attitudes toward mental illness. The findings have implications for implementing social policies that serve to raise awareness of and reduce implicit stigma to ultimately improve the lives for those affected by mental illness.

The purpose of this research was to test how, why, and when social power influences victims' revenge seeking, grudge holding, and forgiveness. Based on Keltner, Gruenfeld, and Anderson's (2003) power approach theory and McCullough, Kurzban, and Tabak's (2013) theorizing about revenge and forgiveness systems, we tested (a) the associations between victims' social power and revenge, grudge, and forgiveness; (b) the mediational role of approach/inhibition motivation in explaining why the associations exist; and (c) the moderating role of whether the transgressor apologizes or not in explaining the associations. Five studies (Ns = 279, 181, 154, 131, and 81) that varied in sample (undergraduate, community), research method (nonexperimental. experimental), context (laboratory, online), measures (self-reported, behavioral), and statistical method (regression, ANOVA), supported our predictions and the systematic generalizability of the effects. Applied implications are discussed.

Hillary Clinton was the first woman nominated for President by a major political party in the United States. Like most women in politics, she faced negative evaluations, in part, due to the inconsistency between the traits typically associated with leaders (competence) versus women (warmth). Because understanding the categorization of an individual female politician is essential to the development of successful bias interventions, we examined the extent to which Hillary Clinton and a novel female politician were categorized as women versus female politicians. In three studies we investigated how the warmth and competence stereotypes associated with women and female politicians contributed to the warmth and competence traits associated with Hillary Clinton and a novel female political candidate. Consistent with a subtyping account, the warmth and competence stereotypes associated with female politicians, but not women, predicted Hillary Clinton's warmth and competence traits (Studies 1–3). However, consistent with a subgrouping account, the warmth and competence stereotypes associated with both women and female politicians predicted a novel female politician's warmth and competence traits (Study 3). Implications for bias reduction interventions are discussed.