A Whiteness Pandemic Is Behind the Racism Pandemic

In May, 2020, George Floyd, an unarmed Black American, was murdered in broad daylight by now-imprisoned former Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, while three of his colleagues looked on, doing nothing to stop it. These three officers were convicted in February, 2022 by the unanimous vote of a federal jury for denying Mr. Floyd his constitutional rights by failing to intervene. Their silence and inaction contributed to Floyd’s death.

Inaction in response to systemic racism reveals the Whiteness Pandemic. Whiteness, here, refers not to skin color—after all, not all the convicted officers were White—but to the culture of Whiteness characterized by colorblindness, silence, passivity, and fragility around race. The central pathogens of the Whiteness Pandemic are color-evasiveness (avoidance or denial of race) and power-evasiveness (denial of racial oppression), which are passed on intergenerationally, especially in White families.

The Whiteness Pandemic Spreads Early In Life

The intergenerational transmission of the Whiteness Pandemic in families helps to explain why U.S. racism is so intractable. Color-evasiveness and power-evasiveness are especially common in the racial socialization approach of White U.S. parents and they also characterize the less advanced phase of Dr. Janet Helms’s White Racial Identity Development theory—which we call WRID for short. WRID’s two phases are:

  • Phase 1: White individuals in this phase show obliviousness, denial, avoidance, or ambivalence about race and racism, and/or bias against racial groups.
  • Phase 2: White individuals in this phrase seek to abandon racism, including White privilege, and show antiracist desires and/or actions to dismantle systemic racism and promote racial equity.

Our study investigated WRID and racial socialization among 392 non-Hispanic White mothers in the Minneapolis metro area within 1 month of Mr. Floyd’s murder, an event that no Minnesotan could have been unaware of due to the significant community unrest and ubiquitous media coverage. How would White parents respond personally? Would Mr. Floyd’s murder in their own city be enough to get them to talk with their children about racism and antiracism?

Using an online survey about parenting and children’s media exposure, we asked mothers if there were any current events impacting their families at the time of the study—knowing, of course, that the main current event was Floyd’s murder. Most other research on this topic asks White parents directly about their race-related attitudes or practices, but our study had a unique design where parents could respond freely, without our bringing up race-related issues ourselves. Thus, we could interpret what parents said (or didn’t say) about Floyd’s murder as meaningful indicators of their racial identity and racial socialization approach in parenting.

A multi-racial team analyzed mothers’ open-ended responses to determine whether they were in WRID Phase 1 or 2 according to their personal beliefs and commitments regarding racism and antiracism. A second independent team thematically analyzed mothers’ responses for their racial socialization approach, meaning their parenting beliefs/values, attitudes, practices, and emotions regarding how they included or didn’t include race in parenting their children. Without naming race directly, the survey also asked about mothers’ orientation towards multiculturalism, their desire to protect their ethnic group, and their psychological distress. Racial socialization themes that emerged were sorted according to Mothers’ WRID Phase.

Racial Silence, And More

We found that the majority of White mothers were racially silent (53%), making no mention of Mr. Floyd’s murder nor any community events that followed, signaling that the murder had no impact of their families. Their racial silence was meaningful, because these mothers also had significantly lower multiculturalism scores and lower psychological distress than their peers. The apathy evident in their racial silence immediately following Floyd’s murder in their own city may have served as a coping mechanism to lower race-related distress.

Among the 47% of White mothers who did mention Floyd, his murder, or subsequent community events, nearly two-thirds (30% of the total sample) were categorized into WRID Phase 1 (less advanced) and only 17% of the total sample evidenced WRID Phase 2 (more advanced). Moreover, mothers with more advanced White racial identity differed from those with less advanced White racial identity in their racial socialization approach as parents:

  • They held parenting beliefs and values that were more color- and power-conscious—for example, they believed in acknowledging systemic racism and White privilege to their children and supported BLM in their homes.
  • They used active and purposeful racial socialization practices in parenting, such as utilizing family media to discuss Floyd’s murder and racial injustice with children and arranging family visits to George Floyd Square.
  • They demonstrated a more effective coping style, showing agency and balanced emotions, such as communicating hope to their children alongside moral outrage, and managing the added parenting demands of COVID-19 plus Floyd’s murder with gratitude versus exasperation.

These findings were corroborated by other results: mothers in WRID Phase 2 had higher multiculturalism scores and lower ethnic group protectiveness scores than did Phase 1 mothers.

In sum, our study demonstrated the insidious intergenerational transmission of the Whiteness Pandemic, which was not slowed by close proximity to a high-profile race-related police murder.

This study is the first to establish the association between White parents’ White Racial Identity and their racial socialization approach. To best combat the Whiteness Pandemic, family-level antiracism interventions for White families should be two-pronged. White parents need courageous parenting support for having race-based parent-child conversations. However, this may not be enough. White parents also need WRID support to further develop White identities that abandon covert forms of racism and racial privilege in favor of a lifelong commitment to self-reflection and action.


For Further Reading (and Watching)

Ferguson, G. M., Eales, L., Gillespie, S., & Leneman, K. (2021). The Whiteness pandemic behind the racism pandemic: Familial Whiteness socialization in Minneapolis following #GeorgeFloyd’s murder. American Psychologist. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000874

Helms, J. E. (2017). The challenge of making Whiteness visible: Reactions to four Whiteness articles. The Counseling Psychologist, 45(5), 717–726. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011000017718943

Loyd, A. B., & Gaither, S. E. (2018). Racial/ethnic socialization for White youth: What we know and future directions. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 59, 54–64. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2018.05.004

Neville, H. A., Awad, G. H., Brooks, J. E., Flores, M. P., & Bluemel, J. (2013). Color-blind racial ideology theory, training, and measurement implications in psychology. American Psychologist, 68(6), 455–466. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0033282

Whiteness Pandemic webpage provides practical resources for parents (and other caregivers) of White children to foster their own WRID and engage in courageous parenting


Gail Ferguson is an Associate Professor in the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota where she directs the Culture and Family Life Lab. Her research and intervention integrate developmental psychology, cross-cultural psychology, and clinical psychology focusing on the cultural socialization of children and adolescents by parents and media in modern globalizing societies.

 

Moral Echo Chambers Breed Radicalization

It has been just over a year since a group of radicalized individuals stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021. The crucial role of social media in this incident is undeniable: far-right social-media platforms, such as Gab and Parler, were used to communicate exactly which streets to take in order to avoid the police, and some posted about carrying guns into the halls of Congress. Bolstered by former President Trump, far-right groups had organized on their trusted social-media networks and invited others to their “rightful” cause. Eventually, this online activism became real-world violence.

My colleagues and I at the University of Southern California delved into social media postings to see if we could find underlying psychological clues to explain what could motivate people to use extreme and violent tactics. A close look at the history of hate crimes and radical groups, and our research, point to a common ground between them: they all have a shared moral vision, that is, adherence to a set of guiding principles that are perceived to be held by all group members. This vision then motivates individuals to use radical or violent strategies to achieve that shared moral vision. In other words, people who are embedded in morally homogeneous environments might develop dichotomous thinking (a “friend or foe” mindset) and demonstrate tunnel vision, focusing all their efforts exclusively on the destruction of the opponents for a sacred purpose.  

We studied nearly 25 million posts on Gab using advanced computer methods for recognizing language usage, and found that the more a person’s language in their posts aligned with their group’s moral values, the more prone they were to use hateful, derogatory language toward oft-targeted minoritized social groups. In other words, we find that the more people are in morally homogeneous “bubbles,” the more likely they are to resort to radical means and verbal violence against others, aiming to achieve their prejudicial vision.

Studying radicalized networks, like Gab, is particularly important in order to understand the underpinnings of radicalization. As mainstream networks such as Twitter and Facebook began to limit the activity of groups such as QAnon on their platforms, these ideologies have slowly resurfaced in other networks that allowed them to openly call for violence under the guise of “freedom of speech.” 

To make sure that our results are not limited to the idiosyncratic features of Gab, we repeated our analyses on a different social-media network called “Incels” founded for “involuntary celibates.” While at first sight Incels might seem less harmful than Gab, that may not be the case: The incel ideology has inspired multiple instances of deadly violence. Elliot Rodger, for example, killed six and injured fourteen (before killing himself) in 2014 to instigate a “War on Women” for “depriving me of sex.” By examining over 900,000 posts in this online community, we again found that Incels users who find themselves in a “bubble,” wherein their beliefs and values are strongly reinforced, are more prone to post hate speech, calling for radical acts to defend heterosexual men and violence against women. In these morally homogeneous environments, individuals feed one another’s moralized visions of the world and feel like others in their group are just like family members, a “band of brothers.”

Taking Our Questions Into The Laboratory

After we uncovered these antecedents of hate speech and the calls for violence in Gab and Incels, we wanted to further understand the mechanism at play, so we designed several experiments. We asked people to imagine they have been invited to a Facebook group and that others in this community shared their moral values. In a comparison group, we told participants about the same Facebook group, but told them that few members shared their moral values. We then asked participants about their intentions to use extreme and illegal measures to protect this hypothetical group. We found that people who were led to believe that they are in a group with shared values had higher radical intentions to protect the group at any cost, even by acceptance of resorting to violent means. In another experiment, we asked U.S. participants to first choose a moral value most important to them among five values: care and compassion, fairness and justice, loyalty to the group, respect for authority, and  physical and spiritual purity. Then we led them to believe that other Americans also share their selected moral value. We also had a comparison group to whom we said that few Americans shared their selected moral value. Again, we found that people who were told that the majority of Americans shared their particular value showed increased radical intentions and they even became slightly more willing to “fight and die” for the United States and the values it stands for. This was the case regardless of what moral value people chose and whether they were liberal or conservative in their political views. We learned two important things:

  • Morality is unique in motivating extreme behavioral expressions of prejudice. Non-moral views (those about mere preference rather than principles about right and wrong) may not have the power to drive people to the edges. Therefore, diversity of moral worldviews within social networks can be considered a good next step to avoid formation of moral echo chambers.
  • Social media networks have rewired our social life, and they can give us a false image of our social world. Too much similarity in the views in our feed could give us a picture that “everyone thinks like me” and that “everyone who does not think like me is evil,” which could worsen political polarization and erode our ability to tell truth from falsehood.

Real-World Threats Of Online Radicalization

The storming of the U.S. Capitol is a good example of how online radicalization breeds physical violence: Those who were convinced that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Trump organized online using the hashtag #StoptheSteal (signaling their effort to stand up to injustice) on Gab and elsewhere, which served as a hub for organizing the insurrection.

These Trump supporters were acting because they were presumably deeply convinced that the presidential election was stolen, a moral transgression. They thought that someone needed to do something to bring order back into their country, and they thought they should “go in.” The insurrection was a demonstration of how moralization in echo chambers can lead to violence and death chants for the Vice President of the United States in Congress halls.


For Further Reading

Atari, M., Davani, A. M., Kogon, D., Kennedy, B., Ani Saxena, N., Anderson, I., & Dehghani, M. (2021). Morally homogeneous networks and radicalism. Social Psychological and Personality Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506211059329

Hoover, J., Atari, M., Davani, A. M., Kennedy, B., Portillo-Wightman, G., Yeh, L., & Dehghani, M. (2021). Investigating the role of group-based morality in extreme behavioral expressions of prejudice. Nature Communications, 12(1), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24786-2

Fiske, A. P., & Rai, T. S. (2015). Virtuous violence. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.


Mohammad Atari is a social psychologist, currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University where he studies cultural change and moral values using experimental methods and natural language processing.

 

When Do People Reject an Identity That Was Once Important to Them?

Each of us can place ourselves into various categories based on characteristics like our gender, religion, occupation, age, and so forth. But only some of these groups are particularly important to how we see ourselves. When belonging to a group shapes our self-concept, social psychologists call this a social identity. Not everyone embraces particular social identities to the same degree, however. Sometimes people may even reject a social identity that was once important to them. People are especially likely to abandon an identity once considered important when that identity becomes “socially problematic.” For example, when an identity becomes associated with groups that are low in status, groups that have beliefs that are taboo, or groups that engage in harmful behavior, individuals are likely to want to distance themselves from such groups.

One example of a social identity that some people have come to view as undesirable is the sense of attachment some White people have with their racial group. For many White Americans, a strong racial identity may seem natural and normal. Research I conducted with Nathan Kalmoe and Kimberly Gross finds that at many points in time over the past decade, between 30 and 40 percent of White people have reported on national public opinion surveys that their racial identity is very or extremely important to them.

Across many years of public opinion survey data, these levels of racial identity among the White American population did not change very much. At least that was the case until immediately after the 2016 presidential election, when there was a considerable decline in the percentage of White people who reported strongly identifying with their racial group. This decline ranged from 8 to 17 percentage points across the surveys we examined.

The Need For Positive Self-Regard

Often we think of social identities as being long-held and resistant to change. But according to psychological theories about social identities (like social identity theory), group identities can also be incredibly dynamic—fluctuating in response to how they are viewed in the current political or social environment. Because social identities fulfill a need for us to see ourselves positively, people want to be associated with groups that they view favorably and that they believe are viewed favorably by others. When perceptions of public opinion about the group appear to change, individuals’ commitment to their group may decline. So what changed in the political environment to cause some White people to abandon their racial identity?

How Disgust Can Influence the Importance of a Social Identity

Over the course of the 2016 presidential campaign, media attention around White racial identity grew considerably. Much of this coverage associated White identity politics with racial prejudice, White nationalism, and White supremacy. White identity and each of these troubling phenomena were also strongly tied to Donald Trump. We speculated that these associations, and in particular the strong negative emotional reactions some White people had toward Trump, may have led some White people to try to distance themselves from their racial identity.

There are a number of negative emotional reactions that individuals may have had toward Donald Trump, but we focused in particular on disgust. Disgust, which literally means “bad taste,” is a negative emotion like anger, sadness, or anxiety. But it is also a unique emotion in that it is associated with withdrawal and revulsion, which means that it may play a unique role in weakening group attachments. That is, when someone feels disgusted by something that is strongly associated with a group identity, they may be especially inclined to distance themselves from that identity.

Disgust can be evoked by physical experiences (“physical disgust”) or by situations, moral offenses, and injustices (“social disgust”). Trump’s value violations during the 2016 campaign may have elicited disgust among many Americans. Trump was credibly accused of sexual misconduct, he made offensive statements regarding religions, disabled people, prisoners of war, and of people of color. All of these behaviors may have generated feelings of disgust toward Trump. As a result, many White people who felt disgust may have chosen to distance themselves with a racial identity strongly associated with the object of their disgust.

Using national panel survey data, in which the same individuals were surveyed twice—once before the 2016 presidential election and once after—we were able to examine which factors were associated with some White people’s decision to disavow their racial identity. We found that relative to any other emotional reaction a person had toward Trump, the most important factor in whether a person reported lower levels of White identity after the election was the whether the person felt disgusted with Trump.

Our findings provide important evidence that individuals possessing strong social identities may respond to social and political contexts by becoming less attached to a group identity when that identity loses social value. Importantly, our work highlights the especially unique role of disgust, which may be particularly effective at pushing people away from their social identities.


For Further Reading

Jardina, A., Kalmoe, N. P., & Gross, K. (2020). Disavowing white identity: How social distancing can change social identities. Political Psychology, 42(4), 619–636. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12717

Jardina, A. (2019). White identity politics. Cambridge University Press.

 

Ashley Jardina is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Duke University. She studies racial attitudes, group identities, and their political consequences.

 

Positive Beliefs About Being Black Can Protect Against the Harm of a Negative Racial Climate at School

If you take a moment to think about your own K-12 school experiences, a lot of what you remember is likely connected with the climate of the school. School climate involves many aspects of a student’s educational experience including safety, relationships (between school personnel, students, and parents), learning and instruction, and the physical environment. Not surprisingly, research shows that a positive school climate is critical for school success. A positive school climate can improve attendance, classroom grades, retention, and even graduation rates.

As you might expect, groups of students may experience school climate in different ways. For Black youth, race and racial equity (or lack thereof) are critical aspects of school climate. A positive school climate for Black youth involves a space where teachers and peers respect and value diversity and individual cultural differences and make intentional efforts to reduce racial inequality. These aspects of what we call school racial climate contribute to positive academic outcomes for Black youth.

The Value of Positive Beliefs About Being Black 

Identity formation is a major part of adolescence. Black adolescents who possess a positive sense of their racial identity and orientation toward their racial group (known in research as private regard) may be able to protect themselves against the harm of racial discrimination and perceptions of unfair treatment and exclusion in school.

In our study, we surveyed 151 Black adolescents at their school to investigate the relationship between two dimensions of school racial climate—(a) interpersonal interactions measured as teacher and peer discrimination and (b) fair treatment/racial equity—and school engagement (behavioral, emotional, and cognitive dimensions). Importantly, we also examined whether positive beliefs about being Black might refute negative attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors from teachers and peers, so that Black students remained engaged in school despite a negative school racial climate.

Our high school participants ranged in age from 14 to 19 years old and attended two demographically similar public high schools located in the southeastern region of the United States. Some findings were as expected: students who perceived their school environment to be equitable for Black students also reported higher behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement. We also found that more teacher discrimination was associated with less emotional engagement, whereas more peer discrimination was associated with lower behavioral engagement and cognitive engagement. Crucially we found that among Black students who reported less positive beliefs about being Black, teacher discrimination was associated with lower emotional engagement, and peer discrimination was associated with lower cognitive engagement. On the other hand, we found that among Black students who reported more positive beliefs about being Black, there was no association between teacher discrimination and emotional engagement or peer discrimination and cognitive engagement. These findings show that more positive beliefs about being Black can protect Black youth against the harm of a negative school racial climate.

Lessons for Educators 

Our findings underscore the importance of educators using strategies that promote a positive school racial climate and encourage positive beliefs about being Black. Using Afrocentric or Black empowerment educational practices and interventions that emphasize cultural pride might include:

  • Displaying pictures of Black historical figures and cultural artifacts, such as a djembe drum
  • Celebrating Kwanzaa
  • Reading texts by Black authors, and
  • Using curricula guided by core values and beliefs, such as pan-Africanism

Unfortunately, research shows that Black students are likely to deal with negative racial experiences at school, such as teacher and peer discrimination and unfair treatment toward those who look like them, which can lead to a school climate that is difficult to navigate. While these types of experiences may be detrimental to Black youth’s school outcomes, our study demonstrates the value of positive beliefs about being Black for protecting them from the harmful impact of such negative experiences.


For Further Reading

Griffin, C. B., Cooper, S. M., Metzger, I. W., Golden, A. R., & White, C. N. (2017). School racial climate and the academic achievement of African American high school students: The mediating role of school engagement. Psychology in the Schools54(7), 673-688. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.22026

Griffin, C. B., Metzger, I. W., Halliday-Boykins, C. A., & Salazar, C. A. (2020). Racial fairness, school engagement, and discipline outcomes in African American high school students: The important role of gender. School Psychology Review49(3), 222-238. https://doi.org/10.1080/2372966X.2020.1726810

Griffin, C. B., Stitt, R. L., & Henderson, D. X. (2020). Investigating school racial climate and private racial regard as risk and protector factors for Black high school students’ school engagement. Journal of Black Psychology46(6-7), 514-549. https://doi.org/10.1177/0095798420946895
 

Charity Brown Griffin is an Associate Professor of Psychological Sciences at Winston-Salem State University. Her work focuses on race and Black youth’s schooling experiences.

The Pride and Prejudice of Social Identities: Implications for Belonging

A person’s social identity can be a source of ‘pride and prejudice’—that is, both belonging and exclusion. This insight can matter deeply for college students. Racial/ethnic disparities are linked to whether a student feels included on college and university campuses, and in turn to their academic achievement, degree attainment, and even health and well-being. Thus, social identities can be associated with risk of a lower sense of institutional belonging and myriad adverse consequences. Accordingly, solutions to inequalities or efforts to reduce such negative outcomes have frequently targeted social identities.

These efforts have, predictably, commonly targeted stigma associated with social identities and have produced powerful insights for theory and application. However, social identities, even those that place individuals at risk for a lower sense of belonging, are complex because they encompass stigma yet also strengths. Such social identities can function as a source of (1) stigma or prejudice, stereotypes, discrimination, and marginalization and (2) strengths or pride, resilience, and interdependence—a positive sense of connection to ingroup others. 

Targeting Both Stigma and Strengths

My recent research provides evidence that targeting stigma as well as strengths tied to social identities can afford multiple pathways to belonging and to solving varied inequalities.  

Andy Lin and I reviewed research in social, developmental, and educational psychology that demonstrates how the combination of ‘stigma and strengths’ shapes social identities for Latino/a/x and African Americans. Then, we showed how such stigma and strengths can be associated with multiple pathways to belonging, and in turn positive long-term consequences across academic and well-being outcomes.

We were able to analyze the actual text of written demands which had been submitted to administrators by college students from underrepresented racial/ethnic minority backgrounds and their allies. These demands were from students attending 80 colleges and universities, mostly in the United States. The demands were tied to nationwide and international protests on college campuses, and represented explicit calls for more inclusive college campuses. In the text of these demands we looked at whether this form of collective action, which was aimed at fostering a greater sense of belonging for racial/ethnic minority students on college campuses, referred to both stigma and strengths.

Indeed, demands across campuses overwhelmingly called for changes that would both reduce stigma and promote strengths. These included calls for transparent procedures for reporting and investigating discrimination. The demands also included requests for funding for ethnic studies classes, and physical spaces on campus that celebrate the cultural, heritage, history, and contemporary experiences of racial/ethnic minority groups.     

Pride and Prejudice Confirmed

Following this, we directly examined Latino/a/x and African American college students’ experiences of stigma and strengths on their campuses, using the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen—containing almost 2,000 Latino/a/x and African American college students at 27 U.S. colleges and universities. We defined experiences of stigma as prejudice and experiences of strengths as pride.

Students’ ‘pride and prejudice’ experiences definitely represented two pathways to belonging and to feeling connected meaningfully to their school. Pride experiences—such as taking a class in Latino/a/x or African American Studies—positively predicted institutional belonging, and in turn academic and well-being outcomes such as graduation rates, grade point average, depression, health, and missed school days. At the same time, prejudice experiences such as hearing a derogatory racial/ethnic remark were negatively associated with institutional belonging, and in turn the academic and well-being measures.

These results have implications for science and society. Researchers need to engage the complexities tied to social identities including the ways in which the same identity can be a source of stigma and strength. Administrators and leaders at schools or workplaces can implement policies and practices that reduce stigma and promote strengths to foster institutional belonging and in turn benefit a variety of academic and health outcomes.


For Further Reading

Brannon, T. N., Fisher, P. H., & Greydanus, A. J. (2020). Selves as solutions to social inequalities: Why engaging the full complexity of social identities is critical to addressing disparities. Cambridge University Press.

Brannon, T. N., & Lin, A. (2020). “Pride and prejudice” pathways to belonging: Implications for inclusive diversity practices within mainstream institutions. American Psychologist. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000643

Massey, D. S., Charles, C. Z., Lundy, G. F., & Fischer, M. J. (2006). The source of the river: The social origins of freshmen at America's selective colleges and universities. Princeton University Press.
 

Tiffany N. Brannon is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Her research examines socio-cultural interventions that leverage social identities as well as intra- and intergroup interactions to impact social inequalities.

 

 

Why We Should All Consider Our Multiple Identities

As a biracial person, whenever I see a demographic form of any kind, my heart beats a little faster and I instantly start to worry—will there be enough boxes for my multiple racial identities? Or will I be forced to choose one of my identities over the other? I have often wondered throughout my life, why is it so difficult to think about and acknowledge our multiple selves? Why is it that our default way of thinking about social identities more often than not takes a “check one box” over a “check all that apply” approach?

The simple answer is that our world is socially complex, and we need to take shortcuts to make processing our social world easier. Thus, it is not anyone’s fault in particular, but rather there are fixed ways of thinking about ourselves that stem from our social default as humans to categorize each other. (In fact, that is also how we learn language—through hearing similar patterns and sounds that we group together, which teaches us how to communicate.) But I find this to be an overly simplistic way of thinking about our multifaceted selves. It really is an inaccurate approach in considering the diversity that exists in our world.

Remind Yourself of Your Multiple Identities

In fact, my research argues that if we simply remind ourselves that we do, in fact, have multiple identities—I’m a student, an athlete, a daughter, a friend, etc.—that acknowledgment can at least temporarily boost creativity and problem-solving abilities in both adults and children. Try it out yourself—take a few minutes to write about all of the different social identities you have, what they mean to you, and what role they play in your life. What does it feel like now to think about the fact that you are lots of things, all at the same time? How does that compare to how you normally consider your identities?

Importantly, my work has shown that this thought exercise needs to be self-relevant to see boosts in flexible thinking. Specifically, in my work with 6-year-old children, we reminded children of eight different identities they have—being a friend, a neighbor, a reader, a drawer, etc. We ended the prompt by asking kids to tell us how they felt about being so many things at the same time, to which children responded which answers including “It’s awesome,” “Pretty normal,” and “Fun.”

Next, children completed a series of creativity problems. One measured how flexibly children could think of new functions for a small box. My favorite answer was using the box as a sled for a hamster! Another task asked children to sort photos of 16 different people into whatever groups they saw. These photos differed systematically by race, age, gender, and emotional expression, which provided children with lots of ways to think about social categories.

When children were reminded of their own multiple identities, we saw significantly more creative thinking. Children came up with more ideas for what to do with a small box, and they thought of significantly more ways to socially categorize the photos of people. Besides using typical categories (such as race and gender), children also noticed other traits, like smile size, eye color, and even the amount of white space left over in a given photo!

This was in comparison to two other groups of children who were asked to think about (a) multiple things they personally/physically have (i.e., two arms, two legs, etc.), which is still self-relevant but not identity-specific; or (b) someone else’s multiple identities. Thus, a simple moment of reflection reminding yourself that you are multiple things at the same time proved to be the best pathway to more flexible thinking.

Over the years, my work has shown this same pattern of results with both adults and children. Even if thinking about your multiple selves proves to be a difficult task, I encourage you to keep practicing. Developing this kind of “identity accessibility” is key to enhancing flexible views of the world around you.

One other pathway to increased flexible thinking is through exposure to different types of diversity. Contact with different groups or exposure to people who are different from you can expand your worldview, helping you to see more commonalities with social outgroup members rather than differences, and opening your eyes to new ways of thinking about your own social identities too.

Therefore, if we can change this default way of thinking about ourselves as just one thing at a time, we should all see a more inclusive world, while also feeling happier about our multiple selves and all that we are.


For Further Reading

Gaither, S. E. (2018). Belonging to multiple groups: Pushing identity research beyond binary thinking. Self & Identity, Special Issue: New Directions in the Study of Self and Identity, 17, 443-454. https://doi.org/10.1080/15298868.2017.1412343

Gaither, S.E., Fan, S. P., & Kinzler, K. D. (2019). Thinking about multiple identities boosts children’s flexible thinking. Developmental Science, 23, e0012871. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12871

Gaither, S. E., Remedios, J. D., Sanchez, D., & Sommers, S. R. (2015). Thinking outside the box: Multiple identity mindsets affect creative problem-solving. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 6, 596–603. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550614568866


Sarah Gaither is an assistant professor of Psychology & Neuroscience and faculty affiliate in the Samuel Dubois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University. Her research focuses on how a person’s social identities and experiences across the lifespan motivate their social perceptions and behaviors in diverse settings.

How Identity Is Linked to Well-being for Biracial People

Race is an important lens through which people, especially people of color, see themselves. The racial group that people identify with can help them navigate the social world by teaching them group practices, and what values and behaviors the group approves of. Even more importantly, identifying with a racial group often gives people a sense of belonging—the feeling that they fit in and have a group of people who are like them. But what happens if the racial group you identify with does not identify with you?

This can be a common experience for Biracial people. Biracial people identify with two racial groups simultaneously, such as Duchess Meghan Markle, who has a White parent and a Black parent and identifies as mixed-race. Or take tennis star Naomi Osaka, who has an Asian parent and a Black parent. Like many other Biracial people, Osaka has clearly stated her identity: “I am Black and Asian. It’s not that confusing.” Yet, not everyone accepts Biracial people as full members of their racial groups.

Even if you are not Biracial, you can envision how this might feel. Imagine you are a triathlete, and this is a really important part of how you think about yourself. You identify yourself as a runner, biker, and swimmer, but maybe other runners deny your identity and tell you that you are not a “real” runner because you also bike and swim. For Biracial people like Markle, identity denial is being told she is not really White or not really Black (or both).

Having one’s racial identity denied through comments such as, “You should identify with one group over another” and questioned through inquiries such as, “What are you?” is a common experience for Biracial people.

The Double Whammy: Being a Dual-Minority Biracial Person

In earlier work, I found that these experiences are stressful and are linked with serious well-being consequences, including depressive symptoms. But my earlier research only focused on Biracial people who had one White parent and one racial minority parent, like Markle. What about Osaka’s experiences? We did not know whether identity denial experiences were similar for Biracial people who have two racial minority parents—“dual-minority Biracial people.” Legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality to describe how various identities are interdependent. For example, the experiences of Black women are different than those of White women and Black men. Therefore, we thought perhaps the experiences of dual-minority Biracial people would also be different than those of White-minority Biracial people.  

Across two studies, we asked dual-minority Biracial people about their experiences having their identities denied or questioned. Biracial people who more frequently had their identity denied believed that society does not value Biracial people. This belief was linked with three important outcomes. Biracial people who had their identity denied often felt like they did not have the freedom to choose and express their identity as they wished; they viewed their two identities as different and conflicting; and they felt a lower sense of belonging or fitting in.

It seems it is not just Biracial people with a White parent who have their identity denied. Dual-minority Biracial people also reported not being seen as members of their racial groups. Thus, restricting how people identify or challenging whether they are really part of the group can be hurtful. Identity denial conveys the idea that Biracial people are not valuable members of society, and influences how Biracial people relate to their own identities.

This work helps us better understand the experiences of Biracial people in the United States.

As our society continues to become more diverse, and more people identify as Biracial, it is important to accept people’s identities as they are to promote greater belonging and inclusivity.


For Further Reading

Albuja, A. F., Gaither, S. E., Sanchez, D. T., Straka, B., & Cipollina, R. (2019). Psychophysiological stress responses to bicultural and biracial identity denial. Journal of Social Issues, 75(4), 1165-1191. https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12347

Albuja, A. F., Sanchez, D. T., & Gaither, S. E. (2019). Identity denied: Comparing American or White identity denial and psychological health outcomes among bicultural and biracial people. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 45(3), 416-430. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167218788553

Albuja, A. F., Sanchez, D. T., & Gaither, S. E. (2020). Intra-race intersectionality: Identity denial among dual-minority biracial people. Translational Issues in Psychological Science, 6(4), 392–403. https://doi.org/10.1037/tps0000264
 

Analia Albuja is a postdoctoral scholar in the Psychology & Neuroscience Department at Duke University. Her research explores the experiences and perceptions of people who hold multiple identities simultaneously.

Tosen Nwadei

Tosen Nwadei is a fourth-year PhD Candidate at Emory University's Goizueta Business School.  He earned his bachelor's degree in Finance from the University of Pittsburgh.  Tosen's research sits at the intersection of identity and intergroup relations.  In his primary research stream, he studies hair as a medium for ameliorating, or exacerbating, inequality.  In a second research stream, he studies creativity from a social identity perspective. 
 

Outside of psychology, how do you like to spend your free time?

I’m a pretty big fan of Latin dance.  I’ve done salsa for the last 5 or so years, and I’ve also had the opportunity to dance in clubs and bars across the country and around the world.  Prior to the pandemic, I was looking forward to starting a hip-hop dance class.  I’ll be signing up for one of those as soon as it’s safe to do so!  That’ll be a little newer to me, but it’ll definitely be a lot of fun.  Aside from dance, I’m a breakfast enthusiast, so I love finding new spots for brunch on the weekend. I also spend my weekends doing some recreational writing, so I try and save some of my mental energy for that after a long week of grad school stuff. 


What period in the academic year do you enjoy or look forward to the most?

I’ll be honest with you: I like the summer because nobody is on campus, haha.  More generally though, there’s just a sense of limitless possibilities that I get once the academic year is over.  As a PhD student, it means you survived.  It means you have the summer to recharge, get some sunshine, and regroup for the next academic year.  Maybe it’s the little kid in me, but there will always be something special about the academic year ending and the summer beginning.      


How has your identity affected your career?

Ha!  A lot.  I think one of the big reasons I tend to gravitate towards identity related research questions is because my identity, as a Nigerian American immigrant, has been a huge part of my lived experiences.  That’s true for my journey in America in general as well as in the academy in particular.  So, what’s really cool about this profession (to me), is that it gives me a formalized, rigorous way of testing my curiosity and intuitions about the world.  I was puzzling over a lot of these questions long before I knew what a PhD was, which I think is true for a lot of people.  I was curious about my experiences, and the experiences of those like me.      


What do you want to grow in next?

I think this is a profession marked by a great deal of uncertainty.  You work really hard on studies, grant proposals, journal submissions, etc., and sometimes you have very little, if anything, to show for the work that you put in. It just comes with the territory, although it can be a bit hard to adjust to early on. So, I definitely say that’s something I’m seeking to grow in as I progress deeper into my career. I don’t really think it gets easier, per se, you just develop a higher tolerance for it.     


What is the best book you’ve read or TV show or movie you’ve watched recently?

Prior to the pandemic, I didn’t really watch many shows, BUT, I watched the first season of Never Have I Ever (it’s a new show, so there’s only one season out currently), and it was soooo stinkin’ good!!  Mindy Kaling is an exceptionally talented artist and writer, and she tells the story of her life as an awkward, Indian-American high school girl growing up in California.  That show gives me all the feels.  We’re the same person, basically.  She’s a little bit prettier though.    

 

 

Scandalous! Immorality in One’s Own Political Party Increases Animosity

On any given day, you are likely to learn about a celebrity or politician accused of some criminal, sexual, or financial misdeed. In fact, research shows that public discourse is saturated with the worst examples of human behavior: one study found that individuals are TWICE as likely to encounter stories of immoral (versus moral) behavior online.

In light of this, you may be inclined to agree with a classic paper in social psychology arguing that bad is stronger (psychologically) than good. In other words, people seem drawn to the worst examples of human behavior, such as when people spend time ‘doomscrolling’ about terrible events despite the detrimental effects of all this negativity.

What effect does this focus on immorality have on our politics? If you suspect that it may be making things worse in some ways, you wouldn’t be alone. Studies show that factors like negative ad campaigns can over time contribute to strong feelings of animosity toward members of an opposing political party. In other words, being bombarded with negative images of opposing politicians seems to condition people to have even more intense dislike of members of an opposing party over time.

However, the effects of political scandals may include other more subtle psychological processes as well. In recent research of ours, we explored how individuals respond to scandals about their own party. There are a couple possibilities here that make sense, given what we know about psychology, and our goal was to determine which of these was better supported by the data.

First, it could be that when people learn about immoral behavior in their own group, they distance themselves from that group, to avoid being associated with any bad apples. While that approach makes sense intuitively, research on political parties also shows that parties become a very important piece of who we are, and something we may not be willing to walk away from if we can avoid it. After all, one’s politics are wrapped up with one’s personal identity and values in a way that makes it much harder to see oneself actually leaving a group, even one tarnished with scandal.

So instead, we thought that individuals may respond to scandals within their own party by becoming even more hostile toward opposing parties. Why? If members of other parties seem even worse than one’s own group, then one’s own group will still look better by comparison. Even though we were focused on reactions to scandal within one’s own party, we predicted that people may respond to this information by viewing an opposing party more negatively, effectively taking the sting out of any harm to their own group’s reputation.

We found across three studies (involving a total of 837 participants) that there was strong support for this view. First, we asked Americans who identified as either Democrat/Republic to read about a series of (fictional) scandals involving one major political party: either low-ranking Democrats or Republicans. We then asked them a wide range of questions to assess their perceptions of their own party and the opposing party. These included perceptions of prominent party figures (George W. Bush, Barack Obama), their willingness to compromise with the opposing party, and how positively/negatively they felt about Democrats/Republican voters in general.

Across all studies, we found that people who read about scandals in their own (versus the opposing) party showed significantly harsher and more negative views of the opposition. In other words, Democrats (or Republicans) held more negative views of the other party when they read about scandals tarnishing their own party’s image in the press. Additionally, we saw that this effect was clearest for those who more strongly identified with their own party; more fair-weather Democrats/Republicans didn’t show the same dislike of the opposition after reading about scandals in their party.

It’s also important to note that this effect was equally strong for both Democrats and Republicans. This suggests that across the ideological spectrum, people are equally motivated to maintain a positive view of their own group, even at the expense of the opposition.

These studies may have important implications. As we noted above, media gravitates overwhelmingly toward scandal. But given how strongly people identify with their political parties, this focus on immoral behavior means that almost any media report about scandal is likely to broaden the divides between parties. If it is about an opposing party, scandal may reinforce negative stereotypes about that group (of course they’d do something so awful!), and our studies show that even if scandal is about one’s own political party, it may still perpetuate hostility (since there’s no way we’re as bad as them). Being aware of these tendencies could help you keep a cool head the next time you find yourself reading about the next big scandal.


For Further Reading

Iyengar, S., & Westwood, S. J. (2015). Fear and loathing across party lines: New evidence on group polarization. American Journal of Political Science, 59(3), 690-707. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12152

Rothschild, Z. K., Keefer, L. A., & Hauri, J. (2021). Defensive partisanship? Evidence that in‐party scandals increase out‐party hostility. Political Psychology, 42(1), 3-21. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12680
 

Lucas A. Keefer is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Southern Mississippi. He primarily studies language and moral psychology.

 

How Do Bisexual People See Themselves?

When you meet someone who’s in a same-gender relationship, what’s your first thought? Do you assume they’re gay or lesbian? Or do you entertain the possibility that they’ve had meaningful romantic relationships with people of other genders as well? For many people, bisexuality may not be the first thought that comes to mind, if at all.

In both popular culture and in academic research, bisexuality remains a source of skepticism. Bisexual people face stereotypes that they are just experimenting, seeking attention, or are in denial about being gay or lesbian. For example, in the recent film, Appropriate Behavior, Shirin tells her brother, “Maxine and I were in a relationship.” When he responds, “So you’re a lesbian?” she says, “I was pretty into all the guys I was with so I think I’m bisexual.” His response: “And that’s a thing?!”

In our research, we wanted to understand whether these ideas about bisexuality are reflected in bisexual people’s own identities. Specifically, we were interested in how their reports about their sexual orientation map onto their implicit sexual identity, or the automatic associations they have about their own sexual identity. Examining identity implicitly can provide insight into people’s self-views or other attitudes in a way that’s less influenced by how people want to present themselves—in other words, it may provide insight into people’s gut reactions.  

In one study, we assessed how strongly bisexual, straight, and gay/lesbian people implicitly associated themselves with a gay/lesbian identity relative to a straight identity. We used a computerized categorization task, the Implicit Association Test, that determines strength of associations. For example, if people could pair the concepts “gay/lesbian” with “self” more quickly than they could pair “straight” and “other,” this would suggest a stronger association of themselves with a gay or lesbian identity. If they were faster at pairing “straight” and “self,” it would suggest a stronger association of themselves with a straight identity.

In the first study, when comparing implicit associations with gay/lesbian as compared to straight identities, gay men and lesbians implicitly identified as more gay than bisexual people, who in turn identified as less straight than straight men and women. This showed that gay/lesbian or straight identities do not sufficiently characterize bisexual people’s implicit identities. Implicit sexual identity for bisexual people fell in between gay and straight identities whether classifying bisexual people using their self-reports of their sexual identity, or when using their self-reports of attraction, sexual behavior, or sexual fantasy patterns.

In two further studies, we instead directly assessed implicit bisexual identity, rather than gay/lesbian compared to straight identities. We compared associations with (1) a bisexual relative to gay/lesbian identity and (2) a bisexual relative to straight identity. In the second study, bisexual people implicitly identified as more bisexual (and less gay) than gay men and lesbians. In the third study, bisexual people also identified as more bisexual (and less straight) than straight people. Additionally, bisexual people implicitly identified as more bisexual than gay, lesbian, or straight in both studies.

Bisexual people have been erased and disparaged throughout history, and they may experience pressure to “pick a side.” Yet, a substantial number of people report a bisexual identity, and their implicit associations show that they also hold this identity on an automatic level. Because people’s identities are important to them, they experience substantial distress when their identity is questioned—bisexual people in particular often feel like their identity is erased and that they don’t fit in with the LGBTQ+ community. The next time you make an assumption about someone’s sexual orientation, perhaps pause and consider whether they might identify with a wide range of less visible orientations, such as bisexual, pansexual, or queer.


For Further Reading

Kirby T.A., Merritt S.K., Baillie S., Malahy L.W., Kaiser C.R. (2020). Combating bisexual erasure: The correspondence of implicit and explicit sexual identity. Social Psychological and Personality Science (Advance Online Publication). https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550620980916

Snowden, R. J., Fitton, E., McKinnon, A., & Gray, N. S. (2020). Sexual attraction to both genders in ambiphilic men: Evidence from implicit cognitions. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 49(2), 503-515. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-019-01552-6
 

Teri A. Kirby is a Senior Lecturer of Psychology at the University of Exeter in the UK. Her research focuses on diversity, identity, and inclusion.