Eliciting cognitive consistency increases acceptance of implicit bias.

Resistance to knowledge about implicit bias jeopardizes the ability to learn, understand, and act to outsmart bias. Across three experiments and five independent samples ( > 3,500), conditions that increase cognitive consistency were created alongside control conditions. In Experiment 1, using a race (Black-White) Implicit Association Test (IAT), cognitive consistency was enhanced when participants evaluated the validity and utility of the test before, rather than after, receiving the test result, leading to greater acceptance of bias.

Less biased yet more defensive: The impact of control processes.

Educational and training programs designed to reduce racial bias often focus on increasing people's awareness of psychological sources of their biases. However, when people learn about their biases, they often respond defensively, which can undermine the effectiveness of antibias interventions and the success of prejudice regulation. Using process (Quad) modeling, we provide one of the first investigations of the relationships between (a) controlled and automatic cognitive processes that underpin performance on the Implicit Association Test and (b) defensive reactions to unflattering implicit racial bias feedback.

Internal conflict and prejudice-regulation: Emotional ambivalence buffers against defensive responding to implicit bias feedback.

Becoming aware of bias is essential for prejudice-regulation. However, attempts to make people aware of bias through feedback often elicits defensive reactions that undermine mitigation efforts. In the present article, we introduce state emotional ambivalence-the simultaneous experience of positive and negative emotions "in the present moment"-as a buffer against defensive responding to implicit bias feedback.

Vax attacks: How conspiracy theory belief undermines vaccine support.

As the world continues to respond to the spread of a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2, which causes the disease commonly known as COVID-19), it has become clear that one of the most effective strategies for curbing the pandemic is the COVID-19 vaccine. However, a major challenge that health organizations face when advocating for the uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine is the spread of related misinformation and conspiracy theories. This study examines factors that influence vaccine hesitancy using two online survey samples, one convenience and one nationally representative, collected in the early summer of 2020 during the height of the second peak of coronavirus cases in the United States.

Personality in a pandemic: Social norms moderate associations between personality and social distancing behaviors.

To limit the transmission of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), it is important to understand the sources of social behavior for members of the general public. However, there is limited research on how basic psychological dispositions interact with social contexts to shape behaviors that help mitigate contagion risk, such as social distancing. Using a sample of 89,305 individuals from 39 countries, we show that Big Five personality traits and the social context shape citizens' social distancing during the pandemic.

Exposure and Aversion to Human Transmissible Diseases Predict Conservative Ideological and Partisan Preferences.

The objective prevalence of and subjective vulnerability to infectious diseases are associated with greater ingroup preference, conformity, and traditionalism. However, evidence directly testing the link between infectious diseases and political ideology and partisanship is lacking. Across four studies, including a large sample representative of the U.

Exposure to capital voir dire may not increase convictions despite increasing pretrial presumption of guilt.

During capital voir dire, prospective jurors are questioned about their views on capital punishment to determine their ability and willingness to impose the penalty as required by law. Two experiments replicated and extended Haney's (1984a) research on the effects of exposure to capital voir dire, which has been cited to support the proposition that jurors who are exposed to a capital voir dire are more prone to convict. In the first study, watching a capital voir dire increased participants' pretrial estimates of the likelihood of the defendant's guilt and conviction, replicating earlier findings.

Do we overemphasize the role of culture in the behavior of racial/ethnic minorities? Evidence of a cultural (mis)attribution bias in American psychology.

Although culture influences all human beings, there is an assumption in American psychology that culture matters more for members of certain groups. This article identifies and provides evidence of the cultural (mis)attribution bias: a tendency to overemphasize the role of culture in the behavior of racial/ethnic minorities, and to underemphasize it in the behavior of Whites. Two studies investigated the presence of this bias with an examination of a decade of peer reviewed research conducted in the United States (N = 434 articles), and an experiment and a survey with psychology professors in the United States (N = 361 psychologists).

Assessing Constituent Levels in Smokeless Tobacco Products: A New Approach to Engaging and Educating the Public.

Introduction: Providing accurate information about the constituents in nicotine-containing products may help tobacco users make informed decisions about product choices. An experimental study examined a novel approach for presenting accurate constituent information about brands and types of smokeless tobacco (SLT) that could be understood by the general public.

Methods: Participants were recruited through Amazon's Mechanical Turk and presented information online about 2 constituent dimensions of SLT products-nicotine and/or toxicity (for simplicity, "toxicity" in this study refers to carcinogenic constituents) Participants completed measures of knowledge and tobacco health risks at 2 time points: before and after exposure to constituent information.