I. Intergroup interactions can be strained at times - how do people respond to acute intergroup tensions, such as when blatant prejudice is expressed?

When someone makes an explicitly biased statement, what motivates one to speak up versus stay silent? Although we might tend to think that disagreement alone leads people to speak up, my research shows that it is not enough. I have examined the role of people’s implicit theories of personality - their beliefs about whether personality is fixed or malleable - in their motivation to confront explicit bias. My research with Carol S. Dweck shows that targets of prejudice who believe that people can change are more likely to speak up in the moment to confront an expression of prejudice compared to those who believe that others cannot change, even when both disagree equally with the comment made. Moreover, believing that others cannot change makes targets of prejudice less willing to interaction again with someone who makes a biased statement (Rattan & Dweck, 2010).

Media: ABCnews.com, Yahoo News, Psychology Today, Journal & Courier Online, Press Release

What about those who are not directly targeted by prejudice? Can their speaking up to address prejudice have an impact? I studied this in the context of people’s “it gets better” messages to youth targeted by prejudice based on their actual or presumed sexual orientation. The first challenge was to find out what people say when they try to communicate comfort to these targets of prejudice. My research with Nalini Ambady shows that people not targeted by prejudice are more likely to communicate themes of social connection, rather than social change, in their supportive intergroup messages. Although both messages are comforting overall, I found systematic differences in LGBQ youth’s responses. Social change messages of support were rated as more comforting than social connection messages of support by LGBQ youth, while heterosexuals rated the messages as equally comforting. (Rattan & Ambady, in press).

II. Society has many shared ideas, such as what we believe about the nature of intelligence, the value we place on individual choice, and the assumption that people can succeed through hard work. Although these shared ideas are, in part, what tie individuals together in society, my research explores how they can also serve to legitimize inequality between groups.

Intelligence: Do you think that only some people or that most people have the potential for high intelligence? Although research has studied beliefs about whether intelligence can grow over time, I have documented a largely independent and consequential set of beliefs about the nature of intelligence: people’s beliefs about the distribution of the potential for high intelligence.

I found that people in the U.S. tend to believe that the potential for high intelligence is unequally distributed (i.e., that only some people have this potential), as compared with South Asians, who tend to believe that the potential for high intelligence is more equally distributed (i.e., that most people have this potential). I have also explored the implications of these beliefs for inequality in the U.S. Believing that the potential for high intelligence is unequally (vs. equally) distributed led to greater opposition to policies designed to redress inequality in opportunity and resources for education or advancement (Rattan, Savani, Naidu, & Dweck, in press).

Choice: Another deeply valued American ideal is the concept of choice. I reasoned that because choice emphasizes individual agency, it might provide people with a ready justification for explaining differences between groups. Participants primed with choice (vs. control) were less disturbed by statistics about wealth inequality and less supportive of measures to reduce wealth inequality (Savani & Rattan, 2012).

Media: Huffington Post, Forbes Magazine, Scientific American, Pacific Standard, Business Insider, Psychology Today

III. With my third line of research, I have worked to expose new ways in which intergroup biases alter perception.

Social Perception: Protections for juveniles have been well-established in the law: juveniles are less culpable than adults and therefore do not merit the most severe punishments. I investigated whether the association between African Americans and criminality could break down this protection for all juveniles. When primed with a single example offender who was African American (rather than White American), a nationally representative sample of White participants supported sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole for all juveniles more, and this was because they viewed juveniles in general as more similar to adults in their inherent culpability. This research reveals the fragility of the protections associated with juvenile status when race is in play (Rattan, Levine, Dweck, & Eberhardt, 2012). 

Media: Invited Op-Ed for The New York Times Room for Debate, Radio interview on KQED Forum, National Journal, Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post

Visual Perception: One of the most well-known visual biases is inattentional blindness – when people fail to consciously perceive an obvious aspect of a scene, such as a person in a gorilla suit walking through a scene of people passing a ball. For decades, inattentional blindness has been shown to be difficult to ameliorate. Yet, I showed that the African American–ape association can influence this visual bias: Whites primed with African American names exhibited reduced inattentional blindness and were more likely to notice the gorilla (Rattan & Eberhardt, 2010). This research was the first to illustrate how social meaning can influence inattentional blindness, potentially constructing different visual worlds depending upon the racial associations salient in the moment.

Think about your typical day: getting your coffee, checking email/facebook/twitter, commuting to your office, running errands, catching up with friends. Could you go a day without having contact with someone from a different social group? Odds are, it nearly impossible for you to avoid diversity (of race, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, or otherwise) in your everyday life. Given this, we might expect people to be experts at dealing with outgroup members. However, these interactions are associated with some of the most pressing challenges that face society today: inequality, intergroup conflict, and prejudice.

In my research, I study how our mindsets and expectations, broadly held cultural ideals, and even unconscious cognitive associations affect our interactions with diverse others. My main areas of research focus on (I) how to resolve conflict in intergroup interactions, (II) how people legitimize inequality in society, and (III) documenting how intergroup biases emerge in subtle ways.

See below to read more. If you would like a paper draft, check out the PDFs embedded in my CV page.