Prejudice concerns and race-based attentional bias: New evidence from eyetracking

Meghan G. Bean, Daniel G. Slaten, William S. Horton, Mary C. Murphy, Andrew R. Todd, Jennifer A. Richeson

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

41 Scopus citations

Abstract

The present study used eyetracking methodology to assess whether individuals high in external motivation (EM) to appear nonprejudiced exhibit an early bias in visual attention toward Black faces indicative of social threat perception. Drawing on previous work examining visual attention to socially threatening stimuli, the authors predicted that high-EM participants, but not lower-EM participants, would initially look toward Black faces and then subsequently direct their attention away from these faces. Participants viewed pairs of images, some of which consisted of one White and one Black male face, while a desk-mounted eyetracking camera recorded their eye movements. Results showed that, as predicted, high-EM, but not lower-EM, individuals exhibited patterns of visual attention indicative of social threat perception.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)722-729
Number of pages8
JournalSocial Psychological and Personality Science
Volume3
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 2012

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: This work was supported in part by a John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship to JAR and a National Science Foundation Fellowship awarded to WSH (#IIS-0705901).

Keywords

  • individual differences
  • intergroup processes
  • intergroup relations
  • person perception
  • social cognition

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Social Psychology
  • Clinical Psychology

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Prejudice concerns and race-based attentional bias: New evidence from eyetracking'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this