Introduction. The current project is derived from a study being conducted as my Honors Thesis in

Transcription

1 1 Anonymous Advanced Statistical Methods in Psychology Final Project 22 December 2015 Introduction The current project is derived from a study being conducted as my Honors Thesis in Psychology. Broadly, the purpose of the study is to develop a measure of awareness and belief in implicit associations and unconscious processes, and to find if this awareness affects explicitly reported racial attitudes. Prior research has shown that awareness of bias, as well as awareness of the potential for bias are integral in the reduction of bias, so we have focused more broadly on the awareness of implicit associations to develop our research with a wider scope. If we find that the mere awareness of implicit associations influences explicitly reported racial attitudes, we can begin to address this additional source of racial bias in both the development of intervention techniques as well as in future research. We can also attempt to pinpoint what factors affect a person s awareness of unconscious processes in order to continue to make people aware of the potential for bias in an attempt to reduce implicit racism. For the following analyses, I derived three separate hypotheses. First, I hypothesized that the self-reported awareness of thoughts and feelings would predict a person s just world belief, such that a higher awareness of thoughts and feelings would result in a lower belief in a just world. Second, I hypothesized that a person s just world belief would predict their likelihood of attributing blame to Amadou Diallo, a Black, unarmed police shooting victim whose story was portrayed in Malcolm Gladwell s Blink (2005), such that a stronger just world belief would result in attributing more blame to a police shooter victim. Lastly, I hypothesized that a person s

2 2 just world belief would predict their likelihood of attributing deservedness to Amadou Diallo, such that a stronger just world belief would result in greater likelihood to believe that a police shooting victim deserved what happened to them. I chose these hypotheses to test because I felt that they were socially relevant and could act as a preliminary look into the factors that contribute to a person s likelihood to victim blame or attribute negative stereotypes to those who are victims of unjustified police shootings. If the just world belief is related to both awareness of implicit cognition and to attitudes about police shootings, we can use this information to educate people on the negative effects of blame attribution and stereotypes of Black men in the criminal justice system. Data A subset of the thesis sample was used for the analyses done in this project. The data were collected from Rutgers undergraduate students in three separate upper-level Psychology courses (the entire thesis project includes data from a broader sample of undergraduate students). Students (N = 331) completed the study for extra credit in their respective courses. The study was developed through Qualtrics online survey software, where participants could complete the study from any computer. Participants were given a brief description of the study and consented to participate, then completed the following measures: the Belief in Implicit and Explicit Associations Scale (BIEA), the Belief in Just World for Others Scale (BJW) (Lipkus, Dalbert, & Siegler, 1996), the Symbolic Racism 2000 Scale (SRS) (Henry & Sears, 2002), the Bias Awareness Scale (BAS) (Perry, Murphy, & Dovidio, 2015), an adapted measure of reverse racism (Norton & Sommers, 2011), and the response questions to an excerpt from Malcolm Gladwell s book Blink (2005). Participants then completed a brief demographics form and

3 3 were debriefed on the study s purpose. The entire survey took approximately 30 minutes to complete. To test the previously stated hypotheses, I chose items from three out of six measures included in the thesis. To measure a person s awareness of their thoughts and feelings, a single item from the BIEA was used ( I am fully aware of my thoughts and feelings ). Responses to this item were scaled from 1 (Completely Agree) to 6 (Completely Disagree). To measure a person s just world belief, the summed score of the BJW was used. Responses to questions were scaled from 1 (Strongly Agree) to 6 (Strongly Disagree) and scores ranged from 8 to 48, with lower scores indicating a stronger just world belief. Lastly, to measure participants likelihood to attribute blame and deservedness to a police shooting victim, two items were taken from the Gladwell response questions: Amadou Diallo was to BLAME for what happened, and Amadou Diallo DESERVED what happened in this interaction. Responses to both questions were scaled from 1 (Strongly Agree) to 6 (Strongly Disagree). Data Analysis To test the first hypothesis that awareness of thoughts and feelings predicted belief in a just world, a correlational analysis was conducted and linear regression model was developed to find the predictability of the BIEA item. The correlation between the two measures was shown to be a weak, positive relationship (r = ). A linear model found a slope of (p = ), however the r-squared statistic was very low (R 2 = ). Residual tests showed that the model was linear, the residuals were fairly normal, and the distribution was homoscedastic. This suggests that while there is a relationship between awareness of thoughts and feelings, participants belief in a just world could not be accurately predicted using a linear model. However, the positive correlation between awareness and belief in a just world indicates the

4 4 opposite of what the hypothesis states: since a 1-point increase in unawareness was shown to result in a 1-point decrease in belief in a just world, this suggests that the less aware a person is of their thoughts and beliefs, the less they believe in a just world. To test the second hypothesis that the belief in a just world predicted likelihood of blaming a police shooting victim, a correlational analysis and linear regression model was conducted. The correlation between belief in just world summed scores and the attribution of blame was shown to be a weak, positive relationship (r = ). A linear model found the slope to be (p = ), however the r-squared statistic was fairly low (R 2 = ). Residual tests showed that the relationship was linear, the distribution of residuals was normal, however the distribution was not homoscedastic. The variance of the scores was not constant throughout the distribution. The variance of the distribution of belief in just world scores prevented the linear model from being predictive of responses on the blame item. However, if we are to consider the linear model valid in predictability, the slope of the linear model would indicate that a 1-point increase in disagreeing that Diallo was to blame was associated with a

5 point decrease in belief in a just world, indicating that those with a weaker belief in a just world are less likely to attribute blame to a police shooting victim. To test the third hypothesis that belief in a just world predicted likelihood of attributing deservedness to a police shooter victim, a correlational analysis and linear regression model was conducted. The correlation showed a weak, positive relationship (r = ). The slope of the linear model was (p = ), however the r-squared statistic was fairly low (R 2 =0.0246). Residual tests showed that the residuals were linear, the residual histogram was normal, however the distribution was not homoscedastic. Again, the distribution of scores was highly skewed and the variance of the distribution of belief in just world scores was far too high to have strong predictability from the linear model. However, ignoring the unfulfilled assumptions of the linear model s predictability, the slope of the line would indicate that a 1- point increase in disagreeing with the deservedness of the police shooter victim would result in a

6 point decrease in a just world belief, indicating that those who hold a stronger just world belief were more likely to belief that a police shooter victim deserved what happened to them. Inference Bootstrap resampling was conducted to find the confidence intervals of the linear regression model coefficients. 10,000 samples of 50 cases were sampled to create a data frame of resampled cases, then a linear regression was performed on each of the 10,000 samples to find the mean coefficient. The mean correlation coefficient of the bootstrapped samples for awareness and belief in just world was found to be (compared to the original sample coefficient of 1.000). A 95% confidence interval was found to be [0.9511, ], which suggests that the correlation coefficient of the linear model is significantly different than zero. This indicates that there is a linear relationship between these two variables.

7 7 Bootstrap Resample: Awareness and BJW The mean correlation coefficient of the bootstrapped samples for belief in just world and blame was found to be (compared to the original sample coefficient of 1.079), with a 95% confidence interval of [1.058, 1.091]. Again, this indicates that the coefficient is significantly different from zero and that there is a linear relationship between these two variables. Bootstrap Resample: BJW and Blame Lastly, the mean correlation coefficient of the bootstrapped samples for belief in just world and deservedness was found to be with a 95% confidence interval of [1.393,

8 ], indicating that the coefficient is significantly different that zero and that there is a linear relationship between these variables. Bootstrap Resample: BJW and Deservedness Conclusions The findings of these analyses suggest a relationship between variables, however, not all in the direction that was originally expected. The linear model of the first hypothesis showed that while there is a relationship between awareness and just world belief, a greater self-reported awareness of thoughts and feelings was associated with a stronger belief in a just world, the opposite of what was originally hypothesized. This could possibly indicate that the relationship between awareness and just world belief is mediated by a variable such as self-esteem, empathy, or likelihood to make internal or external attributions. Further research would have to consider mediation effects in analyses to find if this relationship is valid. There was support for the second and third hypotheses, however the support was not very strong or convincing. The weak predictability of the linear models suggests a problem with the data set, however the minimal support that was shown for the hypotheses does bring optimism that these analyses would work with a different or bigger data set. The biggest problem with the

9 9 responses from this sample, specifically that of the blame and deservedness items, is that there were so many participants that responded with 6 (Strongly Disagree that Diallo was to blame) that there were not enough respondents to accurately predict a person s belief in just world using a linear model. Due to the high level of similar responses, the variability of BJW summed score just within those who responded as strongly disagreeing with blame or deservedness was far too high to make any confident conclusions. A sample that is more likely to answer any of the 1 (Strongly Agree) to 6 (Strongly Disagree) responses would possibly be much more able to be predicted using a linear model. Of course, there are many problems with using university students in research. Having a data set consist solely of undergraduate students from a fairly liberal and diverse university resulted in drastically different results than we would find using a sample of students from a more conservative area of the country (using a sample from a more conservative area of the country could very well solve the problem of having too many people disagree with blame and deservedness). Furthermore, having a sample of students come solely from upper-level Psychology courses, many of which require a declared major in Psychology to register for, gives a non-representative sample of students that cannot be accurately generalized to the Rutgers population, let alone to a population outside of the university. Our bigger project uses data from a broader sample of students, including students in General Psychology courses who participate for course credit, so this problem has been addressed slightly better in my thesis than in this project. Having General Psychology be a required course for a broader scope of majors than just Psychology has given us a much more representative sample of students and has increased the validity of our study, however we still need to keep in mind the limitations of having our sample be taken from a university that is not representative of a much bigger population.

10 10 References Gladwell, M. (2005). Seven seconds in the Bronx: The delicate art of mind reading. Blink: The power of thinking without thinking (pp ). New York: Little, Brown and Co. Henry, P. J., & Sears, D. O. (2002). The symbolic racism 2000 scale. Political Psychology, 23(2), Lipkus, I. M., Dalbert, C., & Siegler, I. C. (1996). The importance of distinguishing the belief in a just world for self versus for others: Implications for psychological well-being. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22, Norton, M. I., & Sommers, S. R. (2011). Whites see racism as a zero-sum game that they are now losing. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(3), Perry, S.P., Murphy, M.C., & Dovidio, J.F. (2015). Modern prejudice: Subtle, but unconscious? The role of bias awareness in whites perceptions of personal and others biases. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 64,