Perspective Taking and Racial Bias 1 Running Head: PERSPECTIVE TAKING AND RACIAL BIAS Perspective Taking Combats Automatic Expressions of Racial Bias

Five experiments investigated the hypothesis that perspective taking—actively contemplating others’ psychological experiences—attenuates automatic expressions of racial bias. Across the first three experiments, participants who adopted the perspective of a Black target in an initial context subsequently exhibited more positive automatic interracial evaluations, with changes in automatic evaluations mediating the effect of perspective taking on more deliberate interracial evaluations. Furthermore, unlike other bias-reduction strategies, the interracial positivity resulting from perspective taking was accompanied by increased salience of racial inequalities (Experiment 3). Perspective taking also produced stronger approach-oriented action tendencies toward Blacks (but not Whites; Experiment 4). A final experiment revealed that face-to-face interactions with perspective takers were rated more positively by Black interaction partners than were interactions with non-perspective takers, a relationship that was mediated by perspective takers’ increased approach-oriented nonverbal behaviors (as rated by objective, third-party observers). These findings indicate that perspective taking can combat automatic expressions of racial biases without simultaneously decreasing sensitivity to ongoing racial disparities. Perspective Taking and Racial Bias 3 The 20th century witnessed a dramatic shift in both the public espousal and legal enforcement of the principle of racial equality. Indeed, survey data have revealed a substantial decline in overt expressions of racial bias since the passage of civil rights legislation nearly 50 years ago (Schuman, Steeh, Bobo, & Krysan, 1997), prompting one researcher to claim that this shift toward egalitarianism represents “[t]he single clearest trend in studies of racial attitudes” (Bobo, 2001, p. 269). This collective attitudinal shift notwithstanding, the attainment of genuine racial equality continues to be impeded by contemporary manifestations of bias—ones that are qualitatively distinct from the “old-fashioned” racism that plagued previous generations but that are equally capable of exerting pernicious effects. Because these biases are driven, in part, by normal psychological processes that operate relatively automatically (Dovidio & Gaertner, 2004; Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2000), designing strategies to combat them presents a formidable challenge. The current research investigated the efficacy of perspective taking—the active contemplation of others’ psychological experiences—as a strategy for counteracting automatic expressions of racial bias. Although there is now a substantial literature attesting to the promise of perspective taking for attenuating overt expressions of bias (Batson, Polycarpou, et al., 1997; Dovidio et al., 2004; Galinsky & Ku, 2004; Shih, Wang, Bucher, & Stotzer, 2009; Vescio, Sechrist, & Paolucci, 2003; Vorauer & Sasaki, 2009), little is currently known about whether perspective taking likewise tempers the more indirect and automatic forms of racial bias that pervade contemporary society. To fill this empirical gap, we conducted five experiments examining the impact of perspective taking on several critical (but largely untested) intergroup outcomes: automatic evaluations, approach–avoidance reactions, and behaviors displayed during face-to-face interactions. Perspective Taking and Racial Bias 4 Contemporary Racial Bias: Automatic Negativity and Behavioral Avoidance The various forms that contemporary racial bias can take have been articulated in several prominent theories (e.g., ambivalent racism, Katz & Hass, 1988; aversive racism, Dovidio & Gaertner, 2004; modern racism, McConahay, 1986; symbolic racism, Sears & Henry, 2005). Despite differences in their defining features and operating characteristics, these theories generally posit that many Whites (and others) experience an inner conflict arising from competing response tendencies toward Blacks. One set of tendencies is grounded in the democratic principles of justice and equality and thus encourages nonbiased responses; the other is based on an underlying, automatically activated negative affective reaction that encourages discriminatory responses. Numerous studies have now shown that, despite a personal disavowal of prejudice, individuals’ underlying interracial negativity often finds behavioral expression, particularly in behaviors that are difficult to monitor and control (e.g., many nonverbal behaviors; Dovidio & Gaertner, 2004). Face-to-face interracial interactions provide one such context. Because the prospect of interracial contact can be a source of anxiety and discomfort (Blascovich, Mendes, Hunter, Lickel, & Kowai-Bell, 2001; Stephan & Stephan, 1985; Trawalter, Richeson, & Shelton, 2009), many people try to avoid interracial contact whenever possible. Yet, oftentimes interracial contact is unavoidable; in such cases, individuals’ underlying negativity may “leak out” behaviorally. For instance, studies have shown that Whites who harbor negative automatic reactions toward Blacks tend to display less nonverbal “friendliness”—fewer approach-oriented (e.g., smiling, forward body leaning) and more avoidance-oriented (e.g., gaze aversion, increased interpersonal distance) behaviors—during interracial interactions (e.g., Dovidio, Kawakami, & Gaertner, 2002; Fazio, Jackson, Dunton, & Williams, 1995; McConnell & Leibold, 2001; see Perspective Taking and Racial Bias 5 Greenwald, Poehlman, Uhlmann, & Banaji, 2009, for a meta-analytic review). Insofar as Black interaction partners are able to detect underlying interracial negativity in Whites’ nonverbal behaviors (see Dovidio et al., 2002; Richeson & Shelton, 2005), they, like Whites, may approach future interracial interactions with a sense of reticence (Shelton, Dovidio, Hebl, & Richeson, 2009; Tropp, 2007). Importantly, this reticence can undermine attempts to establish the rapport and trust that are critical to the development of positive intergroup relations. Although social scientists have long been interested in unearthing effective strategies for reducing intergroup bias, only recently has attention shifted to strategies targeting automatically activated intergroup reactions. Despite a common assumption that automatic intergroup reactions reflect highly robust mental representations that are rooted in long-term socialization experiences (e.g., Rudman, 2004; Wilson, Lindsey, & Schooler, 2000), there is now considerable evidence that automatic intergroup reactions are readily influenced by a variety of contextual and psychological variables (e.g., Blair, Ma, & Lenton, 2001; Gawronski, Deutsch, Mbirkou, Seibt, & Strack, 2008; Kawakami, Phills, Steele, & Dovidio, 2007; Olson & Fazio, 2006; Richeson & Nussbaum, 2004; Turner & Crisp, 2010; see Gawronski & Sritharan, 2010, for a comprehensive review). The current research sought to add to this accumulating body of research by exploring the effects of one promising bias-reduction strategy—perspective taking—on automatically activated expressions of racial bias. Perspective Taking and the Attenuation of Contemporary Forms of Bias The ability and propensity to consider others’ psychological perspectives is an invaluable tool for inferring the contents of others’ minds and for predicting and explaining their actions. Social theorists have long argued that a well-developed perspective-taking capacity is critical for managing the complexities of social life (Higgins, 1981; Mead, 1934; Piaget, 1932; Smith, Perspective Taking and Racial Bias 6 1759), with some viewing it as a critical antecedent to altruistic behavior (Batson, 1991) and to the development of moral reasoning more generally (Selman, 1980). Its presence can promote cooperation (Batson & Moran, 1999) and facilitate conflict resolution (Galinsky, Maddux, Gilin, & White, 2008a). Perspective-taking deficiencies, in contrast, have been linked to severe social dysfunction (as in the case of autism; Baron-Cohen, 1995) and to arrogant, inconsiderate, and even aggressive styles of interpersonal responding (Richardson, Hammock, Smith, Gardner, & Signo, 1994)—behaviors certain to add fuel to already fiery conflict situations. Given the wide range of interpersonal benefits resulting from strategic perspective taking, there is good reason to suspect that actively contemplating outgroup members’ psychological perspectives could be an efficacious strategy for cultivating more positive intergroup relations. Consistent with this supposition, there are now numerous studies attesting to the merits of perspective taking as a strategy for reducing intergroup bias. Whereas some studies have linked perspective taking to decreased activation and application of negative group stereotypes (Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000), others have shown that adopting the perspective of a particular outgroup target leads to more positive evaluations of other individual members of the target’s group (Shih et al., 2009) and of the target’s group as a whole (Batson, Polycarpou, et al., 1997; Dovidio et al., 2004; Galinsky & Ku, 2004; Vescio et al., 2003; Vorauer & Sasaki, 2009). Although these findings have greatly enhanced our understanding of the intergroup consequences of perspective taking, this work has focused almost exclusively on overt forms of bias (e.g., deliberate evaluations) to the exclusion of the more subtle forms of bias discussed previously (see Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000, for an exception). Indeed, we are not aware of any published studies investigating the effects of perspective taking on automatic expressions of racial bias. Very few studies, moreover, have examined the behavioral implications of Perspective Taking and Racial Bias 7 intergroup perspective taking, and what little research there is has yielded mixed results (Blatt, LeLacheur, Galinsky, Simmens, & Greenberg, in press; Vorauer, Martens, & Sasaki, 2009; Vorauer & Sasaki, 2009). Why might perspective taking engender more positive automatic interracial reactions? Research indicates that associative representations of many, if not most, social groups contain a mixture of both positive and negative aspects (Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002). One implication of this representational ambivalence is that factors that highlight the positive associations should promote more positive automatic intergroup reactions (Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006). To the extent that the cognitive elaboration stemming from perspective taking calls to mind different (and more positive) group-based associative content than might otherwise be considered, perspective taking holds the potential to engender more favorable automatic interracial evaluations. Furthermore, if the positive mental representations activated in the course of perspective taking elicit correspondingly more positive spontaneous behavior during interracial encounters, then perspective taking also holds the potential to produce more positive interracial contact experiences. Indeed, research indicates that when a given variable influences the activation of mental associations, there are often corresponding downstream effects on spontaneous forms of behavior (e.g., nonverbal behavior; see Gawronski & Sritharan, 2010). Despite the benefits accrued from altering automatic interracial evaluations and behaviors, strategies whose primary goal is to increase interracial harmony can have unintended consequences that limit their utility. For instance, although focusing on intergroup commonalities has long been argued to promote more positive intergroup evaluations, focusing solely on commonalities can limit motivation for actual social change by desensitizing people to Perspective Taking and Racial Bias 8 the persistence of interracial disparities (Dovidio, Gaertner, & Saguy, 2009; Saguy, Tausch, Dovidio, & Pratto, 2009). If perspective taking, which has been shown to increase perceptions of intergroup commonality (Galinsky, Ku, & Wang, 2005; Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000; Galinsky, Wang, & Ku, 2008b), is susceptible to this unintended side effect, its general value as a strategy for navigating interracial contexts could be limited. However, providing evidence that perspective taking can produce more positive automatic interracial reactions without shrouding interracial disparities would indicate that the benefits of perspective taking do not come with psychological strings attached. Overview of the Current Research The aim of the current research was to investigate the impact of perspective taking on automatic interracial reactions and behaviors. As noted earlier, we define perspective taking broadly as the active contemplation of others’ psychological experiences. In each of our experiments, we manipulated perspective taking in an ostensibly unrelated context prior to the administration of the dependent measures. Specifically, we introduced participants to a Black male (either via video or a photograph) and instructed them to adopt his perspective as they watched him in a video or as they wrote a brief essay about a day in his life. Because previous research has found important psychological differences depending on how perspective taking is manipulated (see Batson, 2009, for a review), we included two different manipulations of perspective taking in Experiment 1. Whereas some participants tried to imagine the target’s perspective (perspective-taking–other), others tried to imagine their own perspective as if they were in the target’s situation (perspective-taking–self). In the remaining experiments, we employed only the perspective-taking–other manipulation. For comparison purposes, we introduced other participants to the same Black male and instructed them to adopt an objective Perspective Taking and Racial Bias 9 focus, or we provided them with no additional instructions. Thus, the current research is perhaps most aptly described as an investigation of the effects of a perspective-taking mindset on automatic expressions of racial bias. Our first two experiments assessed the influence of perspective taking on automatic evaluations of Black Americans versus White Americans. Because prior research has demonstrated that factors that produce more positive intergroup evaluations can have the unintended consequence of obscuring intergroup inequalities (Dovidio et al., 2009; Saguy et al., 2009), Experiment 3 investigated whether perspective taking is vulnerable to this unintended side effect. Our final two experiments explored the behavioral implications of perspective taking. Experiment 4 explored whether changes in automatic interracial reactions following perspective taking are target-group-specific by assessing approach–avoidance action tendencies separately for Black and White targets. Experiment 5 examined the impact of perspective taking on behaviors displayed during an actual interracial interaction and on interaction partners’ subjective experiences of the interaction. In general, we predicted that perspective taking would lead to more positive automatic interracial evaluations and action tendencies. Based on the proposition that changes in mental representations elicit corresponding changes in behavior (see Gawronski & Sritharan, 2010), we further predicted that perspective-taking-induced changes in automatic interracial reactions would lead to more positive interracial interactions. Experiment 1: Automatic Interracial Evaluations The primary purpose of Experiment 1 was to examine the impact of perspective taking on automatic evaluations of Black Americans relative to White Americans. Participants watched a video depicting a series of discriminatory acts directed toward a Black man versus a White man Perspective Taking and Racial Bias 10 (Dovidio et al., 2004; Esses & Dovidio, 2002). As they watched the video, participants either adopted the Black man’s perspective or they attempted to remain objective and detached. We included two different perspective-taking conditions in this experiment. Some participants tried to imagine the Black man’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences (perspective-taking–other condition) as they watched the video; others tried to imagine their own thoughts, feelings, and experiences as if they were in the Black man’s situation (perspective-taking–self condition). Because both approaches have been used in past research (e.g., Batson, Early, & Salvarini, 1997; Davis, Conklin, Smith, & Luce, 1996; Galinsky et al., 2008b) and, in some cases, have been found to have different psychological consequences (Batson, 2009), we wanted to explore whether the specific form of perspective taking would qualify our results. After watching the video, participants completed a variant of the IAT that assesses automatic evaluations of Black Americans relative to White Americans (i.e., personalized evaluative race Implicit Association Test [IAT]; Olson & Fazio, 2004). If adopting the perspective of a Black target activates different (and more positive) group-based associative content than the negative content ordinarily activated when processing a Black exemplar (Devine, 1989), then one could reasonably expect that perspective takers would exhibit more positive automatic interracial evaluations than would non-perspective takers. Alternatively, it is possible that adopting the perspective of a Black target simply heightens the motivation to be—or at least to appear to be—unbiased (Plant & Devine, 1998) and that perspective taking, despite having benefits for self-reported interracial evaluations (Dovidio et al., 2004; Vescio et al., 2003), exerts little effect on automatic interracial evaluations.