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Date of Award

Spring 2025

Document Type

Masters Thesis

Department or Program Affiliation

Experimental Psychology

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Jantzen, Kelly J.

Second Advisor

Lehman, Barbara J.

Third Advisor

Czopp, Alex

Abstract

While people can consciously engage with regulatory goals to suppress potentially biased behavior after social identities are perceived and their associated stereotypes are cued, unconscious engagement with motivational or regulatory goals (Higgins, 1997) has also been shown to influence earlier cognitive processes (Cunningham et al., 2012; Moskowitz et al., 1999). Therefore, it may be the case that regulatory goals can also influence automatic social categorization, and more specifically, how individuals’ faces are encoded during early and late stages of face processing. Across two studies, this thesis uses assessments of recognition accuracy and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to test whether explicit motivations to promote prosocial behavior alter intergroup processing biases between Black and White faces during face perception. Consistent with previous work, results indicate that Black faces are recognized less accurately than White faces and are differentiated as early as 80 ms after perceiving a face. Although we did not find evidence to suggest that regulatory goals are sufficient to increase recognition of Black faces, results indicate that a promotion regulatory focus appears to increase the emotional salience and attentional significance of facial stimuli, regardless of race. Overall, the present work provides a new framework to conceptualize associations between race and motivations to regulate biased behavior at the perceptual level in the context of face processing.

Type

Text

Keywords

Regulatory Focus, Face Processing, The Other-Race Effect

Publisher

Western Washington University

OCLC Number

1524901947

Subject – LCSH

Regulatory focus (Psychology); Face perception--Psychological aspects; Prejudices; Stereotypes (Social psychology); Evoked potentials (Electrophysiology)

Format

application/pdf

Genre/Form

masters theses

Language

English

Rights

Copying of this document in whole or in part is allowable only for scholarly purposes. It is understood, however, that any copying or publication of this document for commercial purposes, or for financial gain, shall not be allowed without the author’s written permission.

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