The Presence of Racial Minorities Impairs
People's Ability to Focus Attention
Justin Aoki, Jordan Wheeler, Chad Johnson and Peizhong Li
Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Stout
The Question:
Does the presence of stigmatized out-group members impair our
ability to focus attention on a task?
What The Participants Did:
•Participants
Participants (N = 46) were instructed to inspect a pair of letter
strings on the screen and indicate whether they were identical or
different.
•When each pair of letter strings appeared, a photo of either a white
or black male face appeared in another location of the screen.
LXNEITJ
Conclusions:
LXNEITJ
Word
Condition
Non-Word
Non
Word
Condition
TIGER
TIGER
LHDBI
LHDBI
SAME
TIGER
HAPPY
JHIFG
LHDBI
DIFFERENT
T
Target
t
Response
•Participants made more errors when they saw a black man’s
face compared to when they saw a white man’s face in the nonperform differently
y in the word
word condition but did not p
condition.
•Performance on cognitively-demanding tasks is hindered by the
presence of out-group members.
CONTACT INFO:
Email: aokij@utwstou.edu
Funded in part by a grant for Course, Curriculum
and Laboratory Improvement by the National
Science Foundation, #DUE-0536511.