Internal conflict and prejudice-regulation: Emotional ambivalence buffers against defensive responding to implicit bias feedback

Abstract

Becoming aware of bias is essential for prejudice-regulation. However, attempts to make people aware of bias through feedback often elicits defensive reactions that undermine mitigation efforts. In the present article, we introduce state emotional ambivalence—the simultaneous experience of positive and negative emotions “in the present moment”–as a buffer against defensive responding to implicit bias feedback. Two studies (N = 507) demonstrate that implicit bias feedback (vs. no feedback) increases defensiveness (rating the test as less valid, credible, and objective). However, high (vs. low) state emotional ambivalence, which was independent of bias feedback, attenuates this relationship between bias feedback and defensiveness, accounting for a larger share of the variance than negative emotions alone. In turn, this reduced defensiveness among individuals high (vs. low) in emotional ambivalence was associated with increased awareness of bias in the self and others. Results suggest that state emotional ambivalence is associated with increased bias awareness by creating a mindset in which individuals are less defensive to potentially threatening information about their own implicit racial bias. These results have important implications for research on stereotyping and prejudice, emotional ambivalence and psychological conflict, and defensiveness.

Flexible control: Conflict mindsets reduce the association between trait measures of self-control decision-making and delay discounting.

“…For example, a line of studies by Winter et al (2021) showed that participants' pre-measures of trust toward a specific social group (e.g., refugees) predicted postmeasures of trust most strongly in the control group. This relationship was much weaker or absent in the condition in which a conflict mindset was evoked in between the two measurements (for similar findings see Rothman et al, 2022;Winter et al, 2022). Specifically, in the conflict condition, people with low pre-measure trust showed a shift toward relatively higher post-measure trust, whereas people with high pre-measure trust showed a shift toward relatively lower post-measure trust.…”

Eliciting cognitive consistency increases acceptance of implicit bias.

“…Nonetheless, the measures we used in our experiments have high levels of face validity and internal validity, and are highly similar to previous implementations in the research literature. For example, conceptually similar items are used in all of the reported studies in Vitriol and Moskowitz (2021), Rothman et al (2022), Howell and Ratliff (2016), Howell et al (2015, 2017). Furthermore, one indication that our measure captures the constructs of interest is in the mean-level variability across IATs.…”

“…A literature on the limitations and challenges of raising awareness of bias is burgeoning (Howell & Ratliff, 2016; Howell et al, 2017; Moskowitz & Vitriol, 2021; Onyeador et al, 2021; Rothman et al, 2022; Vitriol, O’Shea, & Calanchini, 2024). This work demonstrates that defensive responding (i.e., rejection of the information and indeed the underlying science as “fake”) in response to evidence of bias is relatively common (Czopp et al, 2006; Hillard et al, 2013; Howell et al, 2015).…”

“…In this way, awareness-raising strategies for bias reduction may backfire (e.g., Dobbin & Kalev, 2016; Duguid & Thomas-Hunt, 2015; Legault et al, 2011; Perry et al, 2015). While of significant importance for effective bias education, however, efforts to identify strategies to increase acceptance of implicit bias feedback have largely been understudied (see Rothman et al, 2022; Vitriol & Moskowitz, 2021, for exceptions).…”