New study links race prejudice to aggression

Victims of prejudice, discrimination and/or racism can face long-lasting negative impacts like aggressive behavior, over-eating, inability to focus, etc, says a new research, co-authored by psychology student Sonia Kang, who recently finished her PhD, and Michael Inzlicht, associate professor, psychology, University of Toronto.

The report was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology this month.

"There could be long lasting negative impact of prejudices on a human being," said Kang, adding, "Such negative impacts could be the result of not only prejudices, but also discrimination, racism."

Even if the experience of facing prejudice and/or discrimination is short lived, the impact can be everlasting, she added.

"If you encounter prejudices when you first arrive in Canada, that will obviously change the way you interact in the future," she said.

"Some people may feel the impact of prejudicial behavior from others initially, but not notice after some time. So, it really depends on each person, the type of experiences they have. It doesn't mean everyone would be impacted for their entire life, but there's danger of that happening."

'Even after a person leaves a situation where they faced negative stereotypes, the effects of coping with that situation remain,' Inzlicht has said, adding, 'People are more likely to be aggressive after they've faced prejudice in a given situation. They are more likely to exhibit a lack of self control. They have trouble making good, rational decisions, and are more likely to over indulge in unhealthy foods.'

In one part of the study, the researchers had two groups of women write math tests. They told one group that the test would determine whether or not they were capable and smart in math, subtly injecting stereotypes about women and math skills. The other group was given support and coping strategies.

They subsequently performed another series of tasks designed to gauge their aggression levels, their ability to focus and exercise control.

'In these follow-up tests, the women who felt discriminated against ate more than their peers in the control group,' Inzilcht said.

'They showed more hostility than the control group. And they performed more poorly on tests that measured their cognitive skills.'

'Our results indicate that stereotype threats can spill over and impact self-control in a diverse array of non-stereotyped domains,' say the authors.

'These results reveal the potency of stereotype threat and suggest that its negative consequences extend further than previously thought… We suspect that stereotype threat spillover contributes to a number of societal problems, with aggression, obesity, risky decisions, and poor attention being only a small subset of these.'