Past research has found that some aspects of one’s social identity can affect how that person is treated by others. For example, stereotypes can influence people’s behavior during social interactions. This project explores the ways that diverse settings might affect the way people think, feel, and behave in social situations, and might influence their expectations of other people.
In this study, we ask participants to imagine how they would interact with someone they have not met before in a social situation. Next, we ask them to answer questions on a computer regarding their perceptions of the images, people, or situations they encountered.
We expect that some aspects of the situation (e.g., the topic participants imagined discussing with another person) or the people described in the stories (e.g., their social identity) will affect participants’ expectations of others and their thoughts about the situations.
This study will help us to understand how various aspects of others’ social identities can influence our expectations and behavior during social interactions in daily life. In a society that is becoming increasingly diverse, this is an important issue to study.
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This research is conducted by the Social Psychology Lab at Tufts University