Professor, alumnus receive top psychology honor

Samuel L. Gaertner, University of Delaware professor of psychology

2:51 p.m., July 1, 2004--Two researchers with international reputations in the psychology of prejudice, both of whom have strong University of Delaware ties, were named joint winners of the Kurt Lewin Memorial Award by the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) on Sunday, June 27, in Washington, D.C.

Honored were Samuel L. Gaertner, University of Delaware professor of psychology, and Jack Dovidio, a University of Connecticut professor of psychology who earned his doctorate in 1977 at UD with Gaertner as his dissertation advisor.

Gaertner and Dovidio conduct research on intergroup relations and, in particular, on how prejudice, discrimination and intergroup conflict can be reduced by inducing the members of two groups to conceive of themselves as a single, more inclusive group. This work has led them from the laboratory to more applied settings, such as corporate mergers, blended families and public school classrooms.

A key part of their work is in the study of “aversive racism,” which exists among well-intentioned people who often express their racial attitudes in subtle and indirect ways but still with very negative consequences.

Named for the late Kurt Lewin, a pioneer in the science of group dynamics and a founder of SPSSI, the Lewin Award is presented annually for outstanding contributions to the development and integration of psychological research and social action. Gaertner and Dovidio also received the Gordon Allport Intergroup Relations Award in both 1985 and 1998 for their work.

Claude Steele, professor of psychology and department chair at Stanford University, presented the award, saying the pair had formed one of the “relatively few great and lasting collaborations” in the field.

Gaertner and Dovidio have produced an “impressive body of work” and have made an “extraordinary amount of progress” in the study of prejudice, Steele said.

Specifically, he noted their work in studying aversive racism, or that form of racism in which people have an aversion toward their own racist feelings and tend to deny that they exist. “That insight has produced an explosion of knowledge” over the last two decade, Steele said, and has stimulated important work by other researchers.

In accepting the award, Gaertner said his 31 years of work with Dovidio “has been a tremendous experience.” Their work has been done in full collaboration, he said, and the partnership has made “doing research more fun, more rewarding and better.”

“This is not only an honor but truly a thrill,” Dovidio said. “I feel so lucky to have worked with Sam. Not many people have this kind of relationship with their dissertation adviser.”

After the award presentation, the researchers described their work. Dovidio said persistently high levels of infant mortality, unemployment and poverty among blacks in America led them to consider the fundamental question of prejudice in human beings.

They found that while some whites were genuinely committed to fairness and equality and others were openly prejudiced, there existed a third group that denied its racism and worked very hard to avoid acting inappropriately, thus creating a psychological tension.

Aversive racists “will do the right thing when they know what that is,” Dovidio said, however, their “racist feelings will still be expressed, but in more subtle ways.”

For instance, one study they conducted showed that aversive racists are just as likely to help black as white victims in an emergency situation unless they believe they are not the only person who can help and that additional assistance is available. In that case, aversive racists help the black victim only half as often as they help the white victim.

Gaertner and Dovidio found similar results in a study on hiring, where white applicants with mixed qualifications were given the benefit of a doubt by aversive racists and black applicants clearly were not.

Perhaps most telling, blacks and whites were teamed to complete a task. The task was completed most quickly, in 4 minutes and 35 seconds, by blacks working with nonprejudiced whites. Blacks working with prejudiced whites, whose attitudes were at least open and honest, took an average of 5 minutes and 42 seconds, while blacks working with aversive racists took an average of 6 minutes and 10 seconds. Given a work situation in a corporation, Dovidio said blacks are most likely to be working with aversive racists than any other group, thus severely hampering their ability to get a job done efficiently.

“Aversive racism is like a virus that has mutated into a new form,” Dovidio said. “It persists because it is just below the surface.”

“It is a cancer of the human heart,” Gaertner said, “one that has been with human beings for centuries. It is a strange disease because it exists among apparently normal people. We need a cancer institute. We need many types of solutions to be applied to this problem, maybe all at the same time.”

One possible solution, Gaertner believes, is to shift the meaning of “we” from race to something else and to alter the level of inclusiveness of group boundaries. In a study conducted on the UD campus, two groups of three students were given separate group identities. The participants in one session were given a new identity, with individual group members interspersed, sitting close together and rallying around a Delaware banner. The participants in another were kept in their individual groups, sitting far apart and without a unifying element.

“When they felt like one group, there were more positive feelings about the members of the other group,” Gaertner said. “If you consider people to be on your team, they are evaluated more positively and it is a proxy to do the right thing.”

The concept is being applied in the Green Circle program, sponsored in some Delaware schools by the National Council for Community Justice. In the program, students are encouraged to expand their personal circles of “caring and sharing,” Gaertner said, and there have been some positive results.

However, Gaertner said prejudice is not something that will be eradicated quickly but rather step by step over time. “If you think someone will find a solution and prejudice will suddenly be over, it won’t happen that way,” he said.

In the future, the researchers said they hope to look more closely at the notion of dual identity, as in the merged groups, to study whether this could positively affect interactions between blacks and aversive racists and to continue applying their findings to real world situations.

The Lewin Award was presented during the SPSSI’s fifth biennial convention, the theme of which was “From Desegregation to Diversity.” Leading the event was James M. Jones, UD professor of psychology, who is president of the organization.

Article by Neil Thomas
Photo by Kevin Quinlan

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