DrEliane Deschrijver

Project Opportunities

Title: The role of disagreement in discrimination

Summary of opportunity:

Humans tend to discriminate more against others that don’t belong to their own group (i.e., against their outgroup as opposed to their ingroup) - even if groups created on the basis of seemingly irrelevant features, like the appreciation of paintings or one's estimation of a number of dots. Historical theories about discrimination have therefore emphasized group identity processes as central to understanding why people discriminate against each other (e.g., Tajfel & Turner, 1978). Yet, may we also discriminate against another individual if they simply disagree with us?

The overarching goal of this project is to investigate the role of disagreement and relational mentalizing (Deschrijver & Palmer, 2020) in the emergence of discriminatory behaviour. Online and in-person computer experiments, as well as potentially neuroimaging or psychophysiology measures, may be used.

Opportunity synopsis:

Prior research of my group has shown that we are willing to assign about 50% more money to someone when they agree versus disagree with us, even if this disagreement is based on how many numbers they are on a screen, or which painting one likes the most. These effects can even occur when there exists not a disagreement, but rather a random difference: participants similarly give about 50% more money to someone when they receive the same versus a different coin toss outcome.

Your project is meant to investigate what the drivers are of these effects. You are invited to come up with an experimental variation based on these existing experimental designs. Research questions can include, but are not limited to:

- Does the discrimination increase in strength when there is more intense disagreement with the other person?

- Do we discriminate more after disagreement with a person of a different versus the same race, religion, age, gender, ...?

- Do we discriminate against non-human actors such as robots or AI?

- Do we discriminate primarily because we reward someone when they agree, or because we punish them when they disagree?

- Will we find the same effects if we take away money from the other person, rather than giving it to them?

- Do we discriminate against someone after a different versus the same random outcome because we do not like conflicting information?

- What is the role of negative emotions in this type of discrimination, as measured in the activity of smiling and frowning muscles in the face?

- Which brain areas are involved in the discriminatory decision making process (fMRI)?

- What is the timing of these processes (EEG)?