Establishment and maintenance of stimulus equivalence classes with meaningful stimuli using matching to sample and respondent-type procedures: Exploring racial prejudiced attitudes.

• Grant number: 15/10225-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: March 01, 2016
• End date: November 30, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Experimental Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Júlio César Coelho de Rose
• Grantee: Táhcita Medrado Mizael
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 18/07266-0 - Effects of a flexibility training in prejudice and gender bias reduction, BE.EP.DR

Abstract

Racial prejudice can be defined as a set of negative attitudes that were culturally conditioned with respect to individuals that have certain physical characteristics, such as color or ethnicity. Despite several efforts, racial prejudice still exists in various forms and has entailed psychological and physical harm to their victims. Besides, the understanding of racial prejudice as a phenomenon that exists in our society, as well as ways to step in on this phenomenon have been demanded in Psychology debates, in general, and in behavior analysis specifically. Thus, it consists of a topic with both scientific and social relevance. The present study consists in an experimental analysis of racial prejudice, seeking further investigation of the variables that can lead, in the future, to effective procedures for the investigation of formation and change of racial attitudes. Based on a previous research, in which children with a negative racial bias learned to relate black people' faces with positive symbols, after participating in a conditional discrimination training procedure, the aims of this study are: 1) to analyze three training parameters that helped in the formation of stimulus equivalence classes between pictures of black people and positive symbols, 2) to verify if these relationships between black people' faces and positive symbols remain six weeks after the end of the intervention, and 3) to verify if another procedure, closer to the natural environment of children is also effective to promote this modification. Fifty-two children who demonstrate negative racial bias for black people' faces will be recruited for the study, in which participants will learn to relate pictures of black people with positive symbols using either matching-to-sample (Studies 1 and 2) or a respondent-type training procedure (Study 3). After training, it will be evaluated if these children begin to relate the positive symbols with the black faces and vice versa. It will also be assessed whether there will be transfer of function and if these relationships will be maintained six weeks after the end of the research.

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

MIZAEL, TAHCITA M.; DE ALMEIDA, JOAO H.; ROCHE, BRYAN; DE ROSE, JULIO C.. Effectiveness of Different Training and Testing Parameters on the Formation and Maintenance of Equivalence Classes: Investigating Prejudiced Racial Attitudes. PSYCHOLOGICAL RECORD, v. 71, n. 2, p. 265-277, JUN 2021. (14/50909-8, 15/10225-5, 14/01874-7, 08/57705-8)