Effects of a flexibility training in prejudice and gender bias reduction

• Grant number: 18/07266-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Effective date (Start): October 04, 2018
• Effective date (End): July 03, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Experimental Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Júlio César Coelho de Rose
• Grantee: Táhcita Medrado Mizael
• Supervisor: Bryan Thomas Roche
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Research place: National University of Ireland, Maynooth (NUI Maynooth), Ireland
• Associated to the scholarship: 15/10225-5 - Establishment and maintenance of stimulus equivalence classes with meaningful stimuli using matching to sample and respondent-type procedures: Exploring racial prejudiced attitudes., BP.DR

Abstract

This project presents an overview of an experimental proposal and other planned activities to be carried out during an internship at National University of Ireland, Maynooth as a valuable extension to the research being developed during the beneficiary doctorate. The research developed in Brazil employs abstract and socially loaded stimuli to investigate the formation of equivalence classes (categories) between faces of Black individuals and a positive symbol in children who demonstrated racial biases in a pre-screening test. Studies have shown that it is very hard to form classes (categories) with conflicting stimuli, such as relating Black individuals with positive stimulus if the person has learned during his or her lifetime to relate Black individuals with negative stimuli/attributes. In this sense, it is very hard to change attitudes. Some research on Relational Frame Theory have pointed that flexibility is one of the variables that could account for the reduction of several types of prejudice. Hence, during the internship, the beneficiary will focus on the effects of a flexibility training on the prevention of prejudice and if making relations more flexible could lessen gender stereotypes. (AU)