Seemingly small and ambiguous aspects of a cultural context can perpetuate and maintain social biases. Drawing upon critical perspectives, I examine how racial microaggressions—subtle slights directed at people of color—reinforce systemic racism in the U.S. (Skinner-Dorkenoo, Sarmal, et al., 2021). Along with colleagues, we provide evidence that these subtle slights are tools that uphold oppressive cultural systems and harm members from historically marginalized groups.
In another line of ongoing work, I examine how certain norms and values, which on face value may seem race-neutral, serve to uphold ideologies associated with white culture. Using mixed methods, I am combining knowledge from cultural, social, critical, and experimental psychology to construct, validate, and implement a scale assessing the prevalence and impact of these ideologies associated with white culture.
Women are typically underrepresented in and face backlash in leadership roles (e.g., Rudman et al., 2012). In a recent project, I used an intersectional framework to examine how men may use sexualization against high-status women from various racial backgrounds in the workplace. I find that white men sexualized women in higher status positions more and this sexualization was particularly pronounced for women who were identified as East Asian.
In another line of work, I examine the factors that sustain biases and prejudice against interracial couples. Interracial couples are a unique social unit that challenges the status quo of racial homogeneity in U.S. society. In empirical investigations I find that stronger beliefs in social dominance and sexism predict more negative attitudes towards interracial couples. My collaborator and I are continuing this line of research by further identifying the role that overlapping ideologies of oppression play in sustaining these negative attitudes.
I seek to apply social psychological theory to improve the material conditions of people from marginalized backgrounds. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, colleagues and I considered whether exposing White U.S. residents to information about racial disparities would impact their fear of and concern about the virus. We found that knowledge of COVID-19 racial disparities decreased fear of the virus and decreased support for government restrictions among White U.S. residents (Skinner-Dorkenoo, Sarmal, et al., 2022). Due to the potential backfiring effect of public health messaging which highlights racial disparities, this line of research and the resulting publication were widely covered by U.S. news outlets such as National Public Radio and the Washington Post.
In another line of work, we extend work on the Marley Hypothesis which posits that increased knowledge of historical injustices help recognition of present-day systemic racism (Bonam et al., 2019). Given that the field of medicine heavily relies on race as a biological instead of social category, corrections in tests based on race are still prevalent (Cerdeña et al., 2020). Drawing from the Marley hypothesis, in an intervention with pre-medical and non-pre-medical college students, we found that asking participant pairs to read and discuss an article highlighting the history of sociopolitical construction of race lowered support for race-based medicine, and increased beliefs that race-based medicine contributes to racial health disparities (Skinner-Dorkenoo, Rogbeer, Sarmal, et al., 2023).
Finally, I leverage big data to ask questions at a population-level. I wondered whether recent shifts in racial inequalities (e.g., unemployment) could be used to predict implicit and explicit racial attitudes among White and Black U.S. residents. We find that state-level reductions in racial inequalities related to government assistance and employment—which have both been highly politicized—were predictive of greater pro-white attitudes among White U.S. residents (Sarmal*, Cha*, & Skinner*, in press). In a related project, we found that decreased racial inequalities in high school completion rates were associated with decreased pro-Black attitudes (Cha*, Sarmal*, & Skinner*, in prep).
*shared authorship