Research

Systemic oppression is embedded at the interpersonal, institutional, and cultural levels across U.S. society (e.g., employment opportunities, housing access). My program of research seeks to examine the alternative values that are necessary to challenge the cultural hegemony that maintains this oppressive system. In my first line of research, I examine how dominant cultural values serve to maintain systemic oppression. In my second line of research, I deploy a critical historical lens to understand and challenge systemic oppression.

Throughout my work, I center the experiences of marginalized group members to understand the downstream, oppressive impacts of dominant cultural values. I also leverage the perspectives of dominant group members to understand how oppressive systems are maintained. This holistic approach, which incorporates the perspectives of dominant and marginalized group members, allows me to critically examine and situate psychological experiences in the context of power. Using a multi-method approach that integrates social-cognitive experiments, interventions, qualitative methods, archival analyses, and scale development, I test conceptually rich and theoretically grounded research questions, informed by a critical historical lens (e.g., decolonial approaches), to disrupt systemic oppression.

The Maintenance of Systemic Oppression through Dominant Cultural Values

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 measure the mainstream cultural values (i.e., White cultural values) that perpetuate oppression. In a mixed-methods project, I first conducted one-on-one interviews with lay People of Color to understand this construct (Sarmal & Skinner, in prep). Next, using a different qualitative methodology, I asked a general sample of U.S. residents to describe mainstream values in general U.S. society. Based on the data from these studies, I generated a large inventory of scale items that could capture White cultural values in a variety of domains (e.g., work, health), convened expert review panels to gather feedback, and collected data to conduct factor analyses and assess dimensionality. I am now in the process of carrying out scale validation to finalize the development of my novel scale of White cultural values.

I have also assessed how dominant cultural narratives of settler colonial and imperialist ideas (e.g., manifest destiny) are sustained at the interpersonal and systemic levels. Along with colleagues, I developed a measurement tool to assess Belief in the American Dream using a similar methodology as the previous project. We find that three factors, (1) U.S. supremacy (e.g., America is the greatest country in the world), (2) bootstrap mentality (e.g., self-sufficiency), and (3) promoting individual freedom, comprise the “Belief in the American Dream” construct (Sarmal et al., in prep).

Deploying a Critical Historical Lens to Examine and Challenge Systemic Oppression

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 helps 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. Using U.S. Census and Project Implicit Data, 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* et al., 2024). 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

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