Self-control and prejudice
When does prejudice reflect a self-control failure, and when does it reflect the absence of internalized egalitarian motivation?
This idea connects ego depletion, implicit bias, motivation to avoid prejudice, social pressure, and self-determination theory. A useful synthesis is that depletion may increase prejudiced responding especially when automatic stereotypes are activated and regulation depends on effortful control rather than internalized values.
Possible study designs:
- Cross depletion or cognitive load with automatic stereotype activation and internalized motivation to regulate prejudice.
- Compare external pressure, internalized motivation, and weak social-pressure conditions.
- Use online Stroop-like depletion tasks when performance can be checked with reaction times.
- Test whether self-determined prejudice regulation predicts lower bias under low-control conditions.
- Compare explicit attitudes, implicit attitudes, and behavior under high-control versus low-control conditions.
- Vary whether participants believe their behavior is public, filmed, private, or anonymous to separate social desirability from internalization.
Key references to organize:
- Govorun and Payne (2006) on ego depletion and automatic versus controlled components of prejudice.
- Gailliot, Plant, Butz, and Baumeister (2007) on increasing self-regulatory strength and stereotype suppression.
- Legault, Green-Demers, Grant, and Chung (2007) on self-determination theory and implicit/explicit prejudice regulation.
- Legault, Green-Demers, and Eadie (2009) on internalization and automatized stereotype suppression.
- Muraven (2008) on prejudice as self-control failure.
- Buzinski and Kitchens (2017) on self-regulation, social pressure, and prejudice.
Key risks:
- Ego depletion effects are theoretically and empirically contested, so the construct should be handled carefully.
- Strong social pressure may reduce expressed prejudice without changing internal motivation.
- The most interesting prediction may involve interactions among automatic bias, motivation, social pressure, and available control.
- Public monitoring may reduce prejudice expression for impression-management reasons rather than changing underlying automatic responses.
Related ideas: