The influence of skin colour on the experience of ownership in the rubber hand illusion.

Racial prejudice is associated with a fundamental distinction between "us" and "them"-a distinction linked to the perceived overlap between representations of the self and others. Implicit prejudice has been shown to reduce the intensity of White individuals' hand ownership sensation as induced by the Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) with dark rubber hands. However, evidence for this link to implicit prejudice comes from self-report questionnaire data regarding the RHI. As an alternative, we assessed the onset time of the RHI. We hypothesized that onset time of the RHI would be higher for the black compared to the white RH, acting as the mediator between implicit prejudice and magnitude of the RH illusion and proprioceptive drift. As expected, participants took longer to incorporate the black RH and presented lower RH illusion magnitude and a smaller proprioceptive drift for the black RH. Mediation analysis revealed a significant indirect effect of implicit racial bias on proprioceptive drift and magnitude of illusion through onset time to illusion only for the black RH. These findings further illuminate the connection between implicit prejudice and embodied perception, suggesting new perspectives on how implicit biases operate.

Ostracism via virtual chat room-Effects on basic needs, anger and pain.

Ostracism is characterized by a social pain provoked by being excluded and ignored. In order to address the effects of social ostracism in virtual non-physical interactions, we developed a more realistic paradigm as an alternative to Cyberball and assessed its effects on participant's expression of basic social needs, emotional experience and painful feeling. The chat room consisted of controlled social dialogue interactions between participants and two other (confederate) chat room partners. Exclusion was manipulated by varying the number of messages a participant received (15% and 33% in exclusion and inclusion, respectively). Analysis of participant (N = 54) responses revealed that exclusion induced a lower experience of basic-need states and greater anger, compared with included participants. In addition, excluded participants reported higher levels of two specific self-pain feelings, namely tortured and hurt. Our findings suggest that this procedure is effective in inducing social ostracism in a realistic and yet highly controlled experimental procedure.

Gender Attitudes in Early Childhood: Behavioral Consequences and Cognitive Antecedents.

This study examined factors that predicted children's gender intergroup attitudes at age 5 and the implications of these attitudes for intergroup behavior. Ethnically diverse children from low-income backgrounds (N = 246; Mexican-, Chinese-, Dominican-, and African American) were assessed at ages 4 and 5. On average, children reported positive same-gender and negative other-gender attitudes. Positive same-gender attitudes were associated with knowledge of gender stereotypes. In contrast, positive other-gender attitudes were associated with flexibility in gender cognitions (stereotype flexibility, gender consistency). Other-gender attitudes predicted gender-biased behavior. These patterns were observed in all ethnic groups. These findings suggest that early learning about gender categories shape young children's gender attitudes and that these gender attitudes already have consequences for children's intergroup behavior at age 5.

Cross-generational effects of discrimination among immigrant mothers: perceived discrimination predicts child's healthcare visits for illness.

OBJECTIVE: This study tested whether an immigrant mother's perception of ethnic and language-based discrimination affects the health of her child (indexed by the child's frequency of sick visits to the doctor, adjusting for well-visits), as a function of her ethnic-group attachment and length of U.S. residency. METHOD: A community-based sample of 98 immigrant Dominican and Mexican mothers of normally developing 14-month-old children were interviewed. Mothers reported their perceived ethnic and language-based discrimination, degree of ethnic-group attachment, length of time in the United States, and frequency of their child's doctor visits for both illness and routine (healthy) exams. RESULTS: Among more recent immigrants, greater perceived ethnic and language-based discrimination were associated with more frequent sick-child visits, but only among those reporting low ethnic-group attachment. The associations between both forms of perceived discrimination and sick-child visits were not observed among mothers reporting high ethnic-group attachment. Among more established immigrants, perceived language-based discrimination was associated with more frequent sick-child visits regardless of ethnic-group attachment. CONCLUSION: These results suggest that a Latina mother's experience with ethnic and language-based discrimination is associated with her child's health, as indicated by doctor visits for illness, but that strong ethnic-group attachment may mitigate this association among recent immigrants.