Are You a Criminal?: A Senior Project Examining the Relationship Between Stereotype and Power Using Signal Detection Analysis

Stereotype and power interact together every day in manners which previous research has substantiated holds some negative outcomes on others. The current project studies the mechanisms underlying stereotypic behavior and the way in which power manifests itself in stereotypic behaviors through Signal Detection Analysis. Participants were introduced to names of who they believed to be criminals and later were asked to identify the criminals from a list of names including non-criminals, following the False-Criminality Paradigm. The current study hypothesized that participants primed with power would exhibit more stereotypic behavior in judging individuals as criminal or not compared to a control condition; in addition researchers hypothesized that criterion bias would appear as the underlying mechanism of bias meaning that participants would shift the criteria needed to consider minorities as criminal compared to non-minorities. Participants did display more stereotypic behavior when primed with power, but this occurred as a result of decreased sensitivity, not criterion bias. This study offers some insight into the world of power and stereotype, highlighting sensitivity as an operating mechanism of stereotype, for which further research should be conducted. These results led to the need for this project to include several different intervention techniques as well that are used for reducing stereotype.