Talking About Race

IPR/C2S postdoctoral fellow investigates interracial interactions

In a country that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder referred to as “a nation of cowards” when discussing race, how can we work to make interracial contact lead to positive outcomes for all involved? Research by IPR/C2S postdoctoral fellow Sophie Trawalter might help to provide answers to such discussions.

“Interracial contact can be stressful” Trawalter said. “But, if individuals can learn to cope with this stress in adaptive, pro-social ways, they can reap the benefits of diversity.”  The aim of her work is to find viable strategies to cope with the challenges of diversity. She hopes that such strategies will reduce intergroup tensions and improve outcomes for both racial minority and white individuals.

In her work, Trawalter explores the short- and long-term consequences of interracial contact. Working with IPR/C2S psychologist Jennifer Richeson, she found that white and black individuals often self-regulate their thoughts, behaviors, and/or emotions during interracial contact, leaving them cognitively exhausted. As a result, these individuals perform worse on a cognitive performance task following interracial compared with same-race interactions. However, Trawalter and Richeson also found that individuals who approach interracial contact as an opportunity for positive interethnic dialogue performed just as well following interracial or same-race interactions.

In addition to exploring the immediate cognitive costs of interracial contact, in 2007 Trawalter received a three-year National Service Research Award, a postdoctoral training grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to explore the physiological effects and health consequences of interracial contact. Working with C2S Director/IPR faculty fellow Lindsay Chase Lansdale and IPR/C2S faculty fellow Emma Adam, Trawalter set up a social psychology lab to monitor interactions and collect biomarker data. In this work, they find that whites who are particularly concerned about appearing prejudiced exhibit patterns of physiological reactivity that is reflective of threat in response to interracial—but not same-race—contact. 

To examine the long-term consequences of contending with diversity more generally, Trawalter and her colleagues conducted a longitudinal study of white and racial minority college freshmen this past year. In this study, college freshmen completed a number of surveys about their family and home environments. Then, at various times during the academic year, students provided daily diary assessments of their social interactions and saliva samples to be assayed for stress-related analytes. These data will allow Trawalter, Chase-Lansdale, Adam, and Richeson to examine whether family variables such as parental relationships and socialization affect students’ responses to social interactions in new and diverse environments such as the college campus. Trawalter hopes that these data will shed light on white and racial minority students’ transition to college, providing hints for ensuring that both white and racial minority students feel included at academic institutions.

Trawalter will take up a position as assistant professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the fall.