As a social construct, race is defined by a set of phenotypical features (e.g., skin color & hair texture) that were thought to be manifestations of underlying differences in intelligence, temperament, and physical prowess (Omi, 2001). As such, the threat associated with it may be fundamentally different from naturally occurring threats. Specifically, skin color is a socially constructed symbolic threat that is culturally delineated and affects social perceptions (Stangor & Crandall, 2003), which is particularly dangerous due to how often people respond to benign out-group members as if they are threatening (Neuberg & Schaller, 2016).

Using an intersectional identity framework, my research program investigates mental health disparities disproportionately affecting Black women. Located at the intersection of multiple stigmatized identities, Black women frequently experience gendered racism (the intersection of racism and sexism), which is a social stressor that predicts global psychological distress (Essed1991; Schwartzand Meyer 2010; Thomas et al. 2008). To cope, Black women often engage in identity shifting (adjusting behavior & language to fit cultural norms (Jones & Shorter-Gooden, 2004).

In Jones et al. (in prep) “IAT Scores Modulate Collision Judgements to Looming Faces”, we investigated whether looming images affect distance judgments based on race and whether racial bias modulated this effect. Adapted from Vagnoni, Lourenco, & Longo (2012), we utilized black and white faces in the visual looming task. Our stimuli differed from classic implicit bias tasks since we used both male and female faces in each racial category (Chicago Face Database). Participants also completed the Implicit Association Task (IAT; Greenwald et al., 1998), which hypothesized would modulate performance on the visual looming task.