Socially critical decisions towards low status groups: the role of meritocracy

Socially critical decisions towards low status groups: the role of meritocracy Rui Costa-Lopes Ana Filipa Madeira Mariana Pires de Miranda Wilson Moreira 6. 138 ambiguous inclusions: inside out, outside in We make trivial decisions everyday but, every once in a while, we face decisions that have a deep impact on others, as they may imply serious harm or the unequal distribution of relevant material or symbolic resources. These socially critical decisions (scd) constitute the core of this chapter. Its main goal is to describe the literature on these scd and present empirical research testing how the contextual salience of a meritocratic norm impacts on these decisions towards low status group members. The first part of this chapter will describe the existing research on scd within asymmetric social relations that has mostly focused on different examples, such as “shoot vs. not-shoot” police decisions as a function of different ethnic target groups, medical decisions, moral dilemmas and legal decisions. A consistent result across these different decisional contexts (though with some caveats) indicates that low status group members (e. g. blacks, gypsies, the homeless) are targeted with more unfavorable decisions, therefore suggesting an inequality in treatment that may be undermining the full scale inclusion of these group members. We describe how this research has been more focused on showing this group-based discrimination in scd than in explaining it. Importantly, a significant factor that has been consistently shown to impact on group-based distinctions has been neglected by scd research: the salience of a meritocratic norm. Although seen as an important social norm that regulates society, descriptive meritocracy – i. e. the belief that people are rewarded based on their efforts – is nonetheless associated with intolerance and dislike of low status group members and may therefore be logically associated with more unfavourable decisions towards low status groups. This lay explanation of discrimination may legitimise the maintenance of inequality and limit actions towards inclusion. In the second part of this chapter, we will present the rationale for such hypothesis and present our own research developed around this idea. We end the chapter with a succinct discussion on how this bias in scd hinders a full integration of low status group members in society. shoot vs. not shoot decisions towards low status group members Police shootings are a paradigmatic example of a situation where individuals are forced to make socially critical decisions that may carry very serious socially critical decisions towards low status groups 139 consequences. Police officers face a challenging situation when arriving at a dangerous scene: there may be several individuals, with some of them being armed and others not. In a fraction of a second, the police officer needs to make a shoot vs. not shoot decision. Not to shoot an armed individual may result in the police officer getting shot, shooting an unarmed individual may lead to a tragic loss of innocent lives. Moreover, these wrong decisions may lead to major social unrest. In New York, 1999, Amadou Diallo, a 22 year old African immigrant was shot and killed by the police when he tried to reach for his pocket to show some id and the police mistakenly assumed he was reaching for a gun. Several similar incidents with African Americans have occurred since, namely the shooting of Sean Bell in 2006 and the shooting of Trayvon Martin in 2012. In all these incidents, public opinion was focused on one question in particular: would the police officers have made the same decision if the suspect had been white, or even just non-black? This was the question that led Joshua Correll and his colleagues at the University of Colorado at Boulder to set up a research programme that would help provide some answers by recreating in a controlled environment, as realistically as possible, the experience that police officers go through when they are expected to make these decisions. Accordingly, Correll developed a video game simulation in which White or Black targets appeared in different poses and against different backgrounds during several trials of the task, either holding a gun or a neutral object (e. g. mobile phone). Correll and colleagues first used this computer game in a study with university students as participant colleagues ( Correll et al. 2002). Results yield a pattern of shooter bias, where participants decide to shoot Black more quickly and more frequently than White targets. Additionally, participants, on average, required more time to make the decision not to shoot an unarmed suspect when the suspect was black than white. After some years, the same researchers decided to assess the presence of such shooter bias within the police officer population of a major us city in the same state as the first study. Using the community population of the same geographical area as a comparison sample, police officers went through the same computer simulation and results showed that both police officers and community samples exhibited robust racial bias in terms of speed, i. e. participants were quicker to make the decision to shoot black suspects than white suspects. Notably, however, police officers did not show the same shooter 140 ambiguous inclusions: inside out, outside in bias effect in terms of the final decision. That is, although community members set the shooting decision criterion lower for Black targets (compared to White suspects), police officers outperformed them by expressing no such bias in the decision (Correll et al. 2007). According to the authors, results seem to indicate that the training that police officers go through may not affect the speed with which stereotype-incongruent targets are processed, but that it does affect the ultimate decision. This result is consistent with the hypothesis that the shooter bias effect is partially explained by the stereotypical associations that the participants have of the targets. In other words, people take less time in making a decision that is consistent with Black and White stereotyping and more time in making a decision that is inconsistent. Implicit prejudice (i. e. negative stereotypes) leads to more unfavourable decisions towards Blacks. The research line developed by Correll and colleagues is consistent with (and indirectly supported by) research from other us-based social psychology colleagues. For example, Payne (2001) developed a paradigm in which he was able to demonstrate that, when guessing the real content hidden in blurred images, participants are quicker to distinguish weapons from tools when they have been previously primed with pictures of Black faces, compared to White faces. Another (more indirect) example comes from research by Eberhardt and colleagues (Eberhardt et al. 2004), showing that people have a stronger tendency to turn their attention to Black faces, than to White faces, when they have been primed with the concept of crime. socially critical decisions towards low status group members in moral dilemmas The classic example of socially critical decisions comes from the study of moral dilemmas, although in this case, these are often based on artificial situations created to illustrate fundamental ideas. Nonetheless, these fundamental ideas often resonate with real examples from everyday life. When we decide, for example, if we support a war that will most likely kill hundreds of soldiers and civilians for the sake of a more just society; or when a fireman has to decide, during a fire, whether he goes left, to save two elderly people, or right, to save a baby. But how do we decide in these situations? Do we maximise the number of people we save? In theory, moral rules are rigid and absolute. The Bible’s Ten socially critical decisions towards low status groups 141 Commandments include unequivocal exclusions such as “Thou shalt not kill” In real life, however, people are often puzzled about what is the right thing to do. Though it is not yet completely clear what drives people’s decisions within these moral dilemmas, some consistent results have already been identified. A most relevant example for this chapter concerns decisions within moral dilemmas involving people from low status groups. The classic example of a moral dilemma is the “trolley dilemma”. This dilemma has several versions but the most common one is a version with a lever: “There is a runaway trolley barrelling down the railway tracks. Ahead, on the tracks, there are five people tied up and unable to move. The trolley is headed straight for them. You are standing some distance off in the train yard, next to a lever. If you pull this lever, the trolley will switch to a different set of tracks. However, you notice that there is one person tied up on the side track.” Thus, you have two options, you either do nothing, which means the trolley will kill the five people on the main track, or you decide to pull the lever, which diverts the trolley to the side track, saving five people but killing one. While there is no consensus on what the right decision is here, the two fundamental principles that are evoked by those making one decision or the other have been identified. A deontological principle states that the morality of an action lies in its intrinsic nature (Kant 1785 [1959]), which means that causing harm is always wrong, regardless of any positive consequences that may derive from that action. This principle is evoked by people who choose not to do anything. The utilitarian principle states that the morality of an action depends indeed on its consequences and that we should make the decision that maximises the well-being of the majority of people involved (Mill 1861 [1998]). This is the principle evoked by people who choose to kill one in order to save five, as the number of lives saved by that decision is larger than the number of sacrificed victims. Hundreds of thousands of people have responded to the trolley dilemma and its lever version. And even though there is no consensus, the majority of individuals favour the utilitarian principle that you should kill one to save many (Cushman, Young and Hauser 2006; Greene et al. 2001). Recently, Cikara and colleagues (Cikara et al. 2010) brought the status dimension to trolley dilemmas involving victims and other individuals differing in terms of social status. Cikara and colleagues presented several trolley dilemma scenarios to participants, manipulating the social status 142 ambiguous inclusions: inside out, outside in of the five people on the main track and the victim on the side track by presenting pictures in different scenarios.1 Results showed that participants see the utilitarian decision – i. e. the decision to sacrifice the victim on the side track to save the five people on the main track – as more favourable when the victim belongs to a low-competence group and that the scenario in which the sacrifice of the victim was seen as more acceptable was the one involving a victim belonging to a group seen as having both low-competence and low warmth (e. g. the homeless or drug addicts). To our knowledge, no other study has manipulated the victims’ status within moral dilemmas, instead, the research has been more focused on distinguishing how participants from upperand lower-classes respond to the dilemmas (Côté, Piff and Willer 2013). socially critical decisions towards low status group members in the medical context Research on medical decisions is considerably more developed than the previous two research areas. Consistent with other decision making domains, health care providers demonstrate implicit biases suggesting the existence of discriminatory attitudes and decisions towards low status groups, such as Blacks (Blair et al. 2013; Cooper et al. 2012; Green et al. 2007; Haider et al. 2011, 2015a, 2015b; Hausmann et al. 2015; Sabin et al. 2009; Schaa et al. 2015; Stepanikova 2012) and Latinos (Blair et al. 2013; Stepanikova 2012). So why should the level of bias of a particular health provider be of concern during medical decision making? Evidence from four systematic reviews suggests a significant positive relationship between level of implicit bias and lower quality of care (Hall et al. 2015; Paradies, Truong, and Priest 2014; FitzGerald and Hurst 2017; Dehon et al. 2017). This lower quality of care manifests itself in more negative patient-provider interactions but also in clinical decisions. Indeed, a large body of research found empirical evidence of implicit bias influencing clinical decision making towards low status 1 A short note here to define social status in this context. Fiske and colleagues (Fiske et al. 2002) posited that group stereotypes are defined in terms of two fundamental dimensions: competence and warmth. A person belongs to a low status group when that group is perceived as being low in competence or warmth, and naturally the lowest status is attributed to people who are seen as both incompetent and cold. socially critical decisions towards low status groups 143 groups (Bogart et al. 2001; Burgess et al. 2008; Di Caccavo, Fazal‐Short and Moss 2000; Drwecki 2011; Ponterotto, Potere and Johansen 2002; Green et al. 2007; Hirsh, Jensen and Robinson 2010; Stepanikova 2012; Sabin, Rivara and Greenwald 2008; Schulman et al. 1999; Thamer et al. 2001). For example, Schulman and colleagues (1999) found that physicians were less likely to refer Black women for cardiac catheterisation, even after controlling for symptoms, i. e. the physicians’ estimates of the probability of coronary disease and clinical characteristics. Also two studies on treatment recommendations found that providers with greater implicit racial bias are less likely to recommend thrombolysis treatment when presented with clinical vignettes presenting patients with chest pain symptoms, and are less likely to prescribe postsurgical pain medication for a low status patient (Black) than a high status patient (White) (Green et al. 2007). Several studies have shown how the salience of target status group indirectly activates racial stereotypes during clinical decision making. For example, studies using racial primes found physicians’ medical decisions being influenced when subliminally exposed to Black and Hispanic stimuli ( Stepanikova 2012), specifically, when primed with stereotypes related to African Americans, participants tended to rate a hypothetical patient more negatively. Another study found that physicians rated Black patients as less likely than Whites to comply with medical advice or participate in cardiac rehabilitation if prescribed, although these differences were of only borderline statistical significance (Van Ryn et al. 2006). Moskowitz and colleagues (2012) found that physicians had lower trust in non-White, compared with White, patients. Furthermore, the salience of target status group seems to indirectly affect individual’s evaluations and judgements during socially critical decision making. For example, in a study intended to examine medical students’ willingness to prescribe antiretroviral pre-exposure prophylaxis (prep) to a White vs Black patient, participants judged the Black patient to be more likely to increase his rate of unprotected sex if prescribed prep, which, in turn, was associated with reduced willingness to prescribe prep to the Black patient (Calabrese et al. 2014). A similar indirect effect was not found for the white patient. This result is consistent with research on stereotype activation in clinical judgement and decision making (Hirsh, Jensen and Robinson 2010; Van Ryn et al. 2006), suggesting that physicians often associate a racial category with racial stereotypes and use them as decision making heuristics 144 ambiguous inclusions: inside out, outside in leading to corresponding behaviour. Moreover, it has been shown how implicit stereotyping may affect diagnosis and treatment without conscious knowledge of its influence, or may even unduly influence diagnosis and treatment (Bean et al. 2014; Dovidio and Fiske 2012; Moskowitz, Stone, and Childs 2012). More recently, studies have shown how cognitive stressors (e. g. time pressure, cognitive load) may promote reliance on stereotypes and racial bias during decision making (Burgess et al. 2014; Stepanikova 2012). For example, it was found that male physicians were using controlled processes to “correct” for racial stereotypes when they had the opportunity to do so (e. g. sufficient cognitive resources), but were influenced by racial stereotypes in their decision making when under cognitive busyness (Burgess et al. 2014). socially critical decisions towards low status group members in the legal context Research on decision making in the legal context is fairly developed too and it also yields results showing that low status group members are targeted with more unfavourable decisions. However, the dimension this research most focuses on is the one referring to racial categories, i. e. the research on legal decisions that informs about possible bias against low status group members is almost exclusively about more negative decisions towards different-race targets. A recent Portuguese investigative journalism story (Henriques, 2017-08-19) has described that one in every 73 citizens of Lusophone Africa over 16 years old and living in Portugal is in prison, whereas for Portuguese citizens in the same age group the proportion is one to 736. The same kind of results have come up throughout the years in different national investigations (Oliveira and Gomes 2014; Roldão 2016; Seabra and Santos 2006). However, this is clearly not an exclusive problem for Portugal. In the usa, for instance, 38% of the people in prison are Black, 21% are Hispanic, whereas they represent 13% and 17% of the total population, respectively (Nellis 2016). As striking as these proportions are, they should be interpreted cautiously. Seabra and Santos (2006) have modulated scenarios within the Portuguese context in which the ratios of incarcerated population in function of the total group population account for confounding variables (such as the social structure of the groups), and even for distortions in the data (such as the non-inclusion socially critical decisions towards low status groups 145 of people with irregular status; the inclusion of foreigners who do not reside in the country, etc.). When taking into consideration the bigger picture, the difference between the likelihood of a migrant being in prison compared to a Portuguese citizen decreases but is, nonetheless, greater for the migrant group than for the Portuguese group in every scenario. These differences were described and analysed in Faigman and colleagues’ review in terms of the different stages of the criminal path, from (1) the Police encounter, moving to (2) the Charge and plea bargain, and (3) the Trial, and ending with (4) the sentencing (Faigman et al. 2012). The Police encounter phase is sufficiently discussed in the section on shoot vs. not shoot decisions. To our knowledge, there are few studies that describe what happens in the phase in which prosecutors decide to charge or not to charge someone for a given crime. Furthermore, from the results of these studies, it is not possible to describe a consistent pattern, with analysis of justice data sets suggesting either some (Radelet and Pierce 1985) or no disparate decisions by prosecutors (Caravelis, Chiricos and Bales 2013). As such, studies that can isolate the effect of race or status in the charge and plea bargain phase are in need. More attention has been given to the trial and sentencing phases, in regard to which we highlight three meta-analyses conducted in the context of mock trials. Mazzella and Feingold (1994) conducted a meta-analysis including 29 studies which revealed a non-significant effect of racial bias on either trial judgments or sentences, but with the defendant’s race having an effect on sentences qualified by the type of crime. On the other hand, a meta-analysis conducted by Sweeney and Haney (1992), including 14 studies, reported a small but significant racial bias in the sentencing phase, with White participants giving Black defendants longer sentences than White ones. To integrate these inconsistent findings, Mitchell and colleagues (Mitchell et al. 2005) conducted another meta-analysis exploring possible moderators of this racial bias effect. The authors defined racial bias specifically as “a juror’s disparate treatment of a defendant from a racial out-group, when compared with a defendant of the juror’s own-race, in verdict and sentencing decisions”. As such, the authors aimed at extending this effect to an other-race context. Results unequivocally demonstrated the existence of a small but significant other-race racial bias in studies addressing juror decision making, which nonetheless, and in line with our argument, became more pronounced when White jurors evaluated Black defendants. 152 ambiguous inclusions: inside out, outside in status during the decision making process. According to the literature on implicit attitudes (Fazio 1990; Wilson et al. 2000; Dovidio et al. 1997), when participants become aware of study intent (e. g. racial issue), if they have the opportunity and motivation to think beforehand about the consequences of their decisions (e. g. discrimination), their responses will be primarily based on explicit attitudes. In this study, participants had sufficient time (e. g. opportunity) and might have been motivated to control for prejudice, which may have led them to overcorrect their responses towards the low status target. Nevertheless, when the opportunity is not permitted (e. g. due to time pressure) implicit attitudes are more influential (Fazio 1990; Wilson et al. 2000; Dovidio et al. 1997). Following up on this idea, in Study 2 we focused on the perceived high responsibility disease, and added a time pressure condition sought to examine the salience effect of meritocracy on the participants’ decision towards low status groups with a perceived high responsibility disease. Replicating the previous paradigm, we hypothesised that under the salience of meritocracy, participants in the high pressure condition would be more likely to assign a lower priority level to a low status patient (compared to a high status target). Results indicate that participants in the high pressure condition were marginally more likely to assign a lower priority to a low status patient than a high status patient. In contrast, participants in the low pressure condition were more likely to assign a higher priority to a low status patient, although this difference did not reach statistical significance. More importantly, results also showed that these effects were qualified by the condition of meritocracy salience. Specifically, under high pressure, participants were significantly more likely to assign a lower priority to the low status patient than the high status one, and this bias was significantly stronger in the condition where meritocracy was made salient. some preliminary conclusions and unfavourable scd as a barrier to inclusion While providing initial support to the main hypothesis that meritocracy is associated with more unfavourable decisions towards low status group members, this research programme is still at a very incipient stage. Not only do we need to start addressing the other two types of decisions (in the legal context and the shoot vs. not shoot decisions), but we must also consolidate socially critical decisions towards low status groups 153 our knowledge on the obtained effects, namely through the analysis of the underlying mechanisms. Nevertheless, the results obtained so far allow us to ponder the potentially dangerous consequences of promoting a meritocratic norm. What these results already seem to indicate is that when people are made to believe that society is structured along meritocratic principles, they will make inferences about what people deserve according to their situation. They will tend to think that people who are in unfavourable conditions (i. e. low status groups) are in those circumstances of their own accord, as if they are solely responsible for their situation. This kind of inference takes the place of any alternative thinking that considers other determining (societal) factors for people’s situations. Additionally, this line of thinking legitimises discriminatory decisions about issues involving low status group members. A significant part of the meaning of inclusion is about equal treatment and equal opportunities. What the results of our own work and the results of the other studies described in this chapter show is that people from low status groups are treated differently, and this difference consistently means a more negative treatment. They are more likely to be shot in police encounters; they are more likely to be sacrificed if the situation calls for such an act; they are more likely to be prescribed the wrong treatment in a medical context and they are more likely to be targeted with harsher sentences. Moreover, these results also indicate that if discussions emerge about the existence of this discriminatory behaviour, the narratives that ensue are characterised by discrimination-legitimising discourses that place the responsibility of the situation on the targets of discrimination. Thus, this research aims to contribute to a more nuanced reflection about the situation of low status groups and how attitudes and behaviours may be contributing to a vicious cycle, where the discussion about causality and responsibility may be tainted from the start by discriminatory or fallacious assumptions. 154 ambiguous inclusions: inside out, outside in ____________________________________ rui costa-lopes Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa Av. Prof. Aníbal Bettencourt 9 — 1600-036 Lisboa, Portugal [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0002-1509-6397 ____________________________________ ana filipa madeira Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa [email protected] orcid.org/0000-0003-4959-7947 ____________________________________ mariana pires de miranda Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa mariana.mira[email protected]lisboa.pt orcid.org/0000-0003-4208-2967 ____________________________________ wilson moreira Faculdade de Psicologia, Universidade de Lisboa wrmoreira[email protected] orcid.org/0000-0002-6799-0526 ____________________________________ references baldus, D., et al. 1998. “Racial discrimination and the death penalty in the post-Furman era: an empirical and legal overview, with recent findings from Philadelphia”. Cornell Law Review, lxxxiii: 1638-1770. bean, M., et al. 2014. “Documenting nursing and medical students’ stereotypes about Hispanic and American Indian patients”. 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