How do confronters want perpetrators to respond? Defining successful confrontation as the match between desired and actual outcomes.

Research on confronting prejudice frequently defines an effective confrontation as one that induces change in the perpetrator's prejudicial beliefs or actions. We argue for a broader definition, defining successful confrontation as one that elicits the confronter's desired response. Using a community sample of 152 adults, we conducted an exploratory study in which participants recalled a time when they had confronted racism or sexism. Results revealed a frequent mismatch between what confronters desired and what they received from the perpetrator. Path analysis showed that a perceived match between desired and actual perpetrator responses to confrontation predicted greater positive and lower negative emotion among confronters, across a range of perpetrator responses. We argue that researchers need to expand definitions of successful confrontation to better understand the ways in which confronters' and perpetrators' behaviors intersect within lived experiences of prejudice.

Reading the news on Twitter: Source and item memory for social media in younger and older adults.

BACKGROUND: Social media content is well-remembered, possibly because of its personal relevance and gossipy nature. It is unclear whether the mnemonic advantage of social media extends to a population less familiar with these platforms and whether knowing the content is from social media sources influences memory. This study examined how the presentation of news-like content in social media affected both item and source memory across two age groups. Younger adults (n = 42) and older adults (n = 32) studied tweets and news headlines that appeared in the format of Twitter posts or CNN headlines - these items were designed to be either congruent (e.g., tweets formatted as Twitter posts) or incongruent (e.g., tweets formatted as CNN headlines). RESULTS: For item memory, both age groups correctly recognized tweets more than headlines. Source identification was more accurate when format and content were congruent than incongruent. Signal detection analyses indicated that the source advantage for congruent items was largely driven by a bias to select the format that matched the content's original source and that this tendency was stronger in older adults. CONCLUSIONS: These results replicate previous literature on the mnemonic advantage of social media content. Although both younger and older adults remembered the content of social media better than the content of news sources, older adults were more sensitive than younger adults to congruency effects in source memory. These findings suggest that older adults rely more on their prior knowledge of conventional language and style in traditional and social media.

The Effect of Gender Body-Swap Illusions on Working Memory and Stereotype Threat.

The underrepresentation of women in technical and STEM fields is a well-known problem, and stereotype threatening situations have been linked to the inability to recruit and retain women into these fields. Virtual reality enables the unique ability to perform body-swap illusions, and research has shown that these illusions can change participant behavior. Characteristically people take on the traits of the avatar they are embodying. We hypothesized that female participants embodying male avatars when a stereotype threat was made salient would demonstrate stereotype lift. We tested our hypothesis through a between-participants user study in an immersive virtual environment by measuring working memory. Our results support that stereotype threat can be induced in an immersive virtual environment, and that stereotype lift is possible with fully-immersive body-swap illusions. Additionally, our results suggest that participants in a gender-swapped avatar without an induced stereotype threat have significantly impaired working memory; however, this impairment is lifted when a threat is made salient. We discuss possible theories as to why a body-swap illusion from a female participant into a male avatar would only increase working memory impairment when not under threat, as well as applications and future research directions. Our results offer additional insight into understanding the cognitive effects of body-swap illusions, and provide evidence that virtual reality may be an applicable tool for decreasing the gender gap in technology.