Misrecognitive discrimination: field and lab experiments

Face-to-face interactions between people of different cultures are the theater of complex emotional processes that influence how individuals behave towards each other. Understanding these processes is crucial if we want to address the problems that typically arise from inter-cultural interactions. This research project proposes to study the emotional communication observed during interactions between Muslims and non-Muslims. Past research on this topic is mostly based on questionnaires (i.e. people report how they would think or act in particular situations), hence it does not really address the communication styles people actually adopt in their relationships with other cultural groups. The objectives of our project are therefore: 1) To describe observable communicative behavior (e.g. facial expression, body posture) associated with misrecognitive discrimination against Muslims, 2) to study the social and emotional bases of these interpersonal behaviors, as well as the social and emotional impact of interpersonal discrimination on the Muslim minority. We predict that when confronted with Muslim individuals, people will show subtle signs of nonverbal expressions associated with emotions known to regulate intergroup relations such as disgust, fear, and anger. We also predict that when exposed to these behaviors, people will express mixed emotions indicative of shame and humiliated fury. Moreover, we do not expect everyone to react to these situations in the same way and predict that the observed emotional reactions will be moderated by individual variables such as social dominance orientation, authoritarianism, and implicit attitudes towards the out-group. Emotion regulation strategies are also expected to attenuate the subtle emotional reactions. The methodology utilizes naturalistic observations of nonverbal behavior in public places in Paris and Vienna, in a research paradigm involving help requests between members of different cultural communities. In addition, we plan a series of psychological experiments, in which we combine questionnaires, face-to-face social interactions, and measurements of physiological activity (e.g. heart rate and respiration). The experiments are designed to study the different components of emotional reactivity under tightly controlled conditions, in relation to the behaviors observed in public places. The combination of field and laboratory experiments in a single project is innovative and is aimed at gaining valid scientific knowledge that can be applied to everyday interactions between people of different cultures. This project is important because it will allow us to discover psychological processes we are not always aware of when interacting with people of different cultures. These unconscious processes can sometimes prevent the positive unfolding of inter-cultural relationships and therefore undermine attempts at social integration. In addition, this project has the potential to make a scientific breakthrough in the study of inter-cultural relationships because it integrates different measurement techniques (questionnaires, behavioral observations, and physiological measurements), a rare feature in psychological research.