Social and Personality Psychology Compass 3/3 (2009): 211–226, 10.1111/j.1751-9004.2009.00177.x
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Schooling the Cognitive Monster: The Role
of Motivation in the Regulation and Control
of Prejudice
Margo J. Monteith,* Jill E. Lybarger and Anna Woodcock
Purdue University
Abstract
Motivation has been a central construct in theoretical and empirical efforts to
understand the nature of prejudice and stereotyping. We briefly review core
motivational underpinnings of prejudice and stereotyping, focusing on aspects of
the human condition that help to explain why we are so prone to bias. The
strong propensity toward stereotyping and prejudice along with the automatic
manner in which intergroup biases often operate have led researchers to question
the controllability of such biases (e.g., Bargh’s (1999) characterization of stereotyping
as a ‘cognitive monster’ that could not be ‘chained’ through efforts at control).
We revisit the issue of the controllability of stereotyping and prejudice in light of
recent work examining the effects of motivations to control prejudice on regulatory
processes. Although a top-down approach to regulation has been emphasized in
much past work (e.g., the conscious replacement of prejudiced associations with
more egalitarian thoughts), there is growing evidence that more automated and
less effortful bottom-up regulation is also possible (i.e., a ‘schooling’ of the
‘cognitive monster’). Altogether, the accumulated evidence points to the limitations
of dual-process approaches when applied to understanding the control and
regulation of prejudiced responses. The evidence argues instead for a more
complex, dynamic, and multi-level conceptualization of regulation.
Motivational factors have always been central to the study of prejudice,
and they are represented by opposing dual foci: those forces creating and
sustaining bias, and those forces marshaled to regulate and control
it. Thus, motivation is core both to the problem and solution of bias.
Historically, many researchers have reached glum conclusions about the
winner of this motivational fracas. For example, based on evidence available
at the time of his writing, Bargh (1999) likened stereotypical biases to
a ‘cognitive monster’ that could not be controlled, a conclusion much
aligned with the idea that stereotyping and prejudice is inevitable. Our
primary goal in this article is to review especially recent findings concerning
the regulation and control of prejudice. We discuss theoretical and empirical
developments related to people’s motivations to control their prejudice,
© 2009 The Authors
Journal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
212 Motivation and the Regulation and Control of Prejudice
and then we consider the consequences of these motivations and the
extent to which they ultimately facilitate the regulation and control.
These findings shed new light on people’s abilities for and avenues of
control, and they also call for a more complex, dynamic, and multi-level
conceptualization of regulation – a conceptualization that suggests that
the ‘monster’ might be successfully schooled. However, before discussing
potential avenues for successful prejudice control, we begin with the problem.
That is, precisely what are the forces for regulating and controlling
prejudice up against?
The Problem with Motivation
Historically, much emphasis has been placed on certain core motives that
operate across intra-individual, inter-individual, and intergroup contexts
to encourage the development and operation of stereotyping and prejudice
(see Fiske, 2000). To illustrate, we consider four core motives: the need
to deal with cognitive overload and simplify complex information, to
belong and be part of a group, to enhance and maintain feelings of selfworth, and to justify the status quo. The powerful drive to satisfy these
fundamental human needs can create the building blocks of stereotyping
and prejudice and fuel our reliance on them.
Individuals’ motivation for simplification of the complex social world
through categories, stereotypes, and prejudices has long been recognized.
Allport (1954, p. 20) wrote of the human need to ‘think with the aid
of categories’, and once categories are formed, biased generalizations
and evaluations that favor members of our ingroups over members of
outgroups often follow naturally.
We are also motivated by our need for smooth relations with others,
both interpersonally and between groups. The need to belong and to have
frequent interactions that feel good to us have been described as fundamental
human motivations (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Belonging to a group
comes with tangible rewards, whereas exclusion from a group can come
at a significant cost. The fundamental need to belong thus motivates the
acquisition, expression, and internalization of stereotypes and prejudices –
an idea that has theoretical roots in the Social Identity Theory (SIT; Tajfel
& Turner, 1986). Specifically, SIT posits that people identify with groups
to which they belong and maintain a positive social identity by viewing
one’s ingroups favorably, and that people derogate members of outgroups
to enhance self-esteem. Threats to our ingroups, our way of life, and
the values we hold dear also act as motivators to rely on stereotypes and
exhibit prejudices.
Not unconnected with the fundamental need to belong and to establish a
positive social identity is the strong desire to maintain positive self-esteem.
Self-esteem maintenance and protection are fundamental goals, and they
can often lead to the use of stereotypes and to prejudice. Fein and Spencer
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Motivation and the Regulation and Control of Prejudice
213
(1997) demonstrated the critical role of self-esteem in motivating stereotyping
and prejudice by showing that participants whose self-esteem was threatened
were subsequently more likely to evaluate others on the basis of negative
stereotypes. In turn, the use of prejudice and stereotypes served to
increase the self-esteem of those whose identities where under threat –
creating a self-fulfilling cycle of the use of bias to maintain self-esteem.
Finally, justification of the status quo is another powerful motivator of
prejudice and stereotype use. System justification (Jost, Banaji, & Nosek,
2004) is the motivation to justify the current social order. System justification posits that people are motivated to justify the legitimacy, fairness,
and inevitability of the status quo. The consequence of this motivation is
increased use of stereotypes to rationalize the disparate status of groups
within society. Paradoxically, system justification is not simply a motivational
force driving individuals for whom current inequities benefit. This motivation
to justify also leads members of disadvantaged groups (served least by the
status quo and the motivation to justify it) toward a more positive evaluation
of outgroups in relation to their ingroup (see Jost et al., 2004).
In sum, people are powerfully motivated to deploy the use of stereotypes
and prejudice in the pursuit of fundamental needs. Our motivational
preparedness for this deployment oftentimes leads to intergroup biases.
Importantly, people are often unaware of the presence of these biases, and
of their activation and application in intergroup contexts. In other words,
the biases may reside at the implicit level (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995) and
be driven by automatic processes (e.g., Devine, 1989).
Based on these motivational forces that encourage the development
and operation of stereotypes and prejudices (along with cognitive and
sociocultural forces that do the same), intergroup bias may seem to be
inevitable. Indeed, the question of whether prejudicial bias is an inevitable
consequence of the human condition has been of concern to many social
psychologists and lay individuals alike. If we are not aware of our biased
intergroup processing and do not intend it (i.e., automatic processing is
involved), how can we possibly expect to have control and create change?
In 1999, John Bargh published an influential chapter in which he
critically examined the accumulated evidence to draw conclusions about
whether stereotypic and prejudicial bias could be effectively controlled.
Bargh’s ultimate conclusions were not optimistic. He likened automatic
stereotyping and prejudice to a ‘cognitive monster’ that was too powerful
to be chained through people’s efforts at control. To extend Bargh’s
metaphor, we have outlined the motivational forces that serve to create
and feed this monster. Our goal in the remainder of this article is to
examine the second, opposing role of motivation in stereotyping and
prejudice, and to revisit the important issue of controllability in light of
recent theory and findings concerning the effects of people’s motivations
to control bias. We believe that developments especially since the time of
Bargh’s writing shed new light on processes of control.
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214 Motivation and the Regulation and Control of Prejudice
Motivations to Control Prejudice
The idea that prejudice does not sit well with many people has a long
history. In 1944, Myrdal wrote of the ‘ever-raging dilemma’ that many
Americans experience between their prejudices and their motivation to
live up to the ‘American Creed’ and Christian precepts. In 1954, Allport’s
poignant writing described the ‘inner conflict’ that people experience in
relation to their prejudices, and how this often motivates attempts to ‘put
the brakes’ on one’s stereotyping and prejudice. In the United States,
evidence of people’s motivations to control prejudice grew steadily with
legal and normative shifts that accompanied the major efforts of the Civil
Rights Movement and the aftermath. No longer was discrimination in
public facilities, government, and employment considered lawful. The radical
shifts in laws and norms in people’s everyday lives taught the lesson that
people really should be motivated to avoid prejudice.
The theories of the 1980s that described the ways in which prejudice had
evolved continued to recognize the forces that contribute to prejudiced
tendencies and how they coexisted with people’s motivations to maintain
and protect an image of non-prejudice in others’ eyes (McConahay, 1986;
Sears & Kinder, 1985) and even in their own eyes (Gaertner & Dovidio,
1986). In these theories, the motivation to control prejudice was inferred
from people’s self-reported low-prejudice attitudes (e.g., on the Modern
Racism Scale, McConahay, 1986; and the Attitudes Toward Blacks scale,
Brigham, 1993), while the continued prevalence of their prejudice remained
evident especially in subtle or covert judgmental and behavioral biases
(e.g., see Gaertner & Dovidio, 1986).
Researchers at this time were generally leery of self-reports and
wondered whether people were merely unwilling or unable to admit to their
true prejudiced attitudes. In other words, people might be controlling
their self-reported attitudes in response to external pressures to appear
non-prejudiced – in effect, hiding their actual prejudice. Devine, Monteith,
Zuwerink, and Elliot (1991) reasoned that many people might instead be
unable to control their intergroup biases, particularly one’s involving
automatic processes (Devine, 1989), and they might be aware of the conflict
that this poses to their sincerely held low-prejudiced standards. Such
standards or beliefs about how one should respond in relation to members
of stereotyped groups were conceptualized as motivational goal states.
In sum, the motivation to control prejudice has been a central construct
for decades, shaping theoretical perspectives on the nature of prejudice.
However, until the late 1990s, this central construct was measured rather
indirectly with attitudinal measures and personal standards for responding.
This indirect method had limitations, the most notable being that it could
not disentangle the two obvious motivational bases for controlling
prejudice: an external motivation (i.e., a concern with appearing prejudiced
in the eyes of others) and an internal motivation (i.e., a personal concern
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Journal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Motivation and the Regulation and Control of Prejudice
215
involving feelings of moral obligation to control prejudice). Research
beginning in the late 1990s addressed this issue. Dunton and Fazio (1997)
generated the Motivation to Control Prejudice Reactions Scale that
captured both internal and external motivations, and also a tendency to
restrain one’s self from expressing bias that might lead to disputes with
others. However, the scale did not reliably distinguish between internal
and external motivations, likely because items were not written to
disentangle the two sufficiently (cf. Plant & Devine, 1998). Around the same
time, Plant and Devine (1998) developed the Internal Motivation Scale
(IMS; e.g., ‘Because of my personal values, I believe that using stereotypes
about Black people is wrong’) and the External Motivation Scale (EMS;
e.g., ‘I attempt to appear nonprejudiced toward Black people in order to
avoid disapproval from others’).
Plant and Devine’s program of research (1998; Devine, Plant, Amodio,
Harmon-Jones, & Vance, 2002) has established the largely independent
nature of these motivations, and the importance of considering the two
motivations jointly. For example, individuals who are externally but not
internally motivated to control prejudice are less likely to apply stereotypes
to groups when responding in front of others than in private (Plant &
Devine, 1998). Although the IMS is largely redundant with attitudinal
measures of prejudice, considering whether high IMS individuals are
simultaneously more or less externally motivated to control prejudice
proves important. Consistent with self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan,
2000), high IMS/low EMS individuals appear to have well-established
patterns of responding in low-prejudiced ways that are stable across
situations. In contrast, high IMS/high EMS individuals have the conscious
intention to control their prejudice, but this intention has not been as
well-entrained (Devine et al., 2002).
Consequences of Motivations to Control Prejudice
It is all well and good to be motivated to control prejudiced responses,
but what role do these motivations play in the actual control of biased
responses? Recent research has revealed a variety of ways in which
motivations to control prejudice have consequences that ultimately
facilitate control.
Affective consequences
Motivations are important for subsequent control efforts because when
people discover that their actual responses are inconsistent with their
motivations to control prejudice, negative affect is experienced. When
people’s prejudiced feelings, thoughts, or behaviors conflict with an internal
motivation to control prejudice, self-directed negative affect is experienced.
In other words, discrepancies from the goal of responding without prejudice
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Journal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
216 Motivation and the Regulation and Control of Prejudice
produce feelings of disappointment with the self and guilt. This consequence
has been demonstrated repeatedly using a variety of methods. When
low-prejudice people are asked to consider how they should respond in
specific situations involving members of stereotyping groups and how they
would respond in those situations, negative self-directed affect is heightened
if people’s shoulds are less prejudiced than their woulds (e.g., reporting that
one would feel uncomfortable shaking the hand of a Black person but
that one should not have this reaction; for a review, see Monteith &
Mark, 2005). Such affect has also been observed in experiments that
manipulate whether participants detect failures to respond consistently
with their internal motivation to control prejudice (e.g., Amodio, Devine,
& Harmon-Jones, 2007; Fazio & Hilden, 2001; Monteith, 1993; Monteith,
Ashburn-Nardo, Voils, & Czopp, 2002).
Individuals who are more concerned with controlling their prejudice
due to external concerns also experience negative affect following detection of discrepancies between their actual responses and their motivation,
although this affect takes a different form. Because their apprehension
centers more on how they appear to others, discrepancy detection
produces feelings of threat (Plant & Devine, 1998).
In sum, people do not feel good when they violate motivations to
control prejudice. These feelings are important for instigating subsequent
prejudice regulation efforts.
Regulatory system consequences
Monteith (1993) argued that detection of failures to respond consistently
with motivations to avoid prejudiced responses and the resulting affect can
facilitate the control of future potentially prejudiced responses due to
effects on the regulatory system. According to the Self-Regulation of
Prejudice (SRP) model (Monteith, 1993; Monteith et al., 2002), the
behavioral inhibition system (BIS; Gray, 1982, 1987; Gray & McNaughton,
2000) is activated when motivations to control prejudice are contradicted
by actual behavior. BIS activation is associated with enhanced vigilance,
attention, and arousal (e.g., Gray, 1987). Ongoing behavior is very
briefly interrupted and attention is paid to stimuli that are related to the
occurrence of the prejudiced response. According to the SRP, associations
then can be built between the prejudiced response, the negative
affect resulting from the failure to respond consistently with one’s
prejudice-control motivation, and the stimuli surrounding the prejudiced
response. These associations are referred to as cues for control. When
they are present in the future and a prejudiced response is again possible,
the BIS is again activated and engages a preemptive process of regulation.
Rather than generating a prejudiced response, it should be inhibited
and replaced with a response that is consistent with one’s motivation to
control prejudice.
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Motivation and the Regulation and Control of Prejudice
217
This model can be easily understood in the context of examples from
everyday life. Suppose Jenny (who is White) realizes that she assumed
that a Black person shown on the news was a criminal rather than
the victim of a crime. This automatic assumption is inconsistent with
her internal motivation toward egalitarianism, and she feels guilty about
her reaction. She should momentarily pause and briefly attend to features
of the situation (e.g., which television program, the context in which
the Black target was presented) and build an association between her
faulty ‘criminal assumption’, the surrounding cues, and her negative affect.
The next time she is watching the news, prospective reflection should
be elicited when the program shares features of the previous event, and her
thoughts should be regulated with greater care so that a faulty assumption
is averted.
In sum, the SRP provided the theoretical building block for understanding
how prejudiced responses can be monitored and controlled through the
activity of the BIS. Behavioral evidence documenting the observable
consequences of established cues for control supports the analysis
(e.g., Monteith et al., 2002). Furthermore, neuroscientific techniques such as
functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography have
recently allowed researchers to link inhibitory and regulatory activity in
relation to prejudiced responses to neural systems. Specifically, the anterior
cingulate cortex (ACC) monitors for the presence of conflicts among
cognitions and action tendencies and recruits resources for exerting control
(Botvinick, Braver, Barch, Carter, & Cohen, 2001). Amodio, Master,
Yee, and Taylor (2008) recently provided evidence directly linking activity
of the ACC to the BIS.
The critical activity of the ACC in the detection of the need for
cognitive control in relation to one’s prejudiced responses has now been
established in a number of experiments (Amodio et al., 2007; Amodio,
Kubota, Harmon-Jones, & Devine, 2006; Cunningham et al., 2004;
Richeson et al., 2003). For example, in Amodio et al.’s (2007) research,
participants’ brain activity was monitored while they completed the Weapons
Identification Task (WIT; e.g., Payne, 2001). This task is completed on
the computer. Pictures of either Black or White faces precede pictures of
either guns or tools across many trials, and participants’ task is to respond
as quickly as possible by pressing a specified key as to whether the object
presented after the face is a gun or a tool. The task allows for little conscious
processing of the stimuli because of their rapid presentation. This task
typically reveals racial bias among White participants; for example, tools are
erroneously identified as guns when they are preceded by Black faces
more than when they are preceded by White faces. Among participants
who are internally motivated to control prejudice, such errors conflict
with their goal of responding in nonbiased ways. Amodio et al.’s (2007)
critical finding was that greater conflict-monitoring activity in the ACC
was observed on WIT trials that required stereotype inhibition. Thus, the
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Journal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
218 Motivation and the Regulation and Control of Prejudice
engagement of monitoring processes relevant to the regulation of bias was
found to occur very early in the stream of processing.
We turn now to two ways in which people who are motivated to
control their prejudiced responses can achieve the goal of responding in
egalitarian ways.
Top-down regulation With top-down regulation, detecting the need for
control triggers deliberative processing aimed at responding consistently with one’s motivations to control prejudice. With this form of
regulatory control, even if a stereotype has been automatically activated,
its influence can be consciously inhibited and controlled with the aid of
conscious processing strategies. Of course, this method of control requires
not only the motivation to respond without bias but also the ability to
consider one’s response options with care.
Researchers have identified a variety of top-down regulatory strategies
(see Devine & Monteith, 1999). One such strategy is replacement.
Devine’s (1989) classic research showed that, even if stereotypic associations are automatically activated among low-prejudice individuals, they
can consciously activate and rely on their personal beliefs as replacements
when processing conditions are amenable. The tendency for individuals
who are motivated to control their prejudice to replace prejudiced
responses with more egalitarian ones has now been demonstrated in many
studies, ranging from the stereotypes that people are willing to publicly
and privately endorse (Plant & Devine, 1998), self-reported attitudes
(Dunton & Fazio, 1997; Fazio, Jackson, Dunton, & Williams, 1995),
evaluations of racially charged events (Fazio et al., 1995) and stereotypic
jokes (Monteith, 1993), juridical decisions in race-relevant cases (Dovidio,
Kawakami, Johnson, Johnson, & Howard, 1997), and self-reported
evaluations of Black interaction partners (Dovidio et al., 1997). All of this
research established that, even though the participants highly motivated
to control their prejudice were prone to having biases automatically
activated in the mind, such bias was not evident in their consciously
generated responses.
Another strategy for averting biased responses involves gathering
additional individuating information (Fiske, Lin, & Neuberg, 1999). For
example, the details of individuals’ performance can be evaluated, rather than
making snap judgments that are influenced by social category membership.
Researchers find that the internal motivation to control prejudice is
especially likely to prompt people to attend to individuating information
(Sherman, Stroessner, & Azam, 1997).
Individuals may also employ a conscious suppression strategy in an attempt
to banish stereotypic thoughts from their mind while they are forming
impressions of others or processing information about them (see Wegner,
1994). This thought control strategy can backfire among people who are
not internally motivated to control their prejudice, resulting in a marked
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Journal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Motivation and the Regulation and Control of Prejudice
219
increase in stereotypic thoughts (see Monteith, Sherman, & Devine, 1998).
However, it can be effective for individuals who are internally motivated
to control prejudice (Monteith, Spicer, & Tooman, 1998; Gordijn, Hindriks,
Koomen, Dijksterhuis, & Van Knippenberg, 2004).
In sum, top-down regulation can be used to inhibit and control prejudiced
responses that might otherwise result from an automatic reliance on
stereotypes and evaluative biases. In dual-process model terms, although
stereotypes and evaluative biases may be automatically activated, their
influence at the application stage can be controlled. However, important
limitations to top-down regulation are that individuals need to recognize
the potential for bias in the first place, and they need to have the cognitive
resources to exert deliberative control. Much of Bargh’s (1999) pessimism
about stereotype control stemmed from a lack of evidence at that time
suggesting that this could be accomplished with regularity, especially in
the case of implicit bias activation and application. Recent developments
shed new light on this issue.
Bottom-up regulation Emerging findings are suggesting that bottom-up
regulation can occur among individuals who are highly motivated (and
perhaps also highly practiced) at bias control. This bottom-up regulation
involves a highly automated and sensitive conflict-monitoring process that
triggers the need for regulation pre-consciously, and regulation that follows
without requiring conscious inputs.
In support of this process, studies have revealed bias regulation in
tasks that do not afford much conscious control. Specifically, studies have
shown that the motivation to control prejudice is related to an ability to
regulate race-based bias on implicit tasks. This was first demonstrated in a
series of experiments reported by Devine et al. (2002). Participants motivated
to control prejudice for intrinsic and not external reasons (i.e., high-IMS/
low EMS participants) were effective regulators of prejudice-related bias
not only in deliberative processing situations (i.e., self-reported measures)
but also in non-deliberative processing situations (i.e., on implicit bias
measures). A conceptually similar study using a physiological indicator of
race-based bias (i.e., startle eye blink response in response to the presentation of
Black faces) revealed similar evidence of the unique ability of high-IMS/
low-EMS participants to regulate race-based reactions (Amodio, HarmonJones, & Devine, 2003).
In another series of experiments, Maddux, Barden, Brewer, and Petty
(2005) demonstrated that participants who were highly motivated to
control prejudice showed evidence of race-based behavioral inhibition
(i.e., a slowing of responses) rather than facilitation on an evaluative priming
task of automatic responses. Specifically, these participants were actually
slower to identify negative target words (e.g., repulsive) when they were
preceded by the very rapid (prime) presentation pictures of Blacks in
stereotypic contexts (a threatening, foggy street context) than when they
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220 Motivation and the Regulation and Control of Prejudice
were preceded by Whites in these contexts. Consistent with the SRP
model (e.g., Monteith et al., 2002), Maddux and colleagues suggested that
motivated participants responded to the Black prime-target pairs as cues
for control, which resulted in a slowing of responses rather than the usual
race-based facilitation so often observed. In a related vein, Moskowitz,
Gollwitzer, Wasel, and Schaal (1999) presented evidence that, among
individuals who hold chronically accessible egalitarian goals, the presence
of cues associated with Blacks initiate preconscious control processes aimed
at preventing stereotype activation itself.
Findings such as these suggest that regulatory control might be possible
much earlier in the stream of processing than is the case with top-down
regulation. Neurocognitive evidence supports this possibility for individuals
who are highly motivated to control prejudice. Recall that the part of the
brain thought to be responsible for conflict monitoring, the ACC, is
involved in the detection of the need control when one’s actual responses
may conflict the goal of avoiding race bias. The ACC is furthermore
thought to detect conflict between implicit attitudes and explicit goals
(see Amodio et al., 2007). Such conflict monitoring appears to be highly
sensitive among individuals who are motivated primarily by the intrinsic
desire to respond without prejudice. Specifically, Amodio, Devine, and
Harmon-Jones (2008) measured WIT performance while monitoring ACC
activity (indexed by event-related potentials) among participants who
varied in their motivations to control prejudice. Amodio et al. applied
a process-dissociation approach (see Payne, 2001; Jacoby, 1991) to racelinked WIT errors (i.e., mistakenly identifying objects as guns instead of
tools when the tools were paired with Black rather than White primes),
which allowed them to determine the extent to which participants’
performance involved behavioral control. They found greater evidence
of control among high-IMS/low-EMS relative to other participants.
Furthermore, the neural activity measure revealed that such control was
associated with greater conflict-monitoring activity. These data are consistent
with the possibility that conflict monitoring and regulation can occur
through bottom-up regulatory processes.
It is important to note that regulatory activity need not occur only
in the context of inhibiting or avoiding unwanted prejudiced responses;
effective regulation is also achieved by approaching opportunities to respond
in non-prejudiced ways. This distinction between avoidance and approach
has long been recognized as important among motivational theorists
(Atkinson & Litwin, 1960). In terms of the SRP model (e.g., Monteith, 1993),
guilt experienced in connection with prejudiced responses initially instigates
inhibitory and reflective activity that helps to train individuals to detect
future situations in which regulation is needed. When such situations are
detected, not only must unwanted prejudiced responses be avoided but
individuals must approach egalitarian ways of responding. Along these
lines, Amodio et al. (2007) recently obtained evidence of a dynamic
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Motivation and the Regulation and Control of Prejudice
221
conceptualization of prejudice-related guilt. These researchers found that
the extent to which participants experienced guilt in relation to their
prejudiced responses was initially associated with neural correlates indicative
of reduced approach motivation. However, initial guilt levels were later
positively associated with approaching an opportunity for egalitarian
responding, which in turn was linked to a neural index of increased approach
motivation. Other research indicates that regulation focused solely on
inhibiting and avoiding biased responses can, in fact, have deleterious
consequences for the regulator in terms of the depletion of cognitive
resources (Trawalter & Richeson, 2006). Thus, for a variety of reasons,
the approach-avoidance motivation distinction is important to consider in
relation to the regulation of prejudiced responses.
The research we have reviewed concerning ‘downstream’ conflictmonitoring and regulatory activity have led researchers to be hopeful
about highly motivated individuals’ ability to regulate intergroup bias even
in the absence of input from consciousness. Amodio et al. (2008) concluded
that their findings ‘show that effective response control may be deployed
without a person’s awareness that a race-biased response was averted’ (p. 72).
Stanley, Phelps, and Banaji’s (2008) assessment of recent neuroscientific
findings related to prejudice control was that ‘Evidence now suggests that
the detection of conflict between implicit and explicit beliefs, as well as some
aspects of their regulation, is an automatic process that is not dependent on
the allocation of cognitive resources and may be outside the perceiver’s
conscious goals in the immediate moment (pp. 168–169).
The findings thus far are promising, although there is not yet clear
evidence of pre-conscious regulation of the sort that actually enables people
to avert prejudiced responses. For example, Amodio et al.’s (2008) research
did not demonstrate that conflict-monitoring activity or even estimates
of control processing (i.e., from the process dissociation analysis of WIT error
data) were related to the actual inhibition of race bias. Even high-IMS/
low-EMS participants’ behavioral performance on the WIT pointed to race
bias (e.g., more errors for Black-tool trials than for White-tool trials).1
We have no doubt that relevant research will be forthcoming and shed
further light on bottom-up regulation. In addition, research is needed
to test whether conflict monitoring related to intergroup bias becomes
more consistent and increasingly sensitive as individuals internalize the
personal motivation to control prejudice and practice regulation.
Visiting the Cognitive Monster in a Territory beyond
Dual Processing
A decade ago, the dual-process conceptualization of stereotyping and
prejudice suggested that the automatic activation of stereotypes would
result in biased responses unless individuals had the motivation and
ability to regulate through deliberative, conscious processing. Much has
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222 Motivation and the Regulation and Control of Prejudice
been learned since then about motivations to control prejudice and
their role in producing different varieties of regulation that entail more
and less conscious processing. Moreover, researchers have come to
understand the interplay between automatic and controlled processes in
stereotyping and prejudice as much more interactive and dynamic, and as
having reciprocal influences that can ultimately strengthen regulatory
abilities to the point that conscious input may not be required for averting
biased responses.
We believe that evidence is now plentiful that the dual-process conceptualization of stereotyping and prejudice is underspecified, and that the
pathways to control need not always be ones that are contemplated
consciously. To be sure, regulation will not occur in the absence of the
motivation to control prejudice, and then automatic as well as controlled
processes will result in unfair intergroup evaluations and outcomes. However,
when people are internally motivated (and free of external concerns
about appearing prejudiced), regulation may take various forms. Automatic
activation of stereotypes and prejudice may still result in biased outcomes
if conflict-monitoring and regulatory processes are not sufficiently
entrained to detect the need for control and to engage regulation. However,
the motivated individual may then recognize that bias occurred and
experience affective consequences and regulatory system activity that
helps them to establish cues for control. These cues will help to train the
conflict-monitoring system to be more sensitive in the future. If individuals
who are motivated to control prejudice instead detect the conflict
between implicitly activated constructs and their explicit prejudice-related
beliefs prior to generating a biased outcome, conscious processing
resources may be recruited so that top-down regulation can occur. Finally,
for the practiced regulator, it seems likely that automatic activation of
stereotypes and evaluative bias may result in pre-conscious conflict
monitoring and regulation, producing an inhibition of the automatic bias
and thus thwarting of its potential influence.
As Bargh (1999) pointed out, how researchers have answered the question
of whether people can effectively exert control in relation to prejudice has
varied across time. Bargh likened the changes in prevailing thought to a
pendulum that swings between planes of conscious control and automaticity.
The 1960’s emphasis on attribution (e.g., Jones & Davis, 1965) painted a
picture of humankind that was thoughtful and deliberate. The 1970’s
research emphasis fostered a meta-assumption of the ‘mindless’ and ‘miserly’
human mind, ever eager to take mental shortcuts (including stereotyping)
owing to an inclination toward laziness (e.g., Taylor & Fiske, 1978). The 1980s
witnessed the ascent of social cognition methodology and widespread
demonstrations of automatic processes. The social perceiver may not just
be lazy but rather often unable to process in a deliberate, conscious
manner. During the late 1980s and into the 1990s, dual process theories
gained prominence, and they provided hope for the control of stereotyping
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Motivation and the Regulation and Control of Prejudice
223
and prejudice through the distinction between activation and application
phases of processing and response generation, respectively. However, from
this perspective, the control of stereotyping and prejudice depends on
people being able to consciously consider how they wanted to respond
in situations. The recent developments concerning motivation and
prejudice suggest further that people may routinize regulation so that it
becomes the default. In other words, people can essentially school the
‘cognitive monster’ by working to exchange the status quo for a rubric
rooted in equality.
So, has the ‘cognitive monster’ been slain? Certainly not. What people
are capable of may be much different from what they routinely do. But
concluding that people often do not control their prejudices is much
different than concluding that they cannot do so. Whereas the major
challenge half a century ago was how to encourage people to change their
explicit biases, a major challenge today is how to encourage and educate
people to be motivated to control their implicit biases. Prejudice, even in
its automatic forms, can be avoided; it is a question of whether people
are sufficiently motivated to try, and to try hard enough.
In closing, we wish to emphasize that we are not suggesting that the
current research zeitgeist has shifted the pendulum of which Bargh (1999)
wrote back toward a strong position favoring control. Rather, we think it
is time that researchers leave the pendulum and the either-or conclusions
that it encouraged behind.
Short Biography
Margo J. Monteith is a Professor in the Department of Psychological
Sciences at Purdue University. She received her PhD under the direction
of Dr. Patricia Devine at the University of Wisconsin in 1991. The majority
of her academic career was at the University of Kentucky, until she joined
the Purdue program in 2006. Much of Monteith’s research concerns the
affective and motivational processes involved in the self-regulation of
prejudiced responses. Her recent work has also focused on interpersonal
confrontation as a strategy for curbing prejudice, and on understanding
the effects of different strategies on implicit bias change as mediated by
strategy-specific processes. Monteith is a Fellow of the American Psychological
Association and the Association for Psychological Science. Her research
has been supported primarily by grants from the National Institute of Mental
Health. Monteith has served as an associate editor of Personality and Social
Psychology Bulletin, Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, and Social Cognition,
and she currently serves on a variety of editorial boards and as a council
member for the Midwestern Psychological Association.
Jill Lybarger is in the Psychological Sciences doctoral program at
Purdue University. Her research interests are the area of automatic stereotype
activation and prejudice reduction strategies. Specifically, her research
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224 Motivation and the Regulation and Control of Prejudice
examines the reduction of implicit intergroup biases via common ingroup
identity, confronter status, and its effects on prejudiced responses, and
antecedents of the likelihood to confront. She holds a BA from the University
of Texas, El Paso.
Anna Woodcock is in the Psychological Sciences doctoral program at
Purdue University. Her research interests lie in the broad areas of diversity,
prejudice, and stereotyping. Specifically, she is investigating the impact of
implicit bias on behavior and strategies to reduce bias, the processes by
which stereotype threat operates and how it may be effectively ameliorated,
the impact of self-stereotyping, and the self-regulation of prejudice. She
holds a BA from Macquarie University, Australia, and an MA from the
California State University, San Marcos.
Endnotes
* Correspondence address: Prof. Margo Monteith, 703 Third Street, West Lafayette, IN
47907–2004, USA. Email: [email protected]
1
Amodio et al. (2007) expected this to be the case because the WIT taps into stereotypic
associations rather than prejudice-related evaluations; they argue that high-IMS/low-EMS participants appear to hold the same stereotypic associations as other people. Thus, testing for
evidence of successful regulation of responses that are actually generated appears to require a
different experimental paradigm than the researchers used.
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