Contributions Of Evaluative Feedback And Stereotype Threat For Black Americans' Causal Attributions

Abstract

Black and African American individuals’ causal attributions of performance feedback inform how they approach future tasks, with profound implications for future well-being, selfefficacy, and future success. However, negative lifetime experiences (e.g., anti-Black discrimination) may lead to the internalization of harmful stereotypes of racial inferiority and unconsciously predispose some to make harmful causal attributions by misinterpreting events as instances of negative racial feedback. This internalization may also increase the likelihood that African Americans will internalize both positive and negative events as a reflection of racial bias (e.g., affirmative action for positive outcomes, racism for negative outcomes), particularly when experiencing stereotype threat (e.g., a White evaluator). The processes and consequences of these theoretically “harmful” patterns of attribution in African Americans are unknown; however, preliminary evidence challenges existing theory that has been tested among predominantly White populations and suggests unique consequences for African Americans’ confidence and persistence attitudes. In a series of three online experimental studies among African American adults, this dissertation tests existing theory to examine the contextual (i.e., evaluator demographics) and interpersonal (i.e., perceptions of evaluator bias) contributions for causal attributions of evaluative feedback. The guiding research question for this dissertation is: How does evaluator feedback and evaluator race contribute to African Americans’ internal attributions, improvement motivations, general self-efficacy, and perceptions of evaluator prejudice? Study 1 found that African American adults made more internal attributions to negative feedback, though these attributions did not vary by evaluator race. Study 2 found that these internal attributions were not associated with improvement motivations nor self-efficacy beliefs. Finally, study 3 found that perceptions of evaluator prejudice partially explained participants’ internal attributions of feedback. This research has novel implications for policies and practices to improve marginalized individuals’ motivation and success outcomes in a variety of contexts by highlighting the often-unconscious contributions of internal attributions and evaluator perceptions