The Psychology Colloquium Series presents Dr. Michael Olson on “Correcting for Automatic Prejudice: Worrying Trends, Pitfalls, and a Silver Lining” on Friday, Nov. 3, at 11:50 a.m. in Porter 102.
Dr. Michael Olson
Most of Olson’s research at the University of Tennessee involves the overlapping areas of attitude formation and change, implicit social cognition, racial prejudice, and inter-group relations. With respect to attitude formation and change, he employs an evaluative conditioning paradigm that allows him to study how people come to evaluate objects in their environment without their awareness or intent. In related work, Olson attempts to uncover preexisting automatic (and sometimes unconscious) information in the mind using implicit measurement tools that have the potential to uncover a person’s feelings and beliefs without having to ask the person explicitly. Finally, his lab has a long-standing interest in prejudice, and he addresses basic questions about how prejudice develops, how it is detected, and how it manifests in behavior using some of the approaches mentioned above. Informed by the MODE model of attitude-behavior relations, he often examines the interaction between automatic information and more thoughtful, deliberate cognitions on race-related judgments and behaviors.
Currently Olson’s lab is investigating applications of evaluative conditioning in media, politics, and health, as well as more basic questions regarding its underlying attentional mechanisms. This work is informed by the “Implicit Misattribution Model” of evaluative conditioning. He is also working on a model of interracial interaction content that attempts to describe the content (what it is people actually talk about) in interracial interactions, as well as the determinants and consequences of interaction content.
Comments