PAR Lab

The Prejudice Awareness and Reduction (PAR) Lab

Understanding harm to find where change is possible.

In the PAR Lab, we study how people and the social worlds around them interact to shape bias, inequality, harm, belonging, and social change.

Some of our research focuses on the beliefs people carry with them, such as sexism, social dominance, authoritarianism, stereotypes, and other ideological worldviews. Other projects examine the environments people move through, including media, online communities, universities, rural communities, and other social institutions.

Most often, we are interested in what happens when the person and the environment meet.

Why do some people respond to the same social environment differently than others? When do cultural norms, institutions, media, or group processes amplify existing biases? When can educational interventions, community norms, or contemplative/self-reflective practices interrupt these processes instead?

Our central goal is to document social problems and understand where harm comes from, what sustains it, and where meaningful change might be possible.

1) Understanding Intergroup Bias and Social Harm

Bias does not emerge in a vacuum. Our research examines how individual differences, ideologies, social identities, social norms, media programming, cultural environments, and institutions shape how people perceive and treat themselves and members of their own and other social groups.

Across this work, we study prejudice and discrimination involving women, racialized people, sexual and gender diverse people, migrants, and other social groups, while also examining processes of internalized bias and within-group harm (e.g., self-objectification, body shame).

Ideology, Prejudice, and Discrimination

A major strand of our research examines ideological worldviews such as social dominance orientation, right-wing authoritarianism, ambivalent sexism, and conservatism.

Rather than treating these beliefs only as individual characteristics, we study how they interact with social environments to shape prejudice, discrimination, responses to inequality, and perceptions of social harm.

For example, Dr. Prusaczyk’s and Dr. Hodson’s recent work on pornography uses a person × situation framework to examine why exposure to the same sexual media might have very different consequences depending on the ideological beliefs and arousal responses that people bring to that environment.

The Development of Prejudice in Childhood

If deeply rooted ideological beliefs help sustain prejudice in adulthood, how and when do those beliefs begin? Can interrupting these beliefs, even in the short term, translate into more prosocial and egalitarian behaviour?

Dr. Prusaczyk’s and Dr. Steele’s SSHRC funded developmental research moves upstream by examining the emergence of social dominance orientation, authoritarianism, and racial bias in childhood.

The PAR Lab has developed child-friendly measures of social dominance orientation and right-wing authoritarianism, allowing us to investigate these ideological worldviews earlier in development and test interventions intended to interrupt racial bias, theoretically before these patterns become more deeply established.

Gender, Media, Sexuality, and Social Norms

Our research also examines the cultural environments through which gender inequality is produced and reproduced.

Projects investigate gender-stereotypical and sexual media, sexist humour, beauty ideals, objectification, sexual norms, and other everyday cultural messages.

We are particularly interested in understanding why the same cultural environment might affect people differently depending on their pre-existing beliefs, identities, and experiences.

Stereotypes and Social Representations

Sometimes inequality is sustained not by openly negative attitudes, but by assumptions about who naturally belongs where.

Our research examines stereotype content and the consequences of culturally familiar social representations across different groups.

For example, recent work by Patmore, Dr. Prusaczyk, and Dr. Purc-Stephenson found that, in a Canadian rural context, highly favourable perceptions (i.e., warm, hard-working, competent) of farmers coexisted with preferences for more traditional representations of farming. Thus, despite overall positive mental representation of farmers, a persistent preference for small-scale family farming could strain interpersonal dynamics, both with the public and within farming communities themselves, as the industry becomes increasingly industrial.

2) Testing Pathways to Bias and Harm Reduction

The PAR Lab is increasingly identifying and testing ways of interrupting the psychological and social processes that sustain bias and harm.

Education and Social Change

We investigate whether educational interventions (e.g., Prusaczyk et al., 2021) can increase awareness of inequality, challenge prejudicial beliefs, and support more egalitarian and prosocial attitudes and behaviour. Importantly, we are also interested in when educational approaches are less effective and why.

For instance, Dr. Prusaczyk is currently advancing a research program wherein she is documenting when, why, and for whom science communication increases knowledge, trust, critical evaluation, and prosocial action in polarized yet pressing social contexts, including climate change, migration, and intergroup bias. How do communication features influence not only knowledge and persuasion by also trust, critical evaluation, and prosocial action? How do people’s prior attitudes, ideologies, or media literacy skills affect uptake?

Understanding differences in intervention responsiveness can help move educational initiatives beyond a one-size-fits-all model.

Bystander Intervention

Another major research area of the PAR Lab involves examining the psychological and social processes surrounding gender-based sexual violence, particularly in university settings. We study the beliefs, norms, environments, and social dynamics that influence whether people recognize sexual harm, interpret situations as requiring intervention, and choose to prevent harm.

Our work on sexual violence prevention not only examines if bystander programs build knowledge, recognition, self-efficacy, and willingness to intervene, but also whether the program works equally well for everyone.

For instance, recent work by Dr. Prusaczyk, Dr. Lambe, Walker, and Stewart evaluated Nova Scotia’s Waves of Change bystander program, demonstrating that although students were more willing to intervene, sexist beliefs operated as an ideological filter through which people interpreted potential sexual harm; specifically, students higher in benevolent sexism were less likely to recognize sexual violence as requiring intervention following program completion. Ultimately, this work contributes to the broader goal of understanding what interventions work, through which mechanisms, and for whom.

Contemplative Practices

We are also exploring whether meditation or other contemplative practices can support reductions in prejudice and ideological rigidity.

These projects examine whether practices that cultivate awareness, compassion, perspective-taking, humility, and a sense of common humanity might loosen some of the psychological processes that contribute to social division.

Rather than assuming that contemplative practices automatically make people less biased, we are interested in testing when, why, and for whom they might help.