SBP: Collaborative Research: Investigating an integrative model of colonial-based identities

The history of colonialism impacts society members' education, health, and prosperity today. One legacy of colonialism is that racial groups and identities signal and reinforce status and advantage differences. Moreover, among individuals from low-status and disadvantaged groups, racial identities are often linked to support for public policies.

This project develops and tests a model evaluating the relations between the history of colonialism and present-day racial identities, providing insights into how these identities impact the quality of life for individuals from low-status and disadvantaged groups.

This collaborative project adopts a mixed-methods approach, using quantitative and qualitative studies to better understand colonial-based racial identities. Initial studies evaluate the overall model and explore how individuals experience the history of colonialism in relation to their racial identities. Subsequent studies conduct experimental work to examine cause-and-effect relations between the psychology of colonialism and racial identities.

This research addresses these aims by involving participants from Puerto Rico, a United States territory widely considered to be one of the world’s oldest colonies and whose people often experience disproportionately unfavorable outcomes (e.g., poverty, low education attainment, poor health), which have been exacerbated by recent public health and ecological events (e.g., COVID, Hurricane Maria). Project findings can inform policymakers and educators about how history affects present-day social cognition, and the work can build bridges across many social science literatures that often explore these issues in relative isolation.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.