Collaborative Research: SBP: Understanding the Cultural and Psychological Roots of Inequality Maintenance: Omissions of Native Americans

Compared to other racial groups, Native Americans (the Indigenous Peoples of the United States) face disproportionately negative outcomes across many consequential domains of life, including education, income, housing, and criminal justice. Social psychology helps to understand how biases such as stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination contribute to Native Americans’ disparate outcomes.

This research team has identified another distinct form of bias that undermines Native Americans’ opportunities and wellbeing: biases of omission. Biases of omission refer to the ways in which Native Americans are written out of public consciousness. For example, research demonstrates that relative to other groups, mainstream television and news media rarely include Native People or discuss Native issues.

Americans are also taught relatively little -- and largely inaccurate -- information about Native Americans. As one example, the majority of history curricula in American schools discuss Native Peoples only in pre-20th century contexts, rendering invisible the 5.2 million Native Americans currently living in the United States. The research in this project documents the scope and psychological impact of Native omissions, and explores how non-Native Americans justify those omissions.

Studies also examine the motivational underpinnings of the relation between justifications of Native omissions and non-Natives’ national esteem, and test the efficacy of interventions that offer potential for improving Native peoples’ wellbeing.

This project explores both the scope of biases of omissions of Native Americans and the psychological processes that perpetuate these biases. The research is based on the observation that a core cultural narrative of the United States is that of an exceptional, morally superior, equitable, and meritocratic society. Yet Native Peoples’ historic and contemporary experiences in the United States, including state-sanctioned violence and discrimination arising from the country’s settler colonial origins, contradicts these core cultural narratives.

It is therefore hypothesized that Native omissions arise from a desire among non-Native Americans to protect these core cultural narratives and to maintain national esteem -- a sense of attachment to and pride in one’s nation. Three lines of studies test the tenets of this theoretical framework using large samples of Native American participants coupled with samples of non-Native adults from across the United States.

The first phase of research documents the scope and psychological impact of Native omissions, including assessments of how and in what domains Native People experience omissions in U.S. society and the effect of omissions on individual and community wellbeing. Additional studies explore how and to what extent non-Native Americans justify omissions documented by Native participants, and whether justifications of Native omissions play a culturally protective role for non-Natives.

The final phase of research examines the efficacy of acknowledging Native omissions as a means of improving Native peoples’ wellbeing by examining whether acknowledgements (vs. justifications) of Native omissions by mainstream U.S. institutions can enhance Native Americans’ individual and collective wellbeing. The program of research aims to expand the psychological literature by laying the theoretical groundwork for understanding an understudied form of bias and by shedding light on the experiences of Native Americans -- people who are vastly underrepresented in psychological theory and research.

The project also documents and helps to change the psychological processes that perpetuate social inequalities, particularly those experienced by Native Americans, thereby contributing to the science of broadening participation.

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.