An Experimental Analogue Evaluation of Asian and Asian Americans’ Immediate Reactions to Therapist Microaggressions

Microaggressions are subtle, everyday exchanges that convey discriminatory messages. In psychotherapy, client reports of microaggressions are negatively associated with important therapeutic processes and outcomes. However, many studies are retrospective and correlational, and cannot establish the causal impact of specific therapist statements. In this study, Asian and Asian American participants recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk ( N = 66) watched a brief animated counseling vignette, and were randomly assigned to four types of therapist responses to the client (control, subtle, moderate, and overt microaggressions). We assessed emotional reactions, perceptions of the session, and offensiveness of therapist statements. In general, moderate and overt microaggressions were rated much more negatively (Cohen’s d’s > 1.0) than subtle microaggressions or control statements (which were not significantly different from each other on any measure). We discuss implications for research, practice, and training.

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Asian Candidates in America

Political Research Quarterly ◽

10.1177/1065912916674273 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 70 (1) ◽

pp. 68-81 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

Neil Visalvanich

Keyword(s):

African American ◽

Asian Americans ◽

Asian American ◽

Real World ◽

Congressional Elections ◽

Racial Stereotypes ◽

Mechanical Turk ◽

Amazon Mechanical Turk ◽

Foreign Born ◽

Better Than

Racial stereotyping has been found to handicap African American and Latino candidates in negative ways. It is less clear how racial stereotypes may change the fortunes of Asian candidates. This paper explores the candidacies of Asian Americans with an experiment run through Amazon Mechanical Turk as well as real-world evaluations of Asian American candidates using the Cooperative Congressional Elections Study. In my experiments, I find that Asian candidates do significantly better than white candidates across different biographical scenarios (conservative, liberal, and foreign). I find that, contrary to expectations, Asian candidates are not significantly disadvantaged from being immigrant and foreign born. My experimental results mirror my observational results, which show that Asian Democrats are significantly advantaged even when compared with whites. These results indicate that Asian candidates in America face a set of racial-political stereotypes that are unique to their racial subgroup.

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Social Network Experiments

The Oxford Handbook of Social Networks ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190251765.013.12 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 136-152

Author(s):

Matthew E. Brashears ◽

Eric Gladstone

Keyword(s):

Social Network ◽

Experimental Methods ◽

Reliable Data ◽

Experimental Designs ◽

Mechanical Turk ◽

Amazon Mechanical Turk ◽

The Internet ◽

Causal Relevance ◽

Causal Processes ◽

Causal Impact

What is the most effective way of determining causal processes involving social networks? Many, if not most, network researchers would argue that networks have a causal impact on individual and collective outcomes, but identifying causal relationships in networks is notoriously challenging. This chapter provides an overview of experimental designs and gives several examples of how experimental methods can be employed in social network research. Experiments provide unsurpassed certainty in causal identification by allowing the researcher to control all aspects of the process while in many cases substantially reducing data collection costs. Moreover, with the aid of computers, the internet, and a little creativity, it is often possible to collect highly reliable data from online samples with the aid of crowdsourcing services, such as Amazon Mechanical Turk. With the aid of these tools, the opportunities have never been better for showing the causal relevance of network structures.

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