Ruben Laukenmann
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Item type:Publication, Examining relationships among regional economic conditions, cognitive control, and intergroup bias in the implicit association test: A regional modeling approachIndividuals experiencing economic stress demonstrate lower cognitive control and higher intergroup bias. The present research extends beyond individuals to investigate relationships among regional economic conditions, regional cognitive control, and intergroup bias. We aggregated 2.9 million US-based participants’ geolocated responses on the Black/White Implicit Association Test, then applied the Process Dissociation Procedure to estimate state-level cognitive control and racial evaluations across the years 2005 to 2019. Black populations’ cognitive control was weaker in states where Black residents faced more adverse economic conditions, but stronger in states where White residents faced more adverse economic conditions. White populations’ cognitive control was weaker in states where more Black residents faced unemployment. Black populations’ outgroup biases were more negative in states where more White residents lived in poverty, and White populations’ ingroup biases were more positive in states where more White residents were unemployed. By understanding how economic conditions relate to regional cognition, this research can inform policies to better support economically-vulnerable populations.Type:journal articleJournal:Current Research in Ecological and Social PsychologyVolume:10 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Toward a Process-Level Understanding of Correspondence Among Indirect Measures of Racial Threat StereotypesPrevious research often reveals relatively poor correspondence among three prominent indirect measures configured to assess racial stereotypes: the Weapon Identification Task (WIT), the First-Person Shooter Task (FPST), and the Implicit Association Test (IAT). Importantly, these measures differ on a variety of procedural dimensions (e.g., task instructions, stimulus presentation, response time limits), which confounds explanations of low correspondence. In a fully within-participants design, N = 372 participants completed versions of the WIT, FPST, and IAT that were aligned on several procedural dimensions. Process modeling revealed high correlations among measures for model parameters reflecting controlled and automatic processes. However, model-based racial bias estimates correlated only moderately between the WIT and the FPST, and not at all with the IAT. Our findings suggest that all three measures share some correspondence when procedurally aligned, but each reflects a specific aspect of racial threat stereotypes.Type:journal articleJournal:Social CognitionVolume:44Issue:4 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
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Item type:Publication, Regional ideological attitudes selectively predict different domains of regional prejudice(2025-07-10)Type:conference contribution - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Regional Social Dominance Orientation and Right-Wing Authoritarianism predict different types of regional prejudice(2025-10-18)Social Dominance Orientation and Right-Wing Authoritarianism are two fundamental ideological attitudes which predict prejudice towards different social groups. Social Dominance Orientation reflects competition-driven values of power, dominance, and superiority, whereas Right-Wing Authoritarianism reflects threat-driven values of collective security, stability, and order. This study investigated the relationship of these regional ideological attitudes with different domains of regional prejudice (i.e., race, sexuality, age) for 250 cities in the United States aggregated across the years 2015 – 2023. Path modeling revealed that regional Social Dominance Orientation predicted prejudice towards Black people, whereas regional Right-Wing Authoritarianism predicted prejudice towards Gay and young people. Importantly, this pattern varies for prejudice measured as outgroup evaluation (outgroup attitude) or measured as difference between in- and outgroup evaluation (bias). For race prejudice Social Dominance Orientation predicted both outgroup attitudes and bias independently. For sexuality and age prejudice Right-Wing Authoritarianism predicted both outgroup attitudes and bias, but the latter relationship was attenuated when controlling for outgroup attitudes. Overall, this study provides an overview, how regional levels of Social Dominance Orientation and Right-Wing Authoritarianism predict prejudice across different domains for different measures of prejudice.Type:conference contribution - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Unemployment and Anti-Immigration Attitudes: Regional and Individual Effects in 13-Year German Panel Data(2025-09-16); Group threat theory predicts and finds that in times of economic downturns (i.e., when unemployment levels rise), individuals report higher anti-immigration attitudes. This link is rooted in perceptions of increased competition for scarce economic resources, where immigrants are seen as a threat to job security and financial well-being. In this study, we expand previous research on the relationship between unemployment and anti-immigration attitudes in two ways. First, prior research has predominantly relied on (repeated) cross-sectional designs, limiting causal interpretations. Second, it remains unclear whether the observed link between economic downturns and anti-immigration attitudes reflects a structural effect (where worsening regional economic conditions broadly shape public sentiment) or a cumulative effect of individual unemployment (where personal experiences of job loss drive attitudinal shifts). To address these gaps, we integrate historical regional economic data with 13 years of individual longitudinal data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP; including annually recorded anti-immigration attitudes and detailed employment biographies). Using fixed-effects panel regressions, we provide evidence that rising regional unemployment levels predict increases in individual anti-immigration attitudes. Moreover, we find that this effect persists when controlling for individual unemployment experiences. This highlights a fundamental tenet of group threat theory: not only those directly affected by outgroup competition (i.e., those who become unemployed) develop negative attitudes towards an outgroup perceived as potential threat, but these attitudes seem to permeate throughout the entire ingroup.Type:conference contribution - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Cognitive Processes Underlying the Weapon Identification Task: A Comparison of Models Accounting for Both Response Frequencies and Response Times(2023-04); - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, The Temporal Dynamics of Regional Racial Prejudice and Economic Development: Toward an Integration of Social Psychology and Regional Economics(2026-05-27)The average level of people’s racial prejudice differs substantially across regions and has important societal consequences. While prior research has mainly explained these regional differences through structural factors, recent evidence suggests that this regional racial prejudice can also fluctuate over shorter periods of time. In this talk, we examine one potential driver of these dynamics: regional economic development. Using data from more than 1.6 million participants from Project Implicit and economic indicators from 207 U.S. metropolitan areas between 2010 and 2019, we investigate how economic conditions and racial prejudice shape one another over time. Applying Panel Vector Autoregression modeling, we find a reciprocal relationship: poor economic performance predicts subsequent higher levels of regional racial prejudice, while higher levels of regional racial prejudice predict subsequent poor economic performance. Additional analyses provide stronger support for group-threat theory-based explanations than for attribution-bias based accounts. Overall, the talk highlights the value of integrating psychological theory with methods from regional economics to better understand the dynamics of regional prejudice.Type:presentation