1. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and what got you interested in personality psychology?
Since completing my Bachelor’s degree, I have been fascinated by the topic of ethnic prejudice and intergroup relations. I remember loving my coursework of the social psychology course I took! However, beyond the interest in these social processes, I was also curious to understand more about their developmental trend. Where does ethnic prejudice come from? How is it formed and consolidated throughout childhood and adolescence? Can this consolidation process be reversed?
Trying to answer these questions, or at least some of them, has been the main goal of my PhD project, which I have recently completed at the Department of Psychology of University of Bologna (Italy). I am currently working in the same lab as research fellow.
During the past three years as a PhD, I have been working at the intersection between social and developmental psychology to understand how ethnic prejudice changes in adolescence and what are its individual (such as empathy, well-being) and socio-contextual (such as family processes, media influences) correlates.
In this process, I came to realize that prejudice also has a place within the personality psychology field as it intersects with individual characteristics, such as social dominance orientation, but also with identity processes, and well-being. These considerations increased my interest in the study of stability and change in prejudice levels. I am also very excited about the implications that findings can have for interventions tackling either the individual, their micro-contexts (such as the school), and the macro-level (such as policies) factors.
2. What are you currently interested in/working on regarding personality psychology?
In my research, I have been examining the development and correlates of ethnic prejudice in adolescence adopting a socio-ecological and transactional perspective. I have tried to understand how different factors, from influences occurring in the family and classroom environments to the role of media, can contribute to prejudice against different ethnic minority groups. As mentioned before, in this journey I have also come to study the interplay between identity and prejudice. One of the questions I had was: Does the way I approach the diversity of others have something to do with how I define myself?
Well, it turns out (at least from my research) that it does. This might not be a surprise when it comes to social identity. There is a long tradition highlighting that prejudice is a phenomenon stemming from self- and other-categorization processes and showing that ethnic majority individuals who strongly identify with their national group might display more negative attitudes toward ethnic minority groups. However, we found that national identification does not always lead to prejudice. Rather, when youth actively explore their social identity, such that they seek information and think about its meaning and implications, this process contributes to reducing, instead of heightening, prejudice. To me, this was quite a surprising but very exciting finding. And it got even better when, in another study, we found a similar protective effect of within-person fluctuations in identification with the national group.
Additionally, in a different piece of research, we found again that youth who engage in the identity exploration process, this time related to a personal identity domain, are less likely to be in highly prejudiced. I am really excited about these findings and very curious to explore them more in future research, as well as a venue for interventions.
3. Are there any specific movements/shifts in the direction of the field that you would like to see in the next 5 years? Where would you like to see yourself, as an early career researcher in the next 5 years?
Answering questions about the future is always complicated!
Regarding the field, it would be great to have more multidisciplinary work within disciplines in psychology as well as other areas of research. While there are some great examples of this type of research, I would love to see more, and to be part of this process of change as well! Although cross-discipline work is a difficult endeavour, I also think it is very enriching to try on new lenses to look at the same process.
Regarding myself, I would like to dig deeper into how people form their perceptions of themselves and how these processes can influence their attitudes and behaviors toward others who are different from them. Insights into how personal and social identity processes can contribute to improving the quality of interpersonal and intergroup relationships are quite exciting for me, so I aim to focus more on these processes in the upcoming future!
4. Do you have any tips for peer early career researchers?
Another difficult question… As researchers in psychology, we know that average scores do not reflect the experience of every participant, and the other way around. Therefore, my experience and my advice might not be useful for everyone, but I hope they could be useful for some fellow early career researchers.
I could not agree more with what Peter Martin Hähner suggested in his interview: “it’s all about people!”. When I think about my PhD journey, the first thing that comes to mind is the crowd I have shared the past three years with. To me, having fellow PhD students around was crucial to cheer me up on bad days and to celebrate success with.
If I can add something to that, my second piece of advice is to try and build a crowd of fellow peers who are as diverse as possible. It is quite easy, or at least it was for me, to be surrounded by others who work on your same project, study a topic that is closely tied to yours, and rely on the same models and approaches to research. For me, it was fundamental to be surrounded by other PhD students who do research on diverse topics and have different perspectives on reality. They helped me drift away from my usual take on things (predominantly research-wise, but not only) and offered valuable insights for my own research.
I know it is not always the case that you can find other researchers who are going through the PhD journey at the same time and at the same place as you are. That is why my third piece of advice is to create connections that go beyond your lab and institution. Scientific societies and conferences are great for this! The first time I went to a conference I was alone and a bit stressed at the idea of wandering around the conference hall by myself. I ended up getting to know many other researchers, seniors and juniors, and that was a start to later collaborations and experiences. So yes, people are important and looking for opportunities to extend your network is too!
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Dr Beatrice Bobba