Burns, M. D., Hamilton, A. N., & Paz Martin, S. (2025). “When men were men”: Gender nostalgia and bias against trans men and women. Psychology and Sexuality, 16, 114-129.

In recent years, many people have expressed opposition to the increased public representation of trans men and women. This opposition often includes a sentimental longing for a bygone past wherein ‘men were men, and women were women’. Across three studies (N = 860), we investigated the causes and consequences of this longing, herein called Gender Nostalgia. In Study 1, we developed a measure of Gender Nostalgia, and found it to be a uniquely strong predictor of extreme forms of anti-trans bias such as acceptance of anti-trans violence. Critically, Gender Nostalgia predicted acceptance of anti-trans violence above-and-beyond other direct measures of anti-trans bias and relevant demographics. Study 2 replicated Study 1 and investigated predictors of Gender Nostalgia, finding that Gender Nostalgia was strongly predicted by participants’ self-reported gender essentialism (e.g. the belief that men and women are discretely separate social categories). Study 3 experimentally manipulated participants’ perceptions of the degree to which traditional masculinity/femininity has changed over time. Results indicated that among participants high, but not low, in gender essentialism, considering eroding traditional masculinity/femininity increased Gender Nostalgia and acceptance of anti-trans violence. Discussion surrounds the importance of considering Gender Nostalgia when investigating people’s bias against trans men and women.

Granz, E. L. & Burns, M. D. (2025). Labeling effects for the poor: The role of labels on dehumanization of the poor and opposition to welfare policies. Journal of Social Psychology, 1-19.

Numerous terms are frequently used to refer to poor people (i.e. “needy,” “impoverished”). Despite ostensibly used to refer to the same social category, little research has investigated how different labels impact perceptions of the poor. Three studies investigated how different labels for poor people differentially predicted dehumanization of the poor and, in turn, opposition to welfare. Study 1 identified (from 20) labels that participants indicated similar familiarity and referred to the same social category but differed in valence. Studies 2 and 3 had participants indicate their dehumanizing perceptions of poor people varying in label and indicate their support for welfare programs. Results indicated that “Broke” people were dehumanized more than “In Need” people despite referring to the same social category. In turn, greater dehumanization predicted less support for welfare policies designed to benefit the poor. Discussion surrounds the importance of understanding the language surrounding discussions of the poor and welfare.

Burns, M. D., Granz, E. L., & Williams, K. (2024). Beyond “pride and prejudice”: Conservatism, opposition to political correctness, and support for Confederate and other controversial statues. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 27, 1477-1500.

Although controversial, numerous memorials venerating the Confederacy of the American Civil War remain standing across America, and removal efforts are met with backlash. Although research has investigated how racial bias and Southerner identification predict Confederate statue/symbol support, we investigated how conservatism and opposition to political correctness (anti-PC attitudes) explain attitudes toward controversial public statues. Across Studies 1a–5 (N = 885), results revealed that conservatives consistently reported greater anti-PC attitudes than liberals, and anti-PC attitudes predicted support for Confederate statues even after accounting for anti-Black bias. However, conservatives’ anti-PC attitudes were not applied in a principled way. In Studies 2 to 5, conservatives and participants high in anti-PC attitudes opposed the removal of Confederate statues and statues of controversial right-wing figures. However, this pattern was reversed when participants considered statues of controversial left-wing figures. Furthermore, Study 5 investigated how participants’ immediate negative reactions (e.g., moral outrage) predicted their attitudes toward removing controversial statues.

Burns, M. D., Granz, E. L., & Williams, K. (2022). Support for Native-themed mascots and opposition to political correctness. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 26, 1589-1610.

Despite the well-documented harmful effects of Native-themed mascots, Native-themed mascots have many supporters who decry the politically correct efforts to remove these mascots. Although ostensibly unrelated to race/racism, we reasoned that invoking anti-PC attitudes allow prejudiced people to indirectly support Native-themed mascots while minimizing the appearance of being biased. Three studies (N = 587) found that anti-Native bias predicted anti-PC attitudes and, in turn, Native-themed mascot support. In Studies 2 and 3, participants varying in anti-PC attitudes considered a university changing their Native-themed mascot for PC or non-PC reasons. Anti-PC attitudes predicted opposition to changing Native-themed mascots in both conditions. However, the effect of anti-PC attitudes was stronger in the PC condition where social justice norms were salient. These results suggest that, for many, anti-PC attitudes reflect more than just opposition to political correctness and are used by prejudiced people to indirectly defend controversial mascots without appearing prejudiced.

Burns, M. D., & Granz, E. L. (2021). “Past injustice and present prejudice”: Reducing racial bias and increasing sympathy by framing historical racism as recent. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations. 

Racial privity judgments - or the perceived causal connection between historical racial discrimination and current suffering among Black Americans - predicts sympathy for the victims of past injustices and perceptions of contemporary racial inequality. Four studies investigated the ideological roots of privity judgments; focusing on subjective temporal perceptions associated with privity judgments (e.g., subjective perceptions that past discrimination occurred more, versus less, recently). Study 1 revealed that liberals perceived historical instances of racial discrimination as having occurred more recently than conservatives, and that temporal perceptions of recency were associated with less anti-Black bias. Studies 2-4 manipulated temporal perceptions of recency by framing past discrimination as having occurred more recently. Results revealed that increasing perceived temporal recency resulted in reduced anti-Black bias and greater sympathy for present day victims of racial discrimination across political ideology. Discussion surrounds how framing historical information as subjectively recent has implications on prejudice reduction.

Burns, M. D., & Granz, E. L. (2021). Confronting sexism: Promoting confrontation acceptance and reducing stereotyping through stereotype framing. Sex Roles.

Relative to confrontations of other forms of prejudice and stereotyping, confronting gender stereotypes can be challenging, in part, because recipients may be unlikely to accept such feedback. Given the importance of accepting negative feedback in the promotion of reparative efforts, the present research investigated how to frame confrontations of gender stereotyping to be more readily accepted. Across three experiments (131 and 247 U.S. undergraduates; 174 U.S. MTurk workers), we investigated how different framings for confrontations of gender stereotyping, framed as targeting either positive or negative gender stereotypes, impacted participants’ confrontation acceptance, reduction of subsequent gender stereotyping, and concern with expressing gender bias in the future. After expressing stereotypes of women, participants were confronted or not. Confronted participants received feedback that their responses were prejudiced because they included positive or negative stereotypes of women. Results revealed that participants perceived the positive framing more favorably and were more likely to accept (i.e., believe to be accurate) the positive framing relative to the negative framing. Despite different reactions between confrontation framings, both the positive and negative confrontation framings similarly reduced subsequent gender stereotyping relative to no confrontation. Furthermore, both confrontation framings increased participants’ concerns with expressing gender stereotypes in the future. Taken together, these results provide initial insight about how to increase acceptance of confrontations of sexism and how to reduce stereotyping.

Burns, M. D., & Monteith, M. J. (2019). Confronting stereotypic biases: Does internal versus external motivational framing matter? Group Processes & Intergroup Relations. 22, 930-946.

We investigated whether confrontations of intergroup bias that had an external (e.g., emphasizing social norms) versus internal (e.g., emphasizing values) motivational framing differentially reduced subsequent stereotyping. Internally and externally framed confrontations reduced stereotyping equally compared to a control condition, both immediately (Experiments 1 and 2) and across a 2- to 3-day delay (Experiment 1). Only weak evidence was found for a “matching hypothesis” when participants' own chronic internal and external motivations to respond without prejudice were assessed. Confrontation framing did not interact with chronic motivations to affect stereotyping in Experiment 2. In Experiment 3, participants highly internally motivated to respond without bias reduced bias most with an internally framed confrontation, whereas participants who were not motivated for internal reasons reduced bias most with an externally framed confrontation. Finally, whereas both motivational framings reduced stereotyping, simply pointing bias out did not. Thus, providing some motivational framing is important for confrontation effectiveness.

Burns, M. D., Monteith, M. J., & Parker, L. R. (2017). Training away bias: The differential effects of counterstereotype training and self-regulation on stereotype activation and application. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 73, 97-110. 

A pressing issue concerns how to reduce stereotypic responses and discriminatory outcomes resulting from the operation of implicit biases. One possibility is that cognitive retraining, such as by repeatedly practicing counterstereotypes, can reduce implicit bias so that stereotype application will be reduced in turn. Another possibility involves motivated self-regulation, where people's awareness of their proneness to biased responses heightens negative self-directed affect, which in turn facilitates monitoring for biases and reduces stereotype application. These possibilities were tested across three experiments. In all experiments, participants who completed counterstereotype training subsequently scored lower on a measure of implicit bias, relative to untrained participants. In Experiments 1 and 2, counterstereotyping did not reduce subsequent stereotype application; in Experiment 3, counterstereotyping did reduce stereotype application, but this effect was not mediated by implicit bias scores. Participants in the motivated self-regulation condition (Experiments 2 & 3) were primed with their proneness to respond in biased ways, which increased negative self-directed affect among participants more internally motivated to respond without bias. Participants' degree of negative self-directed affect was not consistently associated with implicit bias scores. However, greater negative self-directed affect was associated with reduced stereotype application (Experiment 2) and greater rejection of racist jokes (Experiment 3). These results suggest that reductions of implicit bias through counterstereotype training do not, in turn, lead to reduced stereotype application. In contrast, the results support the viability of motivated self-regulation interventions that facilitate awareness of bias and heighten negative self-directed affect, thus creating the motivation to self-regulate stereotype application.