Thursday 23 July 14:05
- 15:35
Hall: 21 - Room 18
Chair and Presenter:
Hagiwara Nao
Division: Division 3: Psychology and Societal Development
Racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare persist across the globe, partly due to biases held by healthcare providers, which affect clinical interactions and patient outcomes. This symposium highlights new research uncovering the nature of these disparities, the mechanisms through which provider bias contributes to them, and innovative strategies designed to mitigate the impact of such bias. Presentation 1 applied a social comparison framework to mental health disparities. Three studies with Brazilian participants showed that unfavorable social comparisons predicted depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation, while experimentally or cognitively shifting to favorable comparisons improved mental health outcomes. Presentation 2 examined ethnicity-based disparities in psychotherapy among Italian psychology trainees, finding that participants were less inclined to approach or assist a Romanian patient compared to an Italian patient—an effect largely mediated by differences in humanity attributions. These relations were also investigated in the context of racial disparities between Black and White patients. Presentation 3 explored attentional bias in healthcare scenarios under resource scarcity. Across two studies in Portugal, participants exhibited race-modulated attentional biases under scarcity conditions, with heightened attention to Black faces when intensive care stimuli were presented. These results underscore the importance of contextual factors, such as scarcity, in activating subtle bias processes. Presentation 4 tested the clinical impact of a provider implicit bias intervention. FamilyandInternalMedicineresidentswererandomlyassignedtoeitherfullworkshops(awarenesspluscommunicationskills)oranawareness-onlycondition.Hispanicpatientsratedencountersmorepositivelywhenresidentshadcompletedthefulltraining—butonlywhenresidentsdemonstratedlowresistancetolearningaboutbias.Thefindingshighlightthecriticalroleofaddressinglearnerresistancetooptimizetheimpactofbias-reductionefforts.Finally,Presentation5introducedanovel,scalableintervention—abriefscriptforproviderstouseatthestartofclinicalencounters—developedusingacommunityengagementapproach.Black/AfricanAmericansurveyrespondentsreportedsignificantlymoretrustandhigherintentionstoadheretoproviderrecommendationswhenthescriptwasused.Together,thesepresentationsilluminatecontext-sensitivemechanismsofproviderbiasandofferpromising,culturallyinformedstrategiesforinterventionacrossdiversepopulations.
