The purpose of this study is to investigate how people interact with knowledge about an institution’s dark history, in particular when they identify with the institution.
More specifically, we expect that learning about their school’s dark history will threaten students’ positive regard about their school, which will motivate them to employ a coping strategy. People can mitigate threats by creating psychological distance between their ingroup and its wrongdoings (see Peetz et al 2010 and Knowles et al 2014). So what will people do when they have to confront those wrongdoings with little room to create physical or temporal distance?
One possibility is that being in close physical proximity to the location of the institution’s wrongdoings (i.e. when they are in the same physical building where wrongdoings took place) will produce greater threat, which people will respond to by perceiving institutional discontinuity. That is, when people don’t have reasonable space to distance themselves from their ingroup’s wrongdoings physically, they will turn to institutional continuity as a way of creating space between their ingroup and their ingroup’s history. This could look like: “My institution is not the same institution it was in the past. My institution has done things since then that make it a new institution.” In turn, this psychological mechanism gives space for people to create temporal distance between their institution and its past. ’
Another possibility is that being in close physical proximity to the location of an institution’s wrongdoings will force people to confront the institution’s dark history. Rather than creating psychological space between the institution and its past, people will perceive the past as being closer and the institution as having a stronger continuous identity that connects its past and present.
We tested this question by confronting participants - all UVA students - with information about UVA’s past as a leader of eugenics research. Participants encountered this information either while sitting in the building where the eugenics research was housed (the West Complex and UVA’s first medical school) or while in a building that was not involved in eugenics research.
Participants then responded to a number of measures to capture their perceptions of UVa’s institutional continuity and the temporal and physical distances between UVa’s past and present.
DVs
Familiarity:
have you heard of this history before? [yes/no/not sure]
how familiar were you with this history? [1 = not familiar, 7 = very familiar]
Physical distance: sum of the standardized scores on two items
Think about the location where eugenics was practiced on UVa grounds. How far away does that feel to you? Use the slider below to indicate how far away where eugenics was practiced on UVa Grounds feels to you currently.
On the below scale, please indicate how far away where eugenics was practiced on UVA Grounds feels to you currently. [1 = very near, 7 = very far]
The past may feel quite close or far away, regardless of the amount of time that has actually passed. Think about when UVa’s eugenics practices began. How far away in time does the practice of eugenics at UVA feel to you? Use the slider below to indicate how far away in time the practice of eugenics at UVa feels from the present.
On the below scale, please indicate how far away in time the practice of eugenics at UVa feel to you. [1 = feels like yesterday, 7 = feels very far away]
Centrality of wrongdoing
Consider the history described in the UVa today article about the West Complex that you just read. Compared to other events in UVa’s long history, how important do you feel that this particular history is for understanding the story of UVa as an institution? [0 = this is the least important history for understanding the story of UVA. 100= this is the most important history for understanding the story of UVA]
The University, today, is absolutely not responsible for wrongdoings it has committed in the past reversed
The University of Virginia is obligated to atone for wrondgoings it has committed in the past
UVa has a duty to educate current and prospective UVA students about the history of UVa’s involvement in past eugenics practices
UVa has a duty to financially compensate (e.g. offer scholarships, student loan forgiveness) members of the local Black community it historically harmed
UVa is responsible for taking action to ensure that Black Americans and other victim groups of past UVA eugenics practices are compensated for their past suffering
UVa can be trusted to never commit race based, group based, faith based, or identity based wrongdoings again reversed
UVa has atoned for the wrongdoings it has committed in the past reversed
Familiarity with the West Complex
Before this study, how familiar were you with the West Complex building? [i had never been to the West Complex, I have been 1 - 2 times, I have been several times, I regularly work in or attend classes]
Free response reactions
What stood out to you the most about the article you read today?
Most people consider UVa, on average, to be less respected than other schools. reversed
UVa is not respected by the broader society. reversed
In general, people view UVa in a positive manner.
Society views UVa as an asset.
Core affect: How much do you feel ___ at this time? [1 = not at all, 5 = very much so]
Excited
Happy
Calm
Relaxed
Depressed
Lethargic
Tense
Nervous
Disgusted
Procedure
Participants were recruited from the psychology department participant pool beginning on 11/12. We only recruited participants who identified as not being Black. We also screened for participants who had completed the insitutional continuity and ingroup identificaiton scales on the psychology department’s pretest at the beginning of the semester. The pretest scores on the continuity measure will be used to analyze pre-post differences between conditions.
Participants signed up for time slots themselves but did not know the location of the time slot ahead of time. The morning before their time slot, they were emailed the location of their session, which was either the West Complex (for those in the proximal condition) or Gilmer (for those in the distal condition). The emails included pictures of the building they were participating in, which served to give all participants imagery of the building as being identical to the building they view in the historical account for participants in the West Complex, or very different from the building in the article for participants in Gilmer.
Participants arrived at their session location at the time of their scheduled time slot and were directed to a single testing room to complete a Qualtrics survey on a computer. As much as 6 participants participated at a time. They read a summary of a UVA Today article then responded to the measures listed above.
Preliminary analyses
Difference scores: ingroup identification and institutional continuity (3 subscales) changes across time. (Plot by condition)
Check for differences by year
Correlation between physical, temporal distance, & everything
make one for white participants, one for non-white participants
Main analyses
institutional continuity
linear regression: institutional continuity predicted by condition + pre-test score
temporal distance
t-test: temporal distance (composite score?) predicted by condition
institutional repair
t-test: institutional repair (composite score) predicted by condition
(higher impressions of institutional repair should represent perceptions of institutional discontinuity)
Exploratory analyses
Ingroup identification as a moderator
institutional continuity moderated by ingroup pretest score
linear regression: institutional continuity predicted by condition + pre-test continuity score * pre-test ingroup identification
temporal distance moderated by ingroup pretest score
linear regression: temporal distance predicted by condition * pre-test ingroup identification
institutional repair moderated by ingroup pretest score
linear regression: institutional repair predicted by condition * pre-test ingroup identification
Geospatial distance as a manip check or continuous measure of assigned condition
First, look at differences in perceptions of geospatial distance by condition. Should be obviously different. Then, the following analyses:
institutional continuity
linear regression: institutional continuity predicted by geospatial distance + pre-test continuity score
temporal distance
linear regression: temporal distance predicted by geospatial distance
institutional repair
linear regression: institutional repair predicted by geospatial distance
Familiarity with history
does familiarity with history predict
Conceptual distinction of DVs
Perform PCA on the items from the three main DVs (inst. continuity, temporal distance, institutional repair) to explore potential for combining under one to two umbrella concepts
Do primary analyses, then use the familiarity and affect measures as robustness checks
8 participants opened the pretest more than once, resulting in duplicate values. Those duplicates were resolved in the excel file by deleting the redundant rows. In most cases, one of the redundant rows was empty. In some cases (kvr2ze & rzq9wc & Ukm5vj) there were values in both submissions. We need to decide how to handle these two cases’ pretest data (either delete one submission or average the two submissions together). One person mistyped their computing ID (cr6zur should be crz6ur). I verified this by checking against the pretest and then checking Sona for their timeslot. I fixed it in the Excel datafile “study3.csv”.
Data decisions:
kvr2ze: had 3 total rows. one was blank. one submission was opened at 11:20AM but had 3 missing values. the last submission was opened at 12:18PM and had no missing values. I kept the latest submission and deleted the other two.
rzq9wc: two total rows, only one had no missing values.
Ukm5vj: three total rows, only one had no missing values.
We collected a total of 216 responses
Power: N = 216 (n = 121 and n = 95) affords us 80% power to detect an effect size of at least d = 0.39 in a two-tailed t-test.
show code
nice_table(study3 %>%group_by(condition) %>%count(), title ='N per condition')nice_table(study3 %>%group_by(race) %>%count(), title ='Participant Race')nice_table(study3_raw %>%group_by(familiarWest) %>%count(), title ="Participants' familiarity with the West complex")nice_table(study3_raw %>%group_by(heardBefore) %>%count(), title ="Participants' familiarity with the history of the West Complex")
N per condition
condition
n
Gilmer
121
West
95
Participant Race
race
n
asian
21
latinx
5
mideast
5
multi
25
white
160
Participants' familiarity with the West complex
familiarWest
n
84
been once or twice
40
been several times
6
never been
84
regularly go to the West Complex
3
Participants' familiarity with the history of the West Complex
Given PCA results, I decided to create two sub scales of institutional responsibility:
institutional culpability for historical wrongdoings:
The University, today, is absolutely not responsible for wrongdoings it has committed in the past reversed
The University of Virginia is obligated to atone for wrondgoings it has committed in the past
UVa has a duty to educate current and prospective UVA students about the history of UVa’s involvement in past eugenics practices
UVa has a duty to financially compensate (e.g. offer scholarships, student loan forgiveness) members of the local Black community it historically harmed
UVa is responsible for taking action to ensure that Black Americans and other victim groups of past UVA eugenics practices are compensated for their past suffering
Institutional distrust:
UVa can be trusted to never commit race based, group based, faith based, or identity based wrongdoings again reversed
UVa has atoned for the wrongdoings it has committed in the past reversed
Call:
lm(formula = centralityOfWrongdoing ~ institutionalContinuity_diffScore *
condition, data = study3)
Residuals:
Min 1Q Median 3Q Max
-64.423 -7.047 2.810 13.272 36.141
Coefficients:
Estimate Std. Error t value
(Intercept) 65.4455 2.0626 31.729
institutionalContinuity_diffScore 4.7610 2.7125 1.755
conditionWest -0.5499 3.1830 -0.173
institutionalContinuity_diffScore:conditionWest -4.0528 4.0693 -0.996
Pr(>|t|)
(Intercept) <2e-16 ***
institutionalContinuity_diffScore 0.0807 .
conditionWest 0.8630
institutionalContinuity_diffScore:conditionWest 0.3204
---
Signif. codes: 0 '***' 0.001 '**' 0.01 '*' 0.05 '.' 0.1 ' ' 1
Residual standard error: 19.28 on 212 degrees of freedom
Multiple R-squared: 0.01527, Adjusted R-squared: 0.001335
F-statistic: 1.096 on 3 and 212 DF, p-value: 0.3519
Political orientation
see if political orientation predicts perceptions to temporal distance, institutional continuity
Changes:
Institutional Physical Continuity - pre and post:
The university’s aesthetic has endured over time
The University of Virginia has a hallmark buildings and aesthetic has remained constant over time
UVa has changed its architecture throughout history
UVa has changed the way it looks throughout history
The people who run UVA today have a different vision for the university than people who have run UVA in the past
UVA leadership has largely taken the same approach to running the university throughout the university’s history
Temporal distance - pre and post
Think about when UVA was founded (1819). How far away in time does the founding of UVA feel to you? Use the slider below to indicate how far away in time the founding of UVA feels from the present [0 - 100 pt slider]
On the below scale, please indicate how far away in time the founding of UVA feels to you. [likert: 1 = feels like yesterday, 7 = feels very far away]
Think about when UVA hospital first opened (1901). How far away in time does the opening of UVA hospital feel to you? Use the slider below to indicate how far away the opening of UVa hospital feels from the present [0 - 100 pt slider]
On the below scale, please indicate how far away in time the opening of UVA hospital feels to you. [likert: 1 = feels like yesterday, 7 = feels very far away]
Think about when Gilmer hall first opened (1963). How far away in time does the opening of Gilmer hall feel to you? Use the slider below to indicate how far away the opening of Gilmer hall feels from the present [0 - 100 pt slider]
On the below scale, please indicate how far away in time the opening of Gilmer hall feels to you. [likert: 1 = feels like yesterday, 7 = feels very far away]
The University, today, is absolutely not responsible for wrongdoings it has committed in the past reversed
The University of Virginia is obligated to atone for wrondgoings it has committed in the past
UVa has a duty to educate current and prospective UVA students about the history of UVa’s involvement in past eugenics practices
UVa has a duty to financially compensate (e.g. offer scholarships, student loan forgiveness) members of the local Black community it historically harmed
UVa is responsible for taking action to ensure that Black Americans and other victim groups of past UVA eugenics practices are compensated for their past suffering
UVa can be trusted to never commit race based, group based, faith based, or identity based wrongdoings again reversed
UVa has atoned for the wrongdoings it has committed in the past reversed
Moved public regard up before final demogs
Physical continuity: added following items
The people who run UVA today have a different vision for the university than people who have run UVA in the past
UVA leadership has largely taken the same approach to running the university throughout the university’s history
FINAL NOTES 05/01/2025
Due to very slow signups, we stopped collecting in lab participants on 4/11 and switched to a Bagling study, or “study 4”
