Donte Bernard, Ph.D.

he/him

Education: Bachelor of Science in psychology (May 2013)

Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy in clinical psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

McNair Project: Discrimination in Interracial Group Helping Situations Related to Allocation of Funds (2011)

Mentor: Don Saucier, Ph.D.

Discrimination often occurs in interracial helping situations particularly when not helping can be justified using other situational factors (e.g., the justification-suppression model of prejudice.) Utilizing the justification-suppression model of prejudice in a helping paradigm, we conducted a study to examine if individuals who were higher in racism would be less likely to allocate funds to organizations that help minority students. White participants completed a racism measure and later were asked to allocate a large sum of money across a variety of student organizations, some of which helped minority students. Results revealed that participants allocated less money to the organization that benefited Black students. Participants' racism scores, however, were not correlated with the amount of money that was allocated to each group. These results add to the literature on discrimination in helping situations and suggest that high levels of financial cost may serve as a justification factor in interracial helping situations.