Diversifying Social Cognition Through Participatory Action Research Methods for Stimulus Development and Validation.

Stimuli are an essential component of social cognition research. Researchers instruct participants to look at, listen to, remember, reflect on, or otherwise engage with stimuli. Yet, most stimulus sets lack reproducibility, validity, and diverse representation. Conventional methods for developing and validating stimuli often uphold traditional power dynamics, centering the perspective and expertise of the researcher. In this tutorial, we challenge these existing structures that center privileged perspectives and provide alternative, participatory action research-inspired approaches to stimulus development and validation for intergroup-focused social cognition research. Specifically, we outline photovoice methodologies for stimulus development, which empower participants to capture their experiences through their own lens, generating stimuli relevant to lived experiences. We also detail photo elicitation approaches, which give participants— particularly marginalized participants—a voice in stimulus validation procedures. Taken together, the two tutorials presented in this work provide intergroup cognition researchers with actionable steps to contribute to more inclusive research practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]