Faculty Spotlight: Luis Rivera (Professor of Psychology, Rutgers-Newark and Vice Provost, Rutgers-Newark Office of the Chancellor)

Luis Rivera Wins NSF Grant to Study Relationship Between Colonial History and Racial Identity in Puerto Rico 

Back in 2023, while on sabbatical at the University of Puerto Rico, Luis Rivera, professor of Psychology at Rutgers University–Newark, began informally talking with community members about their racial identities and lived experiences.

Shortly thereafter, Rivera, who now serves as Vice Provost in RU-N's Office of the Chancellor, received two Rutgers grants to expand his interrogation into a pilot study tracing the relationship between the island’s colonial history and residents’ racial identities. 

Recently he used that data to secure a three-year $850K National Science Foundation grant to dig deeper into these questions in collaboration with Social/Community Psychologist Teófilo Espada-Brignoni from the University of Puerto Rico–Rio Piedras. 

“We’re very excited to be able to scale up the project and do a thorough investigation using a mixed-method approach of qualitative and quantitative research,” said Rivera, an experimental social psychologist by training.

Rivera and Espada-Brignoni, along with RU-N Psychology Post-doctoral Associate Eduardo Rivera Pichardo, will conduct five related studies to develop and test a model evaluating the relationship between the history of colonialism and present-day racial identities, providing insights into how these identities impact the quality of life for individuals from low-status and disadvantaged groups in Puerto Rico, which has a mix of native Tainos, decendants of African slaves, and residents of colonial Spanish ancestry.

Joining them in this endeavor will be five University of Puerto Rico graduate and undergraduate students, who will gain valuable research experience as they draw links between PR’s complex colonial past and current attitudes.

To better understand colonial-based racial identities in Puerto Rico, Rivera’s team will use their initial studies to evaluate their overall model and explore how individuals experience the history of colonialism in relation to their racial identities. In subsequent studies, they’ll conduct experimental work to examine cause-and-effect relations between the psychology of colonialism and racial identities. 

These types of questions usually are answered from the perspective of historians of Puerto Rico or sociologists who focus on bigger structural factors.

According to Rivera, asking and answering these questions from the perspective of social psychological theories and methodologies makes this study innovative.

“These types of questions usually are answered from the perspective of historians of Puerto Rico or sociologists who focus on bigger structural factors,” said Rivera. “For example, empirical investigation into racial identities traditionally occurs by asking people what their racial identities are—which is a legitimate approach—but via social psychology we’ve learned that people’s identities don’t just manifest explicitly [by simply asking about their racial identities] but also from strong identities they harbor internally vis-a-vis other racial groups. It’s a matter of explicit versus Implicit racial identities, which tell different stories about people. So, using an implicit social cognition framework makes this project unique and hopefully will yield interesting results.”

In fact, part of what motivated Rivera’s new project were the many newspaper headlines and studies he came across on Puerto Ricans and racial identity. What he found intrigued him: Many Puerto Ricans, when asked about race and self, identify as white, even when they’re offered multi-racial options.

“This is interesting, given the history of Puerto Rico, and so I wanted to explore,” said Rivera. “I’m Puerto Rican as well, and as a social psychologist interested in racial identity and processes, I thought I’d have the tools to dig deeper from this perspective.” 

Rivera believes his new study is important also because it can potentially help his team understand why Latinos and other marginalized, underrepresented groups support particular policies.

He says that depending on how they’ve integrated the colonial relationship with the U.S. into their racial identities, his study subjects may support policies that don’t align with their group’s interest, as many Latinos did in the 2020 election: He notes the vast majority of Florida Latinos, for instance, who voted for Donald Trump that cycle, and the increased Latino support Trump received in 2024.

"This is particularly relevant here because when Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, the Trump administration was not instrumental in helping P Puerto Rico recover,” said Rivera. “So, we want to see why they support or don’t support certain policies affecting their communities, in relation to colonial history and their self-described racial identities.”

Either way, Rivera hopes his project findings can inform policymakers and educators about how history affects present-day social cognition, and show that his team’s work can help build bridges across many social science literatures that often explore these issues in relative isolation.

And he very much appreciates the support from Rutgers and NSF to pursue such pressing questions now that Trump is back in office.

“We are grateful to Rutgers, who through their two grants made a small investment that paid off when we won this large NSF grant,” said Rivera. “And while we were a little surprised that NSF, a federal agency, funded a proposal exploring the effects of U.S. colonial power over Puerto Rico, we are grateful that the agency appreciated the importance of the work and gave us their support.”