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Data from two quasi-experimental and two experimental studies of cooperative, equal-status, interracial contact are presented. The results show increases in favorable beliefs about and liking for Blacks by formerly prejudiced Whites. Such changes are accompanied by greater readiness to extend equality of social benefits (e.g., unsegregated housing, education, and employment) to Black persons. This illustrates one approach to the goal of extending the scope of social justice to subordinate groups from whom it is often withheld. Research relevant to other approaches to the goal is also discussed. The cumulative evidence represents a beginning step in formulating a psychology of improving justice.

This paper introduces a conceptual framework aimed at integrating the conservation behavior literature and facilitating the comparison of findings across studies. Within this framework, conservation behavior is approached from the theoretical orientations of attitude change, behavior modification and behavior maintenance. Seven commonly used approaches to encouraging conservation behavior are described in terms of these perspectives. Illustrative research related to each approach is reviewed.

The empirical approach to the analysis of attitude organization suggests that verbal racial attitudes are not organized in terms of cognitive, affective, and conative (or behavioral) components but rather in terms of content areas that cross-cut this structural trichotomy. A racial attitude inventory made up of nine empirically identified dimensions successfully predicted whites' membership in attitudinal criterion groups. In this study two additional dimensions were hypothesized: (a) reactions to interracial marriage and (b) preference between an approach to racial equality for black Americans which stresses changes in society and one stressing changes in blacks themselves. Cluster analyses confirmed the existence of these two additional dimensions as well as the original nine. A validation study indicates that both new dimensions as well as the original nine successfully differentiate groups of whites known to differ in racial attitude.

In their paper, “Academic Freedom, Civil Liberties, and SPSSI,” S. Stansfeld Sargent and Benjamin Harris (1986) give an account of the threat to individual liberties that characterized SPSSI's early years. Based to some extent on my personal experience during the post-World War II peak of this threat (i.e., the era of Senator Joseph McCarthy), I add a brief supplement to Sargent's and Harris's account. I provide a description of initial attempts by SPSSI members to discover the social psychological principles that help to understand the erosion of individual rights and freedoms that took place in those years.