Search

When people support voter identification (ID) laws, who do they imagine they are keeping in and out of the voting booth? We investigated this question across three studies. First, using a traditional survey approach, we found support for voter ID laws was associated with beliefs that ID requirements reduce illegal voting by both Black and White people to the same degree. Because explicit surveys are vulnerable to social desirability concerns, in the following two studies, we utilized an indirect measure, reverse correlation, to investigate mental images of those who try to vote illegally (Study 2) and mental images of those who should and should not get to vote (Study 3). The findings of these studies suggest that support for voter ID laws is associated with racially biased perceptions of illegal voters and who should get to vote. Critically, these biased perceptions may be underestimated by traditional explicit survey approaches.

The current research investigates people’s attitudes toward an ambiguous situation of police violence against a woman suspect. We hypothesize that the suspect’s race and participants’ ambivalent sexism, particularly benevolent sexism, will jointly inform perceptions of the suspect’s femininity, and in turn, perceptions of the suspect’s pain, judgments of who is to blame, and perceptions the officer was justified in using force against the suspect. Across two studies, we found support for our hypotheses: participants who reported more benevolent sexism thought the suspect were more feminine, but this association was only present when the suspect was White, as opposed to Black. Perceived femininity, in turn, predicted perceptions the suspect felt more pain, was less blameworthy for the situation, and perceptions that the officer’s use of force was less justified (Study 2).

Poor White Americans report feeling “worse off” than poor Black Americans despite the persistent negative effects of racism on Black Americans. Additionally, some health issues are rising among White but not Black Americans. Across two representative samples, we test whether White = wealthy stereotypes lead White Americans to feel relatively worse off than their racial group and whether these perceptions have health consequences. Across both samples, White Americans perceived their own status to be significantly lower than the status of the majority of White Americans. In contrast, Black Americans perceived their own status to be significantly higher than the majority of Black Americans. Critically, status comparisons between the self and one’s racial group predicted the experience of fewer positive emotions among White, but not Black, Americans, which mediated reduced mental and physical health. We conclude that race/class stereotypes may shape how poverty subjectively feels.

Research suggests that White Americans oppose welfare due to between-group processes: Many White Americans envision welfare recipients to be lazy, undeserving, and Black, and these perceptions predict reduced welfare support. In the present work, we consider the role of within-group processes that result from complementary beliefs that White people, as a group, are wealthy. Using a nationally representative sample of White and Black Americans (Study 1) and two large samples of White Americans (Study 2 and Study 3; N = 2,000), we find that many White Americans feel relatively lower status than their racial group. Furthermore, these perceived within-group status disparities are associated with reduced stereotyping of welfare recipients as lazy, which mediates greater policy support. Finally, we demonstrate that leading White Americans to take ownership of their racial privilege can increase perceptions of within-group status. And these shifts in within-group status have downstream consequences for attitudes toward welfare recipients and policies (replicating our previous two studies). We conclude that consideration of both between-group and within-group processes may provide a fuller understanding of how group-level privilege shapes White Americans’ support (or lack thereof) for hierarchy-attenuating policy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)

Violent encounters between police and Black people have spurred debates about how race affects officer decision-making. We propose that racial disparities in police–civilian interactions are amplified when police interact with Black civilians who are encountered in groups. To test this possibility, we analyzed New York City stop and frisk data for over 2 million police stops. Results revealed that Black (vs. White) people were more likely to be frisked, searched, arrested, and have force used against them. Critically, these racial disparities were more pronounced for people stopped in groups (vs. alone): Being stopped in a group led to a 1.7% increase in racial disparities for frisks, a 1% increase for searches, a 0.3% increase for arrests, and a 1.7% increase for use of force. Moreover, these disparities held even when we controlled for a potential proxy of effective policing: discovery of illegal contraband. We conclude that groups amplify racial disparities in policing.

As future healthcare practitioners, kinesiology students must become expert learners who choose strategies resulting in deep and durable learning. Metacognitive instruction goes beyond the use of study skills as it focuses on student reflection and evaluation of their learning success, and ultimately establishes effective learning skills, a requirement for professional practice. To examine if an intervention in a kinesiology course affected metacognitive awareness and use of metacognitive strategies, a quasi-experimental research design utilized a convenience sample of 89 upper division undergraduate occupational therapy students and master’s level athletic training students enrolled in kinesiology courses. Using an online survey including the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (Schraw & Dennison, 1994) and three Likert scale questions about perception of study skills, pre-test and post-test data were collected over three years, and 6-month follow-up data were collected during the final two years of the study. The intervention included information about metacognition and key study tips, five learning activities, and teaching techniques to promote metacognition. Treating the pre-test group as the reference group, the results showed that the post-test and 6-month follow-up test groups were significant predictors of students’ scores on the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory, indicating an improved and sustained metacognitive awareness after completing the course. The intervention was found to have a positive association with scores of planning, information management, comprehension monitoring, and evaluation. These results indicate the value of metacognition instruction. Considering that not all students come equipped with metacognitive skills, instruction in this area could be beneficial to students.

This study explores how high school football athletes’ bodies are constructed within the context of contemporary scouting regimes. Deploying a quantitative approach, we analyze 6600 scouting reports on a total of 1650 high school football athletes available online from four high-profile media outlets which offer ‘expert’ analyses of athletes’ body characteristics, performance, and estimated potential. The findings indicate that subjective measurements of the athlete’s body are the best predictors of hierarchical classification. The findings also indicate that objective measurements do not seem to predict the subjective assessment of those very athletic bodies. We argue that the evaluation of high school football athletes by so-called expert analysts is remarkably arbitrary, and thus call into question the very practice of football scouting that has become so dominant and influential. ‘Scouts’ promote a system of scrutiny that contributes the reification of hegemonic relations between the observers and the observed.

Three studies examine how subtle shifts in framing can alter the mind perception of groups. Study 1 finds that people generally perceive groups to have less mind than individuals. However, Study 2 demonstrates that changing the framing of a group from "a group of people" to "people in a group," substantially increases mind perception-leading to comparable levels of mind between groups and individuals. Study 3 reveals that this change in framing influences people's sympathy for groups, an effect mediated by mind perception. We conclude that minor linguistic shifts can have big effects on how groups are perceived-with implications for mind perception and sympathy for mass suffering. (PsycINFO Database Record

White privilege lessons are sometimes used to increase awareness of racism. However, little research has investigated the consequences of these lessons. Across 2 studies (N = 1,189), we hypothesized that White privilege lessons may both highlight structural privilege based on race, and simultaneously decrease sympathy for other challenges some White people endure (e.g., poverty)-especially among social liberals who may be particularly receptive to structural explanations of inequality. Indeed, both studies revealed that while social liberals were overall more sympathetic to poor people than social conservatives, reading about White privilege decreased their sympathy for a poor White (vs. Black) person. Moreover, these shifts in sympathy were associated with greater punishment/blame and fewer external attributions for a poor White person's plight. We conclude that, among social liberals, White privilege lessons may increase beliefs that poor White people have failed to take advantage of their racial privilege-leading to negative social evaluations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

As globalization increases worldwide, it redefines our conceptions of other cultures, the media we consume, and our day-to-day interactions. Despite this increased interconnectivity, we lack a fundamental understanding of how globalization is related to prejudicial attitudes between social groups. We hypothesized that economic inequality may shape the relationship between globalization and intergroup prejudice. We tested this prediction with data from over 66,000 respondents across 44 countries. We found that globalization—and particularly its social aspects such as tourism and migration—is related to increased prejudice in countries with high economic inequality and is related to decreased prejudice in countries with low economic inequality. These findings offer new insight into how and why globalization may shape intergroup relations around the world.