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First Latin American Congress for the Advancement of Psychological Science
This event was supported by the APS Fund for Teaching and Public Understanding of Psychological Science, which invites applications for nonrenewable grants of up to $5,000 to launch new, educational projects in psychological science. Proposals are due October 1 and March 1. At a first-of-its-kind meeting, scientists based in Latin America and beyond shared research and training as well as media and public policy strategies.
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What’s “Fair” Depends on Where You Come From
The mentality that “you get what you earn” is widely accepted as what is “fair” in most Western societies. But is this concept of distributive justice universally considered fair, or is it a culture-bound phenomenon? Marie Schӓfer and colleagues wanted find out. Their research, recently published in Psychological Science, examined how children in three different societies made merit distributions. The researchers chose to look at German children as a representation of modern Western culture, children from the Samburu African tribe to represent gerontocratic society (rule by elders), and children from the ≠All Hai||om African tribe to represent an egalitarian society.
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‘Inoculating’ Against Road Rage
People’s inability to contain their explosive anger behind the wheel has led to stabbings, beatings, shootings, and fatal crashes. The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety reported that, "at least 1,500 people a year are seriously injured or killed in senseless traffic disputes." In some cases, road rage is essentially the result of cognitive distortions, and there are promising evidence-based interventions that teach aggressive drivers to recognize that dysfunctional thinking, as researchers Christine Wickens, Robert Mann, and David Wiesenthal pointed out in Current Directions in Psychological Science.
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Fostering Attention for Human Needs
Decades at the forefront of attention research have convinced APS William James Fellow Michael I. Posner that attention can literally save lives: He witnessed a group of smokers reduce their cigarette consumption by 60% after just 2 weeks of mindfulness training. He confirmed an increase in brain activity in areas related to self-control among these study participants. Posner’s Keynote Address kicked off the the 27th APS Annual Convention in New York City, where 5,300 attendees met to discuss cutting-edge research on behavioral development, attention, clinical interventions, and more.
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Racial Bias in Criminal Justice
Unconscious biases toward African Americans still produce major inequities in the criminal justice system. Using statistical analyses, Jennifer Eberhardt has documented how racially coded features, such as a defendant’s skin color and hair texture, influence jurors’ decisions and the sentences that judges hand down. For example, she’s shown that jurors are more likely to recommend the death penalty for defendants whose features are stereotypically “black.” And she’s demonstrated that police officers are more likely to mistakenly identify black faces as criminal compared to white faces. In 2014, Eberhardt’s worked earned her the prestigious “genius” fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation.
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Credit Screenings Lead to Unfair Hiring
Checking up on a job applicant’s financial history has become a common practice in hiring -- even for service industry jobs like serving frozen yogurt or driving a delivery truck. Employers might assume that a job candidate’s financial history provides a real-world measure of their trustworthiness and reliability. However, new research contends that screening candidates based on credit checks does little to ensure quality hires, and instead often leads to discrimination.
