-
Seeing More Blacks in Prison Increases Support for Policies that Exacerbate Inequality
Informing the public about African Americans’ disproportionate incarceration rate may actually bolster support for punitive policies that perpetuate inequality, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Stanford University psychology researchers Rebecca Hetey and Jennifer Eberhardt found that White participants who were exposed to higher racial disparities in incarceration rates reported being more afraid of crime and more likely to support the kinds of punitive policies that exacerbate these racial disparities.
-
New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Are Orchids Left and Dandelions Right? Frontal Brain Activation Asymmetry and Its Sensitivity to Developmental Context Paz Fortier, Ryan J. Van Lieshout, Jordana A. Waxman, Michael H. Boyle, Saroj Saigal, and Louis A. Schmidt Does frontal asymmetry moderate the relationship between early birth environment and adult behavioral outcomes? Adults who had been of low or normal birth weight were assessed for resting EEG alpha asymmetry when they were between 22 and 26 years of age, and they completed behavioral self-report measures when they were between 30 and 35 years of age.
-
Research Reveals Pervasive Implicit Hierarchies for Race, Religion, and Age
As much as social equality is advocated in the United States, a new study suggests that besides evaluating their own race and religion most favorably, people share implicit hierarchies for racial, religious, and age groups that may be different from their conscious, explicit attitudes and values. The study findings appear in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. “People from relatively low-status groups can readily report that their group does not have the most power. At the same time, most groups, even if they have less social power, favor their own group above all others,” explains psychological scientist Jordan R.
-
Preschoolers With Special Needs Benefit From Peers’ Strong Language Skills
The guiding philosophy for educating children with disabilities has been to integrate them as much as possible into a normal classroom environment, with the hope that peers’ skills will help bring them up to speed. A new study provides empirical evidence that peers really can have an impact on a child’s language abilities, for better or worse. While peers with strong language skills can help boost their classmates’ abilities, being surrounded by peers with weak skills may hinder kids’ language development. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
-
New Research From <em>Clinical Psychological Science</em>
Read about the latest research published in Clinical Psychological Science: Personality Predicts Individual Variation in Fear Learning: A Multilevel Growth Modeling Approach Femke J. Gazendam, Jan H. Kamphuis, Annemarie Eigenhuis, Hilde M. H. Huizenga, Marieke Soeter, Marieke G. N. Bos, Dieuwke Sevenster, and Merel Kindt Studies examining fear learning have generally focused on average responses and have treated individual variation as noise.
-
Cultural Stereotypes May Evolve From Sharing Social Information
Millenials are narcissistic, scientists are geeky, and men like sports -- or so cultural stereotypes would have us believe. Regardless of whether we believe them to be true, we all have extensive knowledge of cultural stereotypes. But how does this information become associated with certain groups in the first place? Research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that cultural stereotypes are the unintended but inevitable consequence of sharing social information.