Christine Reyna

Lazy, Dumb, or Industrious: When Stereotypes Convey Attribution Information in the Classroom

Historically, ethnic minority children and girls have underachieved in American schools. This paper examines the role that stereotypes play in imposing obstacles to success for stigmatized children inside and outside of the classroom. Stereotypes convey explanatory information about groups—such as blacks are lazy, girls are bad at math, and so forth—that may be used as attributions for performance by adults as well as the children themselves. This paper presents a model that brings to light the underlying attributional structures of all stereotypes. Each of these attributional signatures has specific effects on judgments of responsibility and deservingness, help giving or punishment, self-esteem and motivation, and even performance inside and outside of the classroom. Through recognizing that stereotypes are vehicles for attributional judgments, educators are better able to anticipate the effects that stereotypes may have on students and take measures to counteract or diminish them.

The Ideological-Conflict Hypothesis: Intolerance Among Both Liberals and Conservatives

Decades of research in social and political psychology have demonstrated that political conservatives appear more intolerant toward a variety of groups than do political liberals. Recent work from our three independent labs has challenged this conventional wisdom by suggesting that some of the psychological underpinnings of intolerance are not exclusive to people on either end of the political spectrum. These studies have demonstrated that liberals and conservatives express similar levels of intolerance toward ideologically dissimilar and threatening groups. We suggest directions for future research and discuss the psychological and political implications of our conclusions.

The Role of Prejudice and the Need for Closure in Religious Fundamentalism

Religious fundamentalism has been consistently linked to prejudice toward a variety of outgroups. This article proposes that this is partially the case because fundamentalist ideology provides a sense of consistency and closure. Outgroups that challenge the epistemic certainty that fundamentalism provides are rejected in an effort to protect this certainty. Results from two studies, including one using a nationally representative sample, found that the need for closure was related to fundamentalism and partially mediated the relationship between fundamentalism and the derogation of lesbians and gays (Study 1) and value violators in general (Study 2). Furthermore, in Study 2, it was found that only some aspects of the need for closure explain the fundamentalism—prejudice relationship. Results are discussed in relation to past need for closure and ideology research as well as what this means for the study of fundamentalism.

An Attributional Examination of Retributive Versus Utilitarian Philosophies of Punishment

Two basic goals of punishment—retribution and utility—and the means to those goals, including isolation, rehabilitation, and the creation of fear, were first examined. The objectives of punishment were then related to attributions regarding the cause of a transgression. It was documented that punishment goals are mediated by the expectancies and affects that are elicited by causal beliefs. It also was argued that the purposes of punishment are more state-like than trait-like, for they change as a function of the reason for a transgression. Data from three laboratory experiments, as well as a field study regarding reactions to O. J. Simpson for his alleged crimes, were presented in support of the above beliefs. In addition, the morality of retribution versus utilitarianism was discussed in the context of the caning of Michael Fay in Singapore. It is suggested that rehabilitation may be the most moral of the punishment means.

Discrimination across the ideological divide : The role of value violations and abstract values in discrimination by liberals and conservatives

Despite ample research linking conservatism to discrimination and liberalism to tolerance, both groups may discriminate. In two studies, we investigated whether conservatives and liberals support discrimination against value violators, and whether liberals’ and conservatives’ values distinctly affect discrimination. Results demonstrated that liberals and conservatives supported discrimination against ideologically dissimilar groups, an effect mediated by perceptions of value violations. Liberals were more likely than conservatives to espouse egalitarianism and universalism, which attenuated their discrimination; whereas the conservatives’ value of traditionalism predicted more discrimination, and their value of self-reliance predicted less discrimination. This suggests liberals and conservatives are equally likely to discriminate against value violators, but liberal values may ameliorate discrimination more than conservative values.

The Chain of Being A Hierarchy of Morality

For centuries, philosophers, theologians, and scientists have used the idea of the Great Chain of Being to rank all beings, from demons to animals, humans, and gods, along a vertical dimension of morality. Although the idea of a chain of being has largely fallen out of academic favor, we propose that people still use an embodied vertical moral hierarchy to understand their moral world. This social cognitive chain of being (SCCB) encapsulates a range of research on moral perception including dehumanization (the perception of people as lower on the SCCB), anthropomorphism (the perception of animals as higher and the perceptions of gods as lower on the SCCB), and sanctification (the perception of people as higher on the SCCB). Moral emotions provide affective evidence that guide the perception of social targets as moral (e.g., elevation) or immoral (e.g., disgust). Perceptions of social targets along the SCCB enable people to fulfill group and self-serving, effectance, and existential motivations. The SCCB serves as a unifying theoretical framework that organizes research on moral perception, highlights unique interconnections, and provides a roadmap for future research.

Bounded openness: The effect of openness to experience on intolerance is moderated by target group conventionality.

Openness to experience is consistently associated with tolerance. We suggest that tests of the association between openness to experience and tolerance have heretofore been incomplete because they have primarily focused on prejudice toward unconventional target groups. We test (a) the individual difference perspective, which predicts that because people who are high in openness are more open to diverse and dissimilar people and ideas, they will express more tolerance than people who are low in openness and (b) the worldview conflict perspective, which predicts that people high and low in openness will both be intolerant toward those with different worldviews. Four studies, using both conventional and unconventional target groups, find support for an integrative perspective. People high in openness do appear more tolerant of diverse worldviews compared with people low in openness; however, at the same time, people both high and low in openness are more intolerant of groups whose worldviews conflict with their own. These findings highlight the need to consider how individual difference variables and features of the target groups may interact in important ways to influence the expression of prejudice.

Ian is intelligent but Leshaun is lazy: Antecedents and consequences of attributional stereotypes in the classroom

One explanation for the widening achievement gap in America and throughout Europe between ethnic minorities/immigrants, and Whites is the influence of cultural stereotypes on attributions made by both educators and students. This paper explores some factors that increase the likelihood that educators will consciously or unconsciously rely on stereotypes to disambiguate attributional judgments of students. Specifically, the fundamental drive to make attributions in educational settings combine with a norm and pressure for internality judgments in achievement- related domains. These pressures place an extra burden on educators to look for internal causes for student achievement. When that pressure is combined with cognitive overload, motivational barriers, status and hierarchy disparities, and students’ more salient group membership, stereotypes emerge as likely candidates for attributions. The psychological and motivational consequences of attributional stereotypes are discussed in terms of their effects on both educators and students as a function of the distinct attributional patterns implied by stereotypes.RésuméUne explication de l’écart de plus en plus important entre la réussite des blancs et des minorités ethnique/émigrantes aux USA et en Europe tient dans l’influence des stéréotypes culturels concernant les attributions émises par les enseignants et les étudiants. Dans ce manuscrit, sont traités des facteurs qui augmentent la sensibilité des enseignants à se reposer, consciemment ou inconsciemment, sur les stéréotypes afin de lever l’ambiguïté du jugement attributionnel émis à l’égard des étudiants. Plus spécifiquement, la tendance fondamentale à émettre des inférences dans le contexte scolaire se double d’une norme et d’une pression aux jugements internes dans les domaines liés à la performance. Ces pressions conduisent les enseignants à rechercher des causes internes à la performance des étudiants. Lorsque cette pression se double d’une surcharge cognitive, de barrières motivationnelles, de disparités hiérarchiques, de différences de statut, et d’une appartenance groupale saillante des étudiants, les stéréotypes sont alors de bons candidats comme facteurs attributionnels. Les conséquences psychologiques et motivationnelles sur les enseignants et les étudiants sont discutées pour différents types de stéréotypes attributionnels.

The meaning and role of ideology in system justification and resistance for high- and low-status people.

In this article we explore how beliefs about system ideals and the achievement of those ideals differentially predict system justification among low- and high-status groups. Our goal was to reconcile how people can promote system ideals such as equal opportunities for all and at the same time recognize that group-based disparities are, in part, due to these unfulfilled ideals. Three studies examined whether people perceived a discrepancy between a systems ideal goals and its achievement of those goals. Everyone endorsed these goal ideals more than they believed that the goals were being achieved; however, this discrepancy was larger for low-status people. The larger the perceived discrepancy, the more dissatisfied people were with the system and the more likely they were to support hierarchy-attenuating policies. Studies 2 and 3 also examined peoples motivation for endorsing goal ideals. People of all statuses endorsed system ideals to promote an ideal system more than to legitimize the actual system (Study 2); however, high-status people were slightly more likely to endorse system ideals to legitimize the actual system than low-status people (Study 3). In summary, low-status people were more likely than high-status people to recognize discrepancies between system goals and system outcomes, show dissatisfaction with the American system, and prefer policies that would attenuate extant hierarchies.

FUNDAMENTAL CONCERNS ABOUT POLICY FOR ADDRESSING BARRIERS TO STUDENT LEARNING

Education policy, research, and practice are viewed through the lens of addressing barriers to student learning. This produces an analysis that differs markedly from prevailing discussions of how to improve instruction and enhance student achievement. Discussion begins by underscoring the problems for policy, research, and practice that arise from not carefully differentiating among students who manifest learning difficulties. From this perspective, it is stressed that prevailing trends do not adequately address the full range of barriers to learning in ways that provide opportunities for all students to succeed. Implications for new policy directions are discussed.