Dale T. Miller

When small effects are impressive

Effect size is becoming an increasingly popular measure of the importance of an effect, both in individual studies and in meta-analyses. However, a large effect size is not the only way to demonstrate that an effect is important. This article describes 2 alternative methodological strategies, in which importance is a function of how minimal a manipulation of the independent variable or how difficult-to-influence a dependent variable will still produce an effect. These methodologies demonstrate the importance of an independent variable or psychological process, even though they often yield effects that are small in statistical terms

Social stigma : the psychology of marked relationships

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Moral credentials and the expression of prejudice.

Three experiments supported the hypothesis that people are more willing to express attitudes that could be viewed as prejudiced when their past behavior has established their credentials as nonprejudiced persons. In Study 1, participants given the opportunity to disagree with blatantly sexist statements were later more willing to favor a man for a stereotypically male job. In Study 2, participants who first had the opportunity to select a member of a stereotyped group (a woman or an African American) for a category-neutral job were more likely to reject a member of that group for a job stereotypically suited for majority members. In Study 3, participants who had established credentials as nonprejudiced persons revealed a greater willingness to express a politically incorrect opinion even when the audience was unaware of their credentials. The general conditions under which people feel licensed to act on illicit motives are discussed.

Asymmetries in Attachments to Groups and to their Members: Distinguishing between Common-Identity and Common-Bond Groups

Two studies sought to validate the distinction between common-identity groups, which are based on direct attachments to the group identity, and common-bond groups, which are based on attachments among group members. Study 1 focused on members of selective and nonselective university eating clubs. Study 2 focused on members of a diverse sample of campus groups. Both studies revealed asymmetries in group and member attachments: Individuals in common-identity groups were more attached to their group than to its members, whereas individuals in common-bond groups were as attached to the members as to the group (or more so). Study 2 also demonstrated that attachment to the group was more strongly related to various evaluations of individual group members in common-bond than in common-identity groups. The authors discuss the implications of these results for the development of groups over time and speculate on how the dynamics of the two types of groups might differ.

Deserving and the Emergence of Forms of Justice1

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses “deserving” and “emergence” of the theme of justice. The related themes of justice and deserving pervade the entire fabric of a society. The evidence for the importance of the theme of justice in a society can be strikingly juxtaposed against the equally vivid signs of institutionalized injustice and widespread indifference to the fate of innocent victims. Although various theorists have treated the definition in a conceptually more systematic way, “deserving” refers essentially to the relation between a person and his outcomes. A person deserves an outcome if he has met the appropriate “preconditions” for obtaining it. If a person does not get the outcome or gets something judged to be of less value, then he has not received all he deserved. Of course, the outcomes in question can be negative rather than positive in nature. The chapter approaches the more substantive issue of the extent to which people care about justice and the way these concerns affect their lives. It examines the question of why people care at all about justice and deserving. One possibility is suggested by a consideration of a developmental sequence, particularly the transition from living by the “pleasure” principle to living by the “reality” principle. The chapter highlights the development of the “personal contract”, altruism, and forms of justice.

Psychological Essentialism of Human Categories

Psychological essentialism is an ordinary mode of category representation that has powerful social-psychological consequences. This article reviews those consequences, with a focus on the distinctive ways people perceive, evaluate, and interact with members of human categories they essentialize. Why and when people engage in this mode of thinking remain open questions. Variability in essentialism across cultures, categories, and contexts suggests that this mode of representing human categories is rooted in a naturalistic theory of category origins, combined with a need to explain differences that cross category boundaries.

The justice motive in everyday life

Part I. Introduction: 1. Introduction Michael Ross and Dale Miller 2. Pursuing the justice motive Melvin J. Lerner Part II. Theoretical Perspectives on the Justice Motive: 3. Doing justice to the justice motive Leo Montada 4. The justice motive in perspective Riel Vermunt 5. Perverse justice and perverse norms: another turn of the screw Jose-Miguel Fernandez-Dols 6. Justice motivation moral motivation C. Daniel Batson Part III. Victim Derogation and the Belief in a Just World: 7. Why we reject innocent victims Carolyn L. Hafer 8. Helping and rationalization as alternative strategies for restoring the belief in a just world: evidence from longitudinal change analyses Barbara Reichle and Manfred Schmitt 9. Violence in the workplace: the explanatory strength of social (in)justice theories Herman Steensma 10. The just world and Winston Churchill: an approach/avoidance conflict about psychological distance when harming victims Robert Folger and S. Douglas Pugh Part IV. The Justice Motive and Pro-Social Behavior: 11. Just world, social responsibility, and helping behavior Hans-Werner Bierhoff 12. Policies to redress social injustice: is the concern for justice a cause both of support and opposition? D. Ramona Bobocel, Leanne S. Son Hing, Camilla M. Holmvall and Mark P. Zanna 13. Justice and empathy: what motivates people to help others? Steven L. Blader and Tom R. Tyler 14. The justice motive and altruistic helping: rescuers of Jews in Nazi occupied Europe Janusz Reykowski 15. Acting righteously: the influence of attitude, moral responsibility, and emotional involvement Joseph de Rivera, Elena Gerstmann and Lisa Maisels Part V. Justice-based Reactions to Transgressors: 16. Retributive justice: its social context Neil Vidmar 17. Just punishments: research on retributional justice John Darley 18. Deservingness, entitlement, and reactions to outcomes N. T. Feather 19. Just world processes in demonizing John H. Ellard, Christina D. Miller, Terri-Lynne Baumle and James M. Olson Part VI. Justice and Reaction to Ones Own Fate: 20. Belief in a just world as personal resource in school Claudia Dalbert and Jurgen Maes 21. Awakening to discrimination Faye J. Crosby and Stacy A. Ropp 22. Deservingness and perceptions of procedural justice in citizen encounters with the police Jason Sunshine and Larry Heuer 23. Fairness judgments as cognitions E. Allan Lind.

Suspicion of ulterior motivation and the correspondence bias

Three studies examined the hypothesis that when perceivers learn of the existence of multiple, plausibly rival motives for an actors behavior, they are less likely to fall prey to the correspondence bias than when they learn of the existence of situational factors that may have constrained the actors behavior. In the first 2 studies, Ss who learned that an actor was instructed to behave as he did drew inferences that corresponded to his behavior. In contrast, Ss who were led to suspect that an actors behavior may have been motivated by a desire to ingratiate (Study 1), or by a desire to avoid an unwanted job (Study 2), resisted the correspondence bias. The 3rd study demonstrated that these differences were not due to a general unwillingness on the part of suspicious perceivers to make dispositional inferences. The implications that these results have for understanding attribution theory are discussed.

The norm of self-interest and its effects on social action.

Four studies investigated whether people feel inhibited from engaging in social action incongruent with their apparent self-interest. Participants in Study 1 predicted that they would be evaluated negatively were they to take action on behalf of a cause in which they had no stake or in which they had a stake but held stake-incongruent attitudes. Participants in Study 2 reported both surprise and anger when a target person took action on behalf of a cause in which he or she had no stake or in which he or she held stake-incongruent attitudes. In Study 3, individuals felt more comfortable engaging in social action and expected others to respond more favorably toward their actions if the issue was described as more relevant to their own sex than to the opposite sex. In Study 4, the authors found that providing nonvested individuals with psychological standing rendered them as likely as vested individuals to undertake social action. The authors discuss the implications of these results for the relationship between vested interest, social action, and attitude-behavior consistency.

Collective Errors and Errors about the Collective

This article focuses on the circumstances in which individuals mistakenly assume that their beliefs, perceptions, and feelings differ from those of their peers. Pluralistic ignorance, as this phenomenon is called, yields numerous significant consequences for the self (e.g., illusory feelings of deviance) and for the collective (e.g., the perpetuation of unpopular social norms). It also illustrates several important ways in which the self and the collective influence each other. The authors propose that pluralistic ignorance has its roots in collectively shared misconceptions about the relative power of different motives. Specifically, it occurs when widely shared but erroneous social representations of human motivation lead people to view the motive guiding their behavior as one that would not exert a comparable influence on the behavior of others.