Kate A. Ratliff

PsychDisclosure.org : Grassroots Support for Reforming Reporting Standards in Psychology.

There is currently an unprecedented level of doubt regarding the reliability of research findings in psychology. Many recommendations have been made to improve the current situation. In this article, we report results from PsychDisclosure.org, a novel open-science initiative that provides a platform for authors of recently published articles to disclose four methodological design specification details that are not required to be disclosed under current reporting standards but that are critical for accurate interpretation and evaluation of reported findings. Grassroots sentiment—as manifested in the positive and appreciative response to our initiative—indicates that psychologists want to see changes made at the systemic level regarding disclosure of such methodological details. Almost 50% of contacted researchers disclosed the requested design specifications for the four methodological categories (excluded subjects, nonreported conditions and measures, and sample size determination). Disclosed information provided by participating authors also revealed several instances of questionable editorial practices, which need to be thoroughly examined and redressed. On the basis of these results, we argue that the time is now for mandatory methods disclosure statements for all psychology journals, which would be an important step forward in improving the reliability of findings in psychology.

Residential mobility breeds familiarity-seeking.

Why are American landscapes (e.g., housing developments, shopping malls) so uniform, despite the well-known American penchant for independence and uniqueness? We propose that this paradox can be explained by American mobility: Residential mobility fosters familiarity-seeking and familiarity-liking, while allowing individuals to pursue their personal goals and desires. We reason that people are drawn to familiar objects (e.g., familiar, national chain stores) when they move. We conducted 5 studies to test this idea at the levels of society, individuals, and situations. We found that (a) national chain stores do better in residentially mobile places than in residentially stable places (controlling for other economic and demographic factors; Study 1); (b) individuals who have moved a lot prefer familiar, national chain stores to unfamiliar stores (Studies 2a and 2b); and (c) a residential mobility mindset enhances the mere exposure and familiarity-liking effect (Studies 4 and 5). In Study 5, we demonstrated that the link between mobility and familiarity-liking was mediated by anxiety evoked by mobility.

Negativity and Outgroup Biases in Attitude Formation and Transfer

In an initial experiment, the behavior of one person had a stronger influence on implicit evaluations of another person from the same group when (a) the attitude was negative rather than positive and (b) the people were outgroup members rather than ingroup members. Explicitly, participants resisted these attitude transfer effects. In a second experiment, negative information formed less negative explicit attitudes when the target was Black than when the target was White, and participants were more vigilant not to transfer that negative attitude to a new Black person. Implicit attitudes, however, transferred to both Black and White targets. Positive information formed stronger positive explicit attitudes when the target was Black than when the target was White, and that evaluation transferred to another Black person both implicitly and explicitly. Even when deliberately resisting outgroup negativity in attitude formation and transfer, people appear unable to avoid it implicitly.

Caught in the Middle: Defensive Responses to IAT Feedback Among Whites, Blacks, and Biracial Black/Whites

This study used archival data to examine how White, Black, and biracial Black/White people respond to implicit attitude feedback suggesting that they harbor racial bias that does not align with their self-reported attitudes. The results suggested that people are generally defensive in response to feedback indicating that their implicit attitudes differ from their explicit attitudes. Among monoracial White and Black individuals, this effect was particularly strong when they learned that they were implicitly more pro-White than they indicated explicitly. By contrast, biracial Black/White individuals were defensive about large discrepancies in either direction (more pro-Black or more pro-White implicit attitudes). These results pinpoint one distinct difference between monoracial and biracial populations and pave the way for future research to further explore how monoracial majority, minority, and biracial populations compare in other types of attitudes and responses to personal feedback.

Implicit prototypes predict risky sun behavior.

OBJECTIVE Despite the fact that skin cancer is highly avoidable, incidence and death rates in the United States continue to climb. The pattern is particularly problematic among young, White women, who sometimes overexpose themselves to harmful ultraviolet rays in hopes of being tan. Research has suggested that positivity toward prototypes of individuals who engage in unhealthy behavior, like tanning, influences the likelihood that an individual will personally engage in those behaviors. Although the prototype-to-behavior link is considered to operate automatically, researchers have typically relied on peoples self-reported evaluations of prototypes, which are more controlled and susceptible to self-presentational concerns. METHOD In the present research, we developed a measure of implicit prototypes and compared it with measures of explicit prototypes in predicting the safe sun behavior of 731 women. RESULTS Meta-analysis of 5 different prototypes (i.e., cool, fun, healthy, intelligent, and attractive) suggested that implicit prototypes predicted more variance in womens current behavior, planned behavior, behavioral willingness, and tanning frequency than did explicit prototypes. CONCLUSION Although some models recognize that health behavior may be based on automatic processes, they exclusively use measures of self-reported attitudes and prototypes to predict behavior. The results suggest that measuring implicit prototypes may provide important explanatory power.

Implicit Attitude Generalization From Black to Black–White Biracial Group Members

We investigated whether Black–White biracial individuals are perceived as Black in the domain of evaluation. Previous research has documented that White perceivers’ negative evaluation of one Black person leads to a negative implicit evaluation of another Black person belonging to the same minimal group. We built upon this out-group transfer effect by investigating whether perceivers also transferred negative implicit attitudes from one Black person to a novel Black–White biracial person. In three experiments, participants learned about a Black individual who performed undesirable behaviors and were then introduced to a new group member. White perceivers formed negative attitudes toward the original individual and transferred these attitudes to the new group member if she was Black or Biracial, but not if she was White (Experiment 1) or Asian (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 demonstrated that only White participants exhibited transfer to the new Black and Biracial group members; Black participants did not.

Not your average bigot: The better‐than‐average effect and defensive responding to Implicit Association Test feedback

A robust body of literature on the better-than-average effect suggests that people believe that they are better than the average others across a variety of domains. In two studies, we examined whether these better-than-average beliefs occur for bias related to stereotyping and prejudice. Moreover, we investigated the hypothesis that better-than-average beliefs will predict defensive responding to feedback indicating personal bias (e.g., preferences for majority groups, societally endorsed stereotypes). Specifically, we examined defensive responses to implicit attitude feedback. Study 1 examined this prediction using archival analysis of two large, online samples of participants completing a Weight-related Implicit Association Test (IAT). Study 2 conceptually replicated Study 1 using nine different, randomly assigned IATs and additional measures of defensiveness. In both studies, people generally believed that they were less biased than others. Moreover, people responded defensively to feedback indicating they were biased. This effect was moderated by better-than-average beliefs such that feedback indicating societally consistent bias was related to defensiveness most (and sometimes only) when people believed they were better than average initially. This work represents the first foray into examining the possible moderating role of social-comparative beliefs in predicting responses to implicit attitude feedback and spurs several important avenues for future research.

Implicit and explicit evaluations of feminist prototypes predict feminist identity and behavior

Many people who endorse gender equality do not personally identify as feminists. The present research offers a novel explanation for this disconnect by examining people’s attitudes toward feminist prototypes—the central, representative feminist that comes to mind when they think of feminists as a group. Results from two samples support the hypothesis that both implicit and explicit attitudes toward feminist prototypes predict unique variance in feminist identity beyond gender-equality attitudes. Results from a second study show feminist identity to mediate between implicit prototypes and self-reported willingness to engage in feminist behaviors. Lastly, a third study shows feminist identity to mediate between implicit prototypes and actual feminist behavior. This is the first study to specifically examine the role of implicit attitudes and prototype favorability in understanding feminist identity and behavior, and the results suggest that promoting positive prototypes of feminists may be an effective route to encouraging feminist identity.

Perceived moral responsibility for attitude-based discrimination.

This research investigated judgements of moral responsibility for attitude-based discrimination, testing whether a wrongdoers mental states - awareness and foresight - are central determinants of culpability. Participants read about and judged a target person who was described as consciously egalitarian, but harbouring negative attitudes that lead him to treat African Americans unfairly. Two studies showed that participants ascribed greater moral responsibility for discrimination when the target was aware of having negative attitudes than when he was unaware. Surprisingly, moral judgements were equally harsh towards a target who was explicitly aware that his bias could influence his behaviour as a target who was not. To explain this result, a second study showed that the path from awareness to moral responsibility was mediated by perceptions that the target had an obligation to foresee his discriminatory behaviour, but not by perceptions of the targets actual foresight. These results suggest that bias awareness influences moral judgements of those who engage in attitude-based discrimination because it obligates them to foresee harmful consequences. The current findings demonstrate that moral judges consider not just descriptive facts, but also normative standards regarding a wrongdoers mental states.

Retribution as hierarchy regulation: Hierarchy preferences moderate the effect of offender socioeconomic status on support for retribution

People punish others for various reasons, including deterring future crime, incapacitating the offender, and retribution, or payback. The current research focuses on retribution, testing whether support for retribution is motivated by the desire to maintain social hierarchies. If so, then the retributive tendencies of hierarchy enhancers or hierarchy attenuators should depend on whether offenders are relatively lower or higher in status, respectively. Three studies showed that hierarchy attenuators were more retributive against high-status offenders than for low-status offenders, that hierarchy enhancers showed a stronger orientation towards retributive justice, and that relationship was stronger for low-status, rather than high-status, criminal offenders. These findings clarify the purpose and function of retributive punishment. They also reveal how hierarchy-regulating motives underlie retribution, motives which, if allowed to influence judgements, may contribute to biased or ineffective justice systems.