Crossing Class Boundaries

Yesterday the New York Times published an opinion piece written by University of Toronto, Rotman School of Management Professor, Stephane Cote and I on the challenges of crossing social class boundaries. You can find the article here. This blog post accompanies that article with a few notes about the research.

Psychological Barriers in Economic Inequality Reduction

Today I wrote a blog for New Left Project on psychology research examining perceptions of, and responses to, economic inequality. The post features cutting-edge research by prominent social psychologists Mike Norton and Dan Ariely, as well as research from my own laboratory at the University of Illinois. An excerpt:

"The United States is one of the most unequal and rigidly stratified societies in the industrialised world.  In the wake of the Great Recession, it has become increasingly clear that success in America flows to the wealthy and the well-connected.  Why do these inequities persist in the face of steady unemployment, abject poverty and rising homelessness? 

Psychology at the (Home) Movies: HBO’s The Wire

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Although I’m more than a decade late to the party, a recent fortunate Amazon.com prime membership has gifted me with access to HBO’s acclaimed series the Wire. For the last two months I’ve been watching the show weekly, digesting its contents in small consistent doses. My background as a middle class ivory tower academic makes the Wire foreign territory to me—I don’t have much personal experience with drug culture, or poverty, or oppression, or Baltimore (the primary city in the story) for that matter. Nevertheless, there were many themes in the TV series that align well with contemporary research in the social sciences. With an eye towards these themes, I bring you a look into HBO’s the Wire by linking it to our current understanding of basic psychology. As with any piece of film-making, the nuance and detail will not be completely captured in this post, and I welcome comments here or on twitter (@mwkraus). Also, SPOILERS!

I Went Open Access: The Story So Far

This past week, one of my graduate students and I published a paper at PLoS ONE, a leading open access journal (if you are interested in politics and economic inequality, I suggest you head over and check it out here). I'm not the first researcher (or psychologist) to use PLoS ONE as an outlet for my work, but it's still a relatively new place for social/personality psychologists to publish their findings. Because of the "newness" of this whole venture, I thought it might be nice to tell you a bit about my experience, so far.

The psychology within the biggest news of 2013

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As we ring in the new year, every major news outlet is publishing their “top” lists of 2013: the top movies, the top tweets, the top sports moments, the top medical breakthroughs, the top business blunders - the lists go on and on. To add a bit of psychology to this “top” list trend, in this post, I take the three top news stories of 2013 as chosen by CNN.com’s readers and highlight what psychological research can contribute to each of them.

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1. New pope. When the 266th pope of the Catholic Church was elected this year, many praised him for his commitment to interfaith dialogue. His support of cross-religious interactions underscores his belief that communication between members of different groups can help to reduce prejudice and conflict. Seeking to heal rifts among people due to religious differences or prior conflicts, the pope himself has sought out personal relationships with many religious leaders across the globe. He hopes that by encouraging his followers to establish similar interfaith relationships, current tensions can be quelled and prejudice alleviated.

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Research on the intergroup contact hypothesis tells us that the pope’s strategy is likely a good one. The basic prediction of the hypothesis is that contact between people of different groups will usually reduce prejudice. Forming relationships with members of another group can help people learn more about a group, experience less anxiety about interacting with the group, and feel more empathy for that group. All three of these outcomes can then diminish prejudice. Some research has even shown that merely having a friend who interacts with someone from another group can reduce prejudice (the extended contact hypothesis). While it’s not always the case that intergroup contact yields less prejudice, the pope does seem to be taking the right approach for prejudice reduction by continuing to support interfaith dialogue.

Why Do We Blame Victims?

Two months ago Jonathan Martin, a football player on the Miami Dolphins, left the team due to mistreatment from teammates, which included receiving threatening phone messages from another player. The incident raised concerns about hazing within the NFL, but it also prompted some to suggest that Martin himself bears at least partial responsibility for his fate. For example, another NFL player stated in an interview that Martin is "just as much to blame because he allowed it to happen" and should have behaved like a man. Others argued that Martin was oversensitive and made himself an easy target. 

This sort of victim blaming is not unique to bullying cases. It can be seen when rape victims' sexual histories are dissected, when people living in poverty are viewed as lazy and unmotivated, when those suffering from mental or physical illness are presumed to have invited disease through their own bad choices. There are cases where victims may indeed hold some responsibility for their misfortunate, but all too often this responsibility is overblown and other factors are discounted. Why are we so eager to blame victims, even when we have seemingly nothing to gain? 

I'm Thankful For Female Role Models in Psychological Science

Zoe! Science!

My brain may still be in a fog from all the food I ate yesterday, but that isn't going to stop me from being thankful. I'm thankful for a great many things in my life: My family, my health, and my job are three things that first come to mind. I am especially thankful for my daughter Zoe, who just turned 8 months old last week, and is, pretty much, the best baby in all the universe (admittedly, I haven't been EVERYWHERE in the universe, but I think it's at least a fair hypothesis with some empirical support). When I think about Zoe growing up, I wonder about the kind of person she is going to be and the things she is going to be interested in doing for her life. Along with these thoughts, I worry about whether Zoe's interests will conflict with what the world around her says about what she can or cannot do. If she wants to go into science, for instance, will there be people or institutions telling her that science simply isn't a thing that "people like her" are interested in? Thinking about this must be raising my blood pressure.

You're an intelligent bunch, PYM readers, so I don't need to review all the details, but when women pursue science careers they face barriers that men do not. These barriers include norms and expectations that socialize men and women to think that a science career is only compatible with the male gender, unwanted sexual advances from superiors (typically men) who make the science environment a hostile workplace (here), and direct and indirect discriminatory practices that make it more difficult for women to succeed in a science career (here for an example, and here behind a paywall).

And yet, despite these significant obstacles, women still pursue science careers and excel! Today, I would like to give thanks to my female role models in psychological science. These are female scientists who have shaped my research career and through their own path-breaking work, have made science more accessible to women everywhere!

The Great Social Ladder of Our Lives

Last week I was on vacation in my hometown of Poway, CA. It's a little suburb outside of San Diego that boasts of being "The City in the Country" (basically that means we have both Starbucks and rodeo!). Whenever I go home, I see my family and I tend to fall into many of the same activities I did when I was in high school--mostly that involves eating Mexican food from the various eateries around the city (Cotijas, Albertos, Aibertos, Robertos, El Robertos, you get the idea). When I'm in Poway I think a lot about high school. One of the main aspects of high school--as we know from careful analyses of movies like the Breakfast Club and Mean Girls--is social status. That is, who is at the top of the social ladder, and how can we either be friends with those people, or if we aren't high status, how can we avoid the wrath of those at the top of the pecking order? I think my first interest in research on social hierarchy started in high school.

The truth is that social hierarchy isn't just confined to the high school cafeteria, but is instead a large part of our everyday social lives. Status hierarchies can be about workplace power, respect among peers, or stereotypes ascribed to us by virtue of our membership in a social category (e.g., gender and race). I believe that one of the, often overlooked, bases of status is social class--the money we make, education we obtain, and the job prestige we garner. Social class is the great social ladder that ranks us in society.

Guest Post: Combating Weight Stigma

Today's guest post comes from Aubrey Toole, a recent graduate of the University of California, Berkeley who will begin a doctoral program in clinical psychology at Emory University in the Fall. 

I am willing to bet that most of you reading this don’t go a typical day without hearing a weight-related comment or conversation, or seeing body weight-related advertisements or media messages. It seems like I hear about another celebrity weight loss ‘success’ story or weight gain ‘fiasco’ every time I turn on the TV. Standing in line at the drug store means being surrounded by a smattering of tabloids fraught with photos of celebrity cellulite. And even on facebook, it’s hard to avoid sneaky before and after photos of some new miracle diet appearing out of the corner of my eye.

Psychology At the Movies: Essentialist Musings in Man of Steel

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Yesterday, my spouse and I dropped our newborn daughter off with Grandma and then popped over to the local theater to see this summer's much anticipated comic-book blockbuster Man of Steel. By any standard, Man of Steel is exceptionally light when it comes to philosophical musings: The plot is predictably linear--good guys fight bad guys who are trying to kill them. At first glance, it may seem like a stretch to write an entire blog entry (for a psychology blog) about the film, given this simple plot design. But, in between the explosions--and there were MANY explosions--the bad guys turned out to be motivated by some very simple psychological principles. Spoilers Ahead!

Group gender composition: Does it matter?

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When I was younger, I can remember being split into teams in gym class and different tables in art class and having one question: how many girls and how many boys are in my group? Depending on the activity, it seemed important to know this so you could assess your chances for success. More boys on your team, and you might be more likely to win dodgeball. More girls at your art table, and you might paint a better mural.

An adult might have told me that was silly - how many boys vs. girls were in my group didn’t matter. However, recent research suggests that the gender composition of a group does matter. Though it doesn’t matter in terms of impacting actual performance, it can influence how group members think about one another and about their group as a whole. Because I love research that examines people in their natural (or somewhat natural) environments when they are interacting with other people, let’s take a look at how the researchers demonstrated this. 

SWAG: Racial Bias in Pain Perception

Tom Brady is no stranger to pain (source)

Every Wednesday afternoon, I gather with a bunch of faculty and graduate students at the University of Illinois to discuss a journal article about social psychology, and to eat a snack. This blog post reflects the discussion we had during this week's seminar affectionately called Social Wednesdays and Grub (SWAG).

This week in SWAG we read an article about racial biases in perceptions of others’ pain. The American medical field has a long history of racial bias (Note: I think if you switched the words “medical field” with almost any other field, the sentence would be factually accurate. For example, “mathematics field” or “psychology field” but not “magnetic field”). American blacks tend to be diagnosed less accurately by medical staff than whites, to receive less optimal health care, and to be cared for less intimately. The authors, led by Sophie Trawalter of the University of Virginia, wondered about the source of this racial bias. They reasoned that it might arise in part from a belief that low status groups experience less pain than other groups in society. Blacks and other traditionally low status groups in America are perceived as having overcome greater hardships throughout their lives. As a result of contending with, and overcoming these hardships, low status groups are perceived to experience less pain than their more advantaged counterparts—their tough circumstances have made them tougher. This racial bias in pain perception is theorized to underlie the black-white treatment gap in medicine.

Do I have the least stressful job in 2013?

About a week ago, Forbes magazine published a list of the least stressful jobs in 2013 (here). At the very top of the list was the college Professor. This sparked some outrage among my colleagues who (rightly) point out that a Professor's job is not without stress (here). The swell of outrage was so immense, that the original author posted an addendum stating that indeed, some of the characterizations of a Professorial job made in the original post--e.g., that Professors don't work hard--were inaccurate (here).

So, what kind of stress do Professors actually face in their jobs relative to other professions? It might help to first try to understand what is meant by the word "stress."

PYM: Holiday Edition

Looking for your perfect holiday?

The holidays are upon us, which can mean family, fun, food, and cheer. But also, stress, anxiety, conflict, and caloric guilt. Psychology has a lot to say about how to promote the former and avoid the latter, so like last year, I've compiled posts from the previous year to provide you with tips on how to make your holidays a little bit brighter.

On giving and receiving gifts:

-It is not the thought that counts. There is a mismatch in our preference for giving and our preference for receiving gifts. We like to think that a thoughtful gift is the best kind, but gift recipients really just want to receive a gift they like - so know that picking a gift from someone's amazon wish-list is a surefire way to guarantee a happy Christmas. But if you went off-road this Christmas when buying your presents, temper your expectations for how happy the recipient will be when receiving a gift accompanied by out-of-the-box thinking. And if you are receiving a gift that isn't what you expected, remember that the gift giver thought they were doing something nice by putting in that extra thought and not just clicking on the amazon link.

For the Love of Humanity: The Psychology of Thinking Globally

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When was the last time you thought about the fact that you are a member of the human species? For most of us, this aspect of our identity is not front and center. More relevant are things like gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion, political party, sports team affiliations, and all of our other group memberships, large and small. Not only do we stake our identity and often also our sense of self-worth in these groups, but we tend to be more helpful towards those who belong to them, often at the expense of those who do not. A significant minority of people, however, seem less concerned with group distinctions. For example, while many turned a blind eye, some individuals risked their lives to rescue Jews during the Holocaust. In interviews conducted by Kristen Renwick Monroe for her book, The Heart of Altruism, many of these individuals described a sense of common humanity, or "belonging to one human family." By contrast, those who did not offer help were less likely to possess this feeling of expanded kinship.

In a recent article published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, psychologists Sam McFarland, Matthew Webb, and Derek Brown developed a new scale for measuring individual differences in this attribute, the Identification With All Humanity scale (IWAH). The scale involves a series of questions assessing the degree to which someone identifies with "all humans everywhere" ("identifying" includes things like feeling love toward, feeling similar to, and believing in), independent of how much they identify with people in their own community and country. They then examined how scores on this measure relate to various personality traits and behaviors. Here are some highlights from the findings.

How the Rich are Different from the Poor I: Choice

In the many conversations that F. Scott Fitzgerald had with his friend Ernest Hemingway, Fitzgerald was believed to have said that "The rich are different from the poor." Hemingway's alleged response: "Yes, they have more money."

While this conversation may have never occurred, it goes without saying that the rich do indeed differ from the poor. In this first part of a four part PYM series I will be exploring precisely how the rich differ from the poor--in a psychological sense at least. In this first post, I examine how one's social class status--that is, the money, education, and occupation status of one's family--influences the concept of choice.

Marriage equality: What is shifting our opinions?

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Our president has brought us many first – events that have nudged the collective social psychological typography of our nation. President Obama’s race, grassroots campaign, and prolific use of social media have shaped subtle changes in how we interact with the political system and each other.

Last week brought another first. Speaking in support of same-sex marriage, Obama acknowledged and gave his voice to a divisive social issue. Simultaneously, for the first time in our country’s history, despite North Carolina’s marriage amendment, the number of people favoring same-sex marriage has outnumbered those who oppose it. As a moral psychology researcher, I ask, “Why?” “What has changed to pave the way for these shifts?” Maybe more importantly, “Why is it that we are still so divided on this issue?”

It's lonely at the top: Power makes you mistrusting

It's lonely at the top

Power is desirable – it helps us achieve goals, frees us from many social constraints, and allows us to be ourselves. But having power isn’t all peaches and cream, it’s also lonely at the top. Perhaps Leonardo DiCaprio summed it up best when he said “I had better success meeting girls before Titanic... there wasn’t a perception of her talking to me for only one reason.” And it turns out this isn’t just Leo’s problem. According to recent research by Ena Inesi and colleagues, having power – as a manager, as the higher-paid spouse, or even as the babysitter – leads people to see favors by others as more selfishly motivated.

Across five different studies, Inesi and her colleagues found that power lead people to make cynical attributions about the intentions behind another person’s kind acts. When a worker brings coffee for a boss, the boss may think that the co-worker is just trying to get ahead. And it doesn’t end there – because people who are more powerful are more likely to make these cynical attributions, believing those with less power are only using favors as a way to climb to the top, they are also less thankful, less trusting, and less likely to reciprocate the kind act. Gratitude, trust, and reciprocation are the cornerstones of relationship development. Relationships are hard, and without being able to trust the other person and return their favors, relationships are not likely to last long. Indeed, Inesi found that people who earned more than their spouses were less committed to their relationships, and this lack of commitment was explained by their mistrust of their partners’ intentions – the higher paid spouses believed their partners’ favors were more likely to be bestowed in a self-serving manner.

An Inconvenient Truth: Race in America (Part I)

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It is an American tragedy whenever an unarmed teenage boy--of any color--is fatally shot. And when you strip down the Trayvon Martin shooting to its core, that is exactly what we were all faced with in Florida several weeks ago--a senseless tragedy. As a result, there has been a re-emergence of questions about the meaning of race in today's America. I will be taking on some of these tough questions in a series of blog posts I'm calling "An Inconvenient Truth." In this discussion of race in America, I will pull no punches.

One of the main talking points (but definitely not the only one) in the Trayvon Martin shooting, and in the eventual arrest of his killer, George Zimmerman, has been race. Did race play a role in Zimmerman's actions that day? Was Zimmerman unfairly judging Martin based on his skin color?  If Martin was of another racial/ethnic group, would the same things have happened? 

Rue and Racism: Intergroup dynamics and the Hunger Games

 Today we have the second installment of awesome guest blogger Maya Kuehn's posts on the psychology behind the Hunger Games. Check out the first installment here.

Rue

In the original, written version of The Hunger Games, it’s made fairly clear that both Rue and her fellow District 11 tribute, Thresh, are African American. Yet when faced with their ethnicity on the movie screen, many people have expressed great disappointment (to state it delicately) over these tragic characters not being White. But why?

Well, it turns out that empathy across group boundaries is a complicated matter. Although part of the glue holding society together is a desire to reduce the suffering of others, and though we’re quick to empathize with and help members of our own groups, this dynamic can go haywire when it must extend to members of different groups (Cikara, Bruneau, & Saxe, 2011).