Nilanjana Dasgupta
Biographic Data
| ID | 183296 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nilanjana Dasgupta |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nilanjana |
| FAMILY NAME | Dasgupta |
| SIGNATURE | DASGUPTA N |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Massachusetts Amherst |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4098-605X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 66 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 726 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 66 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
The Habitus of Care
BACKGROUND: People who use drugs represent a significant yet underrecognized frontline against overdose fatality. While overdose education and naloxone distribution programs provide basic training, little is known about how expertise develops through repeated real-world encounters with overdose. METHODS: We conducted semi-structured interviews with 74 people who had administered naloxone within the past year, recruited through harm reduction prog…
Public Trust, Private Data
Emergence of Medetomidine in the Unregulated Drug Supply and Its Association With Hallucinogenic Effects
A brick to a bundle
Findings suggest that people who use drugs are adapting consumption patterns and adopting harm reduction practices as coping responses to xylazine's adverse effects. Unlike previous major opioid market transitions that primarily differed in pharmacokinetics, xylazine introduces new risks while replacing desired psychoactive effects with undesirable ones. The widespread dissatisfaction with xylazine represents a unique opportunity to expand harm r…
Racial Biases in Parent-Teacher Ratings of Childhood ADHD Symptoms
Evaluating Algorithmic Approaches to Uncover Racial, Ethnic, and Gender Disparities in Scientific Authorship
To explore the capabilities of race/ethnicity and gender prediction algorithms in uncovering patterns of authorship distribution in scientific paper submissions to a major peer-reviewed scientific journal ( AJPH), we analyzed 17 667 manuscript submissions from the United States between 2013 and 2022. We used machine-learning algorithms to predict corresponding authors’ race/ethnicity (Asian, Black, Hispanic, White) and gender categories based on …
The gender gap in the care economy is larger in highly developed countries
Despite the growing demand for care economy employees (e.g., nurses, teachers, and social workers), men remain underrepresented in these careers. While economically developed countries support more equal rights for women and men, their labor markets are highly gender segregated (Charles, 1992, 2003). We conducted a focused investigation of this paradoxical pattern in the care economy, testing whether gender gaps in care economy career interest ar…
Harnessing Social Psychological Insights to Grow the Next Generation of American Scientists, Engineers, and Technologists and Address Real‐World Challenges Facing the Nation
Two interconnecting challenges contribute to a substantial gap between the supply and demand of talented STEM professionals in the United States workforce. First, is a substantial gap between the rising demographic diversity of the U.S. population and the limited diversity of Americans in STEM education pathways and careers. Second, inadequate attention connecting STEM research and teaching to socially relevant real‐world issues makes STEM educat…
Social media prompts to encourage intervening with cancer treatment misinformation
“Cookbook medicine”
Opioid dependence and overdose are serious public health concerns. States have responded by enacting legislation regulating opioid-prescribing practices. Through in-depth interviews with clinicians, state officials, and organizational stakeholders, this paper examines opioid prescribing limits legislation (PLL) in North Carolina and how it impacts clinical practice. Since the advent of PLL, clinicians report being more mindful when prescribing op…
We Can’t Arrest Our Way Out of Overdose
When) do counterattitudinal exemplars shift implicit racial evaluations? Replications and extensions of Dasgupta and Greenwald (2001)
Dasgupta and Greenwald (2001) demonstrated that exposure to positive Black exemplars (e.g., Colin Powell) and negative White exemplars (e.g., Jeffrey Dahmer) can reduce implicit pro-White/anti-Black evaluations, as measured by an Implicit Association Test. Here, we report seven preregistered online experiments conducted with volunteer U.S. participants ( N = 6,953) that sought to replicate and probe the boundary conditions of this finding. Contra…
Gender Gap in Parental Leave Intentions
Despite global commitments and efforts, a gender‐based division of paid and unpaid work persists. To identify how psychological factors, national policies, and the broader sociocultural context contribute to this inequality, we assessed parental‐leave intentions in young adults (18–30 years old) planning to have children (N = 13,942; 8,880 identified as women; 5,062 identified as men) across 37 countries that varied in parental‐leave policies and…
From Precollege to Career
Although the United States population is growing increasingly diverse, the diversity within higher education is not keeping pace. Contributing to the underrepresentation of students from historically marginalized groups are a variety of interconnected systemic barriers that prevent students from entering college, from thriving while there, and from persisting through to graduation. Here, we use the stereotype inoculation model as a guiding framew…
Principles and Metrics for Evaluating Oregon’s Innovative Drug Decriminalization Measure
A “Chillier” Climate for Multiply Marginalized STEM Faculty Impedes Research Collaboration
Experimental Forum 2
The Future of the Public Health Data Dashboard
The impact of communal learning contexts on adolescent self-concept and achievement
Misalignment between students' communal values and those expressed in classrooms is an obstacle to academic engagement, especially in mathematics, and especially for racial ethnic minority and female students. Using 10 schools across the United States, we conducted a longitudinal field study in 8th grade mathematics classes to investigate: (a) how perceptions of communally oriented classrooms influence student outcomes in early adolescence, (b) w…
Variation in Abuse‐Deterrent Formulation Opioid Prescribing in California, Florida, and Kentucky in 2018
PURPOSE: Abuse-deterrent formulation (ADF) opioid analgesics have been developed as a means to address prescription opioid abuse. ADF opioid use in clinical practice is not well described in the literature. This study characterizes ADF opioid prescribing patterns in 3 diverse states. METHODS: This study used data from prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) in California, Florida, and Kentucky. The sample includes all ADF opioid prescriptio…
Sociodemographic and Clinical Predictors of Prescription Opioid Use in a Longitudinal Community-Based Cohort Study of Middle-Aged and Older Adults
Findings support the assessment of these modifiable factors during clinical encounters in patients ≥ 50 years old with chronic pain
Changing public opinion about gender activates group threat and opposition to feminist social movements among men
Two studies examined whether men’s perception of the declining value of traditional masculinity activates social status, realistic, and symbolic threat, and in turn motivates opposition to feminist social movements. In Study 1, men’s perception that their ingroup is losing value across several social spheres was associated with social status and realistic threat, both of which were associated with opposition to feminist movements. Study 2, an exp…
Surveillance, Surveys, and Covid-19
Ghost in the Machine
On the malleability of automatic attitudes
Two experiments examined whether exposure to pictures of admired and disliked exemplars can reduce automatic preference for White over Black Americans and younger over older people. In Experiment 1, participants were exposed to either admired Black and disliked White individuals, disliked Black and admired White individuals, or nonracial exemplars. Immediately after exemplar exposure and 24 hr later, they completed an Implicit Association Test th…
Seeing is believing
On the malleability of automatic attitudes
Automatic Preference for White Americans
Opioid Crisis
The accepted wisdom about the US overdose crisis singles out prescribing as the causative vector. Although drug supply is a key factor, we posit that the crisis is fundamentally fueled by economic and social upheaval, its etiology closely linked to the role of opioids as a refuge from physical and psychological trauma, concentrated disadvantage, isolation, and hopelessness. Overreliance on opioid medications is emblematic of a health care system …
Implicit Ingroup Favoritism, Outgroup Favoritism, and Their Behavioral Manifestations
From automatic antigay prejudice to behavior
Two experiments tested whether the relation between automatic prejudice and discriminatory behavior is moderated by 2 conscious processes: conscious egalitarian beliefs and behavioral control. The authors predicted that, when both conscious processes are deactivated, automatic prejudice would elicit discriminatory behavior. When either of the 2 processes is activated, behavioral bias would be eliminated. The authors assessed participants' automat…
Group entitativity and group perception
STEMing the tide
Three studies tested a stereotype inoculation model, which proposed that contact with same-sex experts (advanced peers, professionals, professors) in academic environments involving science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) enhances women's self-concept in STEM, attitudes toward STEM, and motivation to pursue STEM careers. Two cross-sectional controlled experiments and 1 longitudinal naturalistic study in a calculus class revealed …
Attributions of responsibility and perceived harm in the aftermath of mass violence
Two studies shed light on construals (i.e., attributions of responsibility and perceived severity of harm) of extreme intergroup violence and the relationship between in-group identification and these construals. An investigation of Turkish construals of Armenian massacres at the beginning of the 20th century (Study 1) and Hutus’ and Tutsis’ construals of the ethnic conflict in Burundi (Study 2) showed that each group attributed less responsibili…
The devil is in the details
Three experiments integrated several theories in psychology and sociology to identify the conditions under which multiculturalism has positive versus negative effects on majority group members' attitudes and behavioral intentions toward ethnic minorities. On the basis of social cognitive construal theories, we predicted and found that construing multiculturalism in abstract terms by highlighting its broad goals reduced White Americans' prejudice …
An integrative framework on the impact of allies
What impact do advantaged group allies have within social movements? Although solidarity between advantaged and disadvantaged group members is often encouraged to achieve long‐term social change, allies run the risk of being ineffective or counterproductive, therefore making it important to shift our focus towards understanding the impact of allies. We propose an integrative theoretical framework describing the positive and negative impact of all…
Collaboration and Gender Equity among Academic Scientists
Universities were established as hierarchical bureaucracies that reward individual attainment in evaluating success. Yet collaboration is crucial both to 21st century science and, we argue, to advancing equity for women academic scientists. We draw from research on gender equity and on collaboration in higher education, and report on data collected on one campus. Sixteen focus group meetings were held with 85 faculty members from STEM departments…
Changing public opinion about gender activates group threat and opposition to feminist social movements among men
Two studies examined whether men’s perception of the declining value of traditional masculinity activates social status, realistic, and symbolic threat, and in turn motivates opposition to feminist social movements. In Study 1, men’s perception that their ingroup is losing value across several social spheres was associated with social status and realistic threat, both of which were associated with opposition to feminist movements. Study 2, an exp…
To be or not to be (ethnic)
A new American dilemma? The effect of ethnic identification and public service on the national inclusion of ethnic minorities
Three experiments integrate research from political science and social psychology to examine the consequences of two competing visions of American national identity. American identity has been defined not only in terms of shared ethnocultural heritage originating in Europe (the ethnocultural prototype) but also in terms of shared commitment to civic service (the civic responsibility prototype). Three experiments tested the consequence of highligh…
When Does Contact with Successful Ingroup Members Change Self-Stereotypes
A longitudinal study examined the relationship between contact with successful ingroup members and women's stereotypes about their own leadership abilities, career goals, and assertive behavior in class. Upon entry into college and toward the end of their sophomore year we measured (1) participants' quantity and quality of contact with successful ingroup members (female professors), (2) implicit and explicit leadership self-concept, (3) career go…
How the Demographic Composition of Academic Science and Engineering Departments Influences Workplace Culture, Faculty Experience, and Retention Risk
Although on average women are underrepresented in academic science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) departments at universities, an underappreciated fact is that women's representation varies widely across STEM disciplines. Past research is fairly silent on how local variations in gender composition impact faculty experiences. This study fills that gap. A survey of STEM departments at a large research university finds that women f…
The detrimental effect of affirming masculinity on judgments of gay men
Ethics in a Pandemic
A pandemic of highly pathogenic influenza would threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands in the United States and confront governments and organizations, with ethical issues having wide-ranging implications. The Department of Health and Human Services and all states have published pandemic influenza plans. We analyzed the federal and state plans, available on the Internet, for evidence of ethical guidance as judged by the presence of ethical t…
Gender Gap in Parental Leave Intentions
Despite global commitments and efforts, a gender‐based division of paid and unpaid work persists. To identify how psychological factors, national policies, and the broader sociocultural context contribute to this inequality, we assessed parental‐leave intentions in young adults (18–30 years old) planning to have children (N = 13,942; 8,880 identified as women; 5,062 identified as men) across 37 countries that varied in parental‐leave policies and…
Principles and Metrics for Evaluating Oregon’s Innovative Drug Decriminalization Measure
A “Chillier” Climate for Multiply Marginalized STEM Faculty Impedes Research Collaboration
Contemporary Discrimination in the Lab and Field
This article highlights the necessity of applying evidence‐based social psychological research to identify the causes and consequences of implicit bias as they occur in the real world. We first outline a number of benefits that emerge from complementing controlled laboratory experiments with field studies chief among them is that the latter bolster external validity and the applicability of laboratory research to real‐world settings where social …
From Precollege to Career
Although the United States population is growing increasingly diverse, the diversity within higher education is not keeping pace. Contributing to the underrepresentation of students from historically marginalized groups are a variety of interconnected systemic barriers that prevent students from entering college, from thriving while there, and from persisting through to graduation. Here, we use the stereotype inoculation model as a guiding framew…
The Future of the Public Health Data Dashboard
Perceptions of the Collective Other
It is contended that perceptions of groups are affected by particular variables that do not apply to individuals (e.g., intragroup similarity and proximity). Importantly, the perception of outgroup threat has incomplete analogs at the individual level. Results from 3 studies support predictable distinctions between representations of individuals and of groups. Study I showed that priming of the word they produces more extreme negative judgments o…
Group entitativity and group perception
Automatic Preference for White Americans
On the malleability of automatic attitudes
Subgroup Prejudice Based on Skin Color Among Hispanics in the United States and Latin America
Two experiments examined the influence of skin color on American Hispanics' and Chileans' attitudes towards their ethnic ingroup and toward subgroups within their ingroup. When implicit attitudes were examined, both American Hispanics and Chileans expressed strong preference for the lighter complexioned subgroup (“Blanco” in Spanish) over the darker complexioned subgroup (“Moreno” in Spanish) within their ethnic ingroup. Implicit preference for B…
Prejudice From Thin Air
Two experiments provide initial evidence that specific emotional states are capable of creating automatic prejudice toward outgroups. Specifically, we propose that anger should influence automatic evaluations of outgroups because of its functional relevance to intergroup conflict and competition, whereas other negative emotions less relevant to intergroup relations (e.g., sadness) should not. In both experiments, after minimal ingroups and outgro…
Seeing is believing
Implicit Ingroup Favoritism, Outgroup Favoritism, and Their Behavioral Manifestations
From automatic antigay prejudice to behavior
Two experiments tested whether the relation between automatic prejudice and discriminatory behavior is moderated by 2 conscious processes: conscious egalitarian beliefs and behavioral control. The authors predicted that, when both conscious processes are deactivated, automatic prejudice would elicit discriminatory behavior. When either of the 2 processes is activated, behavioral bias would be eliminated. The authors assessed participants' automat…
The malleability of men's gender self-concept
The present study tested the influence of social status and gender salience on the malleability of men's gender self-concepts at an automatic versus controlled level. Male participants were placed in a superior or subordinate role relative to a male or female confederate for a joint task; subsequently their automatic and controlled beliefs about themselves were measured. We predicted first, that men placed in a subordinate role would protect agai…
Ethics in a Pandemic
A pandemic of highly pathogenic influenza would threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands in the United States and confront governments and organizations, with ethical issues having wide-ranging implications. The Department of Health and Human Services and all states have published pandemic influenza plans. We analyzed the federal and state plans, available on the Internet, for evidence of ethical guidance as judged by the presence of ethical t…
Fanning the flames of prejudice
Three experiments examined the impact of incidental emotions on implicit intergroup evaluations. Experiment 1 demonstrated that for unknown social groups, two negative emotions that are broadly applicable to intergroup conflict (anger and disgust) both created implicit bias where none had existed before. However, for known groups about which perceivers had prior knowledge, emotions increased implicit prejudice only if the induced emotion was appl…
When Does Contact with Successful Ingroup Members Change Self-Stereotypes
A longitudinal study examined the relationship between contact with successful ingroup members and women's stereotypes about their own leadership abilities, career goals, and assertive behavior in class. Upon entry into college and toward the end of their sophomore year we measured (1) participants' quantity and quality of contact with successful ingroup members (female professors), (2) implicit and explicit leadership self-concept, (3) career go…
When He Doesn’t Mean You
Three studies assessed whether a common cultural practice, namely, the use of gender-exclusive language (e.g., using he to indicate he or she), is experienced as ostracism at the group level by women. Women responded to the use of gender-exclusive language ( he) during a mock job interview with a lower sense of belonging, less motivation, and less expected identification with the job compared to others exposed to gender-inclusive ( he or she) or …
Ingroup Experts and Peers as Social Vaccines Who Inoculate the Self-Concept
Individuals’ choice to pursue one academic or professional path over another may feel like a free choice but is often constrained by subtle cues in achievement environments that signal who naturally belongs there and who does not. People gravitate toward achievement domains that feel like a comfortable fit because they are in sync with ingroup stereotypes and away from other domains that feel like an uncomfortable fit because they deviate too far…
To be or not to be (ethnic)
STEMing the tide
Three studies tested a stereotype inoculation model, which proposed that contact with same-sex experts (advanced peers, professionals, professors) in academic environments involving science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) enhances women's self-concept in STEM, attitudes toward STEM, and motivation to pursue STEM careers. Two cross-sectional controlled experiments and 1 longitudinal naturalistic study in a calculus class revealed …
Attributions of responsibility and perceived harm in the aftermath of mass violence
Two studies shed light on construals (i.e., attributions of responsibility and perceived severity of harm) of extreme intergroup violence and the relationship between in-group identification and these construals. An investigation of Turkish construals of Armenian massacres at the beginning of the 20th century (Study 1) and Hutus’ and Tutsis’ construals of the ethnic conflict in Burundi (Study 2) showed that each group attributed less responsibili…
A new American dilemma? The effect of ethnic identification and public service on the national inclusion of ethnic minorities
Three experiments integrate research from political science and social psychology to examine the consequences of two competing visions of American national identity. American identity has been defined not only in terms of shared ethnocultural heritage originating in Europe (the ethnocultural prototype) but also in terms of shared commitment to civic service (the civic responsibility prototype). Three experiments tested the consequence of highligh…
Contemporary Discrimination in the Lab and Field
This article highlights the necessity of applying evidence‐based social psychological research to identify the causes and consequences of implicit bias as they occur in the real world. We first outline a number of benefits that emerge from complementing controlled laboratory experiments with field studies chief among them is that the latter bolster external validity and the applicability of laboratory research to real‐world settings where social …
Girls and Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics
Scientific advances fuel American economic competitiveness, quality of life, and national security. Much of the future job growth is projected in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). However, the supply of domestic students who pursue STEM careers remains small relative to the demand. On the supply side, girls and women represent untapped human capital that, if leveraged, could enhance the STEM workforce, given that they comp…
Conceptions of national identity in a globalised world
The emergence of nation states is a relatively recent phenomenon in human history. Yet its impact on everyday life is ubiquitous. The purpose of the present article is to synthesise research from several social science disciplines to identify similarities and differences between legal and structural definitions of nation states studied by political scientists and historians and psychological conceptions of nation states studied by social psycholo…
In the eyes of the beholder
Two studies examined how perceivers' national identification influences their implicit and explicit attitudes toward White and non-White ethnic groups whose members express their ethnic identity overtly in public or discreetly in private spaces. Results revealed that at a conscious level, White American perceivers' national identification elicited more negative attitudes toward both White and non-White ethnic groups when members embraced their et…
Evolution and Convergence of State Laws Governing Controlled Substance Prescription Monitoring Programs, 1998-2011
Objectives. We sought to collect and characterize all laws governing the operation of prescription monitoring programs (PMPs), state-level databases that collect patient-specific prescription information, which have been suggested as a tool for reducing prescription drug overdose fatalities. Methods. We utilized a structured legal research protocol to systematically identify, review, and code all PMP statutes and regulations effective from 1998 t…
The devil is in the details
Three experiments integrated several theories in psychology and sociology to identify the conditions under which multiculturalism has positive versus negative effects on majority group members' attitudes and behavioral intentions toward ethnic minorities. On the basis of social cognitive construal theories, we predicted and found that construing multiculturalism in abstract terms by highlighting its broad goals reduced White Americans' prejudice …
Psychology (42 works) · Social Psychology (35 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (26 works) · Political science (22 works) · Medicine (20 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (19 works) · Social Psychology (16 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Developmental psychology (13 works) · Gender Diversity and Inequality (11 works)