Christian S Crandall
Biographic Data
| ID | 127679 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christian S Crandall |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christian S |
| FAMILY NAME | Crandall |
| SIGNATURE | CRANDALL C S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Kansas |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9619-7167 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 52 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 863 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 51 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1984 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Changing Norms Following the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election
Following the 2016 U.S. Presidential election of Donald Trump, prejudice toward groups targeted during his campaign (e.g., Asian Americans, Mexicans) become more acceptable. By contrast, both Trump and Clinton voters reported less prejudice of their own. We conducted a 2024 conceptual replication, measuring perceived norms of prejudice and own-prejudice toward 128 groups, both before ( N = 362) and after ( N = 261) the U.S. election. We separatel…
Psychological Science in the Wake of Covid-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has extensively changed the state of psychological science from what research questions psychologists can ask to which methodologies psychologists can use to investigate them. In this article, we offer a perspective on how to optimize new research in the pandemic’s wake. Because this pandemic is inherently a social phenomenon—an event that hinges on human-to-human contact—we focus on socially relevant subfields of psychology…
Please pass the peas
This article argues that the data presented in Philosophy Within Its Proper Bounds are of greater interest to psychologists than to philosophers, and cautions experimental philosophers against some experimental shortcomings in the use of self-report and vignettes
Vicarious Justifications for Prejudice in the Application of Democratic Values
Democratic values are widely endorsed principles including commitments to protect individual freedoms. Paradoxically, the widespread normativity of these ideas can be used to justify prejudice. With two nationally representative U.S. samples, we find that prejudiced respondents defend another’s prejudiced speech, using democratic values as justification. This vicarious defense occurs primarily among those who share the prejudice and only when the…
Perceived authenticity as a vicarious justification for prejudice
When is the expression of prejudice seen as authentic? Perceived authenticity refers to how much one judges another’s behavior to reflect the beliefs, attitudes, goals, and desires of that person. We investigate whether perceived authenticity can operate as a vicarious justification for prejudice—a way for prejudiced people to defend the prejudiced statements of others. In six studies, prejudice was positively related to perceived authenticity of…
Science as Dissent
Threats to democracy loom around the world, but scientists of all kinds can resist. I begin by describing two practical opportunities offered at the 2017 Presidential Address in Albuquerque, NM, and quickly turn to the close connection between science and democracy. Science and education promote both scientific and democratic values by building the infrastructure of democracy. Science and democracy coevolved, rely on, and mutually benefit each ot…
Culture and Mobility Determine the Importance of Similarity in Friendship
We test whether the ability to start friendships-and end them-determines what we look for in friends. We hypothesized that individual differences in beliefs about relationship choice would translate into differences in similarity of relationship partners. To test the constructs across their spectrum, we sampled both American and Korean relationships ( N = 1,603). Study 1 field-sampled naturally occurring relationship pairs in the United States an…
Changing Norms Following the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election
The 2016 presidential election was characterized by the remarkable expression of prejudice toward a range of groups. In two closely related studies ( N = 388; 196 supporting Trump, 192 Clinton), we measured (1) perceptions of social norms toward prejudice or (2) people’s own levels of prejudice toward 19 social groups, shortly before and after the election. Some groups were targeted by the Trump campaign (e.g., Muslims, immigrants) and some were …
Covert Operations, Wars, Detainee Destinations, and the Psychology of Democratic Peace
We explore US covert forcible actions against democratic governments and their citizens and show that interdemocratic use of covert force is common and can be accommodated within the theory of democratic peace. Grounded in the Perceptual Theory of Legitimacy, we argue that democracies are constrained by public perceptions of their legitimacy from overtly aggressing against other democratic states. When democracies desire to aggress against their …
Freedom of racist speech
Do claims of "free speech" provide cover for prejudice? We investigate whether this defense of racist or hate speech serves as a justification for prejudice. In a series of 8 studies (N = 1,624), we found that explicit racial prejudice is a reliable predictor of the "free speech defense" of racist expression. Participants endorsed free speech values for singing racists songs or posting racist comments on social media; people high in prejudice end…
Similarity in relationships as niche construction
A series of field studies focused on the role of similarity as niche construction in friendships. Using a free-range dyad harvest method, we collected 11 independent samples with 1,523 interacting pairs, and compared dyad members' personality traits, attitudes, values, recreational activities, and alcohol and drug use. Within-dyad similarity was statistically significant on 86% of variables measured. To determine whether similarity was primarily …
On the scientific superiority of conceptual replications for scientific progress
Social norms and social influence
Stereotyping and Prejudice
The opposite of backlash
We tested how perceived threat to group position affects the relationship between beliefs about the acceptability of social inequality—as measured by social dominance orientation (SDO)—and discrimination. We hypothesized that high‐SDO heterosexuals would respond with increased discrimination when they perceived status gains for gays. In a pilot study, we found that SDO correlated with gay prejudice and with perceiving gays to be gaining status. I…
Shoes as a source of first impressions
Social ecology of similarity
Social ecologies shape the way people initiate and maintain social relationships. Settings with much opportunity will lead to more fine-grained similarity among friends; less opportunity leads to less similarity. We compare two ecological contexts—a large, relatively diverse state university versus smaller colleges in the same state—to test the hypothesis that a larger pool of available friendship choices will lead to greater similarity within dy…
Longer is better
The existence bias
The authors demonstrate that people treat the mere existence of something as evidence of its goodness. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrate that an existing state is evaluated more favorably than an alternative. Study 3 shows that imagining an event increases estimates of its likelihood, which in turn leads to favorable evaluation; the more likely that something will be, the more positively it is evaluated. Study 4 shows that the more a form is described …
Pathogen-avoidance mechanisms and the stigmatization of obese people
Dimensions of Mental Illness Stigma
The stigma of mental illness can be as harmful as the symptoms, leading to family discord, job discrimination, and social rejection. The existence of mental illness stigma has been well established, but stigma theory must go beyond demonstrations and mere descriptions. This article addresses which characteristics across mental disorders lead to stigmatization and social rejection. Participants (N = 270) read case histories depicting individuals w…
Stereotypes and implicit social comparison
Perceiving Self-Interest
Stereotype Threat and Arousal
Theories of arousal suggest that arousal should decrease performance on difficult tasks and increase performance on easy tasks. An experiment tested the hypothesis that the effects of stereotype threat on performance are due to heightened arousal. The authors hypothesized that telling participants that a math test they are about to take is known to have gender differences would cause stereotype threat in women but not in men. In the experiment, e…
Attributions and weight-based prejudice.
Prejudice against fat people
Prejudice against fat people was compared with symbolic racism. An anti-fat attitudes questionnaire was developed and used in several studies testing the notion that antipathy toward fat people is part of an ideology of blame. Three commonalities between antifat attitudes and racism were explored: (a) the association between values, beliefs, and the rejection of a stigmatized group, (b) the old-fashioned antipathy toward deviance of many sorts, a…
Social norms and the expression and suppression of prejudice
The authors studied social norms and prejudice using M. Sherif and C. W. Sherif's (1953) group norm theory of attitudes. In 7 studies (N = 1,504), social norms were measured and manipulated to examine their effects on prejudice; both normatively proscribed and normatively prescribed forms of prejudice were included. The public expression of prejudice toward 105 social groups was very highly correlated with social approval of that expression. Part…
A justification-suppression model of the expression and experience of prejudice
The authors propose a justification-suppression model (JSM), which characterizes the processes that lead to prejudice expression and the experience of one's own prejudice. They suggest that "genuine" prejudices are not directly expressed but are restrained by beliefs, values, and norms that suppress them. Prejudices are expressed when justifications (e.g., attributions, ideologies, stereotypes) release suppressed prejudices. The same process acco…
Dimensions of Mental Illness Stigma
The stigma of mental illness can be as harmful as the symptoms, leading to family discord, job discrimination, and social rejection. The existence of mental illness stigma has been well established, but stigma theory must go beyond demonstrations and mere descriptions. This article addresses which characteristics across mental disorders lead to stigmatization and social rejection. Participants (N = 270) read case histories depicting individuals w…
Some neo-Darwinian decision rules for altruism
A neo-Darwinian heuristic for decisions involving altruism is'hypothesized in this article. Following W. Hamilton's (1964) analysis of inclusive fitness, the assumption of this study is that tendencies to help another person are selected against, except when the donor and recipient are related and share genes underlying these tendencies. An important social psychological implication of Hamilton's formulation is that in group-living individuals (a…
On the scientific superiority of conceptual replications for scientific progress
Aids-Related Stigmatization and the Disruption of Social Relationships
This article describes the importance of stigma to understanding the experience of becoming infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), especially with respect to social relationships. Based on anonymous questionnaires from respondents who either have AIDS, AIDS-related complex or are infected but asymptomatic, we found that many of those infected with HIV do not feel stigmatized or show its effects. Those who do feel stigmatized also f…
Multiple stigma and Aids
AIDS‐related stigmatization may come from both social and illness sources. The social stigma comes from the association between HIV‐related illness and stigmatized bheaviour associated with HIV infection, notably homosexuality and IV drug use. The illness stigma comes from the disease itself ‐ the severity and contagiability of the illness. To compare social and illness stigma, 16 versions of ‘Dan’ were presented to 393 undergraduates. Four ways …
Social contagion of binge eating
Similarity in relationships as niche construction
A series of field studies focused on the role of similarity as niche construction in friendships. Using a free-range dyad harvest method, we collected 11 independent samples with 1,523 interacting pairs, and compared dyad members' personality traits, attitudes, values, recreational activities, and alcohol and drug use. Within-dyad similarity was statistically significant on 86% of variables measured. To determine whether similarity was primarily …
Longer is better
The existence bias
The authors demonstrate that people treat the mere existence of something as evidence of its goodness. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrate that an existing state is evaluated more favorably than an alternative. Study 3 shows that imagining an event increases estimates of its likelihood, which in turn leads to favorable evaluation; the more likely that something will be, the more positively it is evaluated. Study 4 shows that the more a form is described …
Freedom of racist speech
Do claims of "free speech" provide cover for prejudice? We investigate whether this defense of racist or hate speech serves as a justification for prejudice. In a series of 8 studies (N = 1,624), we found that explicit racial prejudice is a reliable predictor of the "free speech defense" of racist expression. Participants endorsed free speech values for singing racists songs or posting racist comments on social media; people high in prejudice end…
Social ecology of similarity
Social ecologies shape the way people initiate and maintain social relationships. Settings with much opportunity will lead to more fine-grained similarity among friends; less opportunity leads to less similarity. We compare two ecological contexts—a large, relatively diverse state university versus smaller colleges in the same state—to test the hypothesis that a larger pool of available friendship choices will lead to greater similarity within dy…
Shoes as a source of first impressions
All that you can be
The authors tested the shifting standards model (M. Biernat, M. Manis, & T. E. Nelson, 1991) as it applies to sex- and race-based stereotyping of self and others in the military. U. S. Army officers attending a leadership training course made judgments of their own and their groupmates' leadership competence at 3 time points over a 9-week period. We examined the effects of officer sex and race on both subjective (rating) and objective/common-rule…
The Personality of the Stigmatizer
Newsworthy Moral Dilemmas
Covert Operations, Wars, Detainee Destinations, and the Psychology of Democratic Peace
We explore US covert forcible actions against democratic governments and their citizens and show that interdemocratic use of covert force is common and can be accommodated within the theory of democratic peace. Grounded in the Perceptual Theory of Legitimacy, we argue that democracies are constrained by public perceptions of their legitimacy from overtly aggressing against other democratic states. When democracies desire to aggress against their …
Perceiving Self-Interest
Stereotyping and contact with social groups
In an attempt to understand and integrate various meanings of the stereotype concept, we conducted a longitudinal study in which we measured subjects' stereotypes of various target groups using multiple measurement techniques: trait ascription (Likert scales), group differentiation (diagnostic‐ratio), and deviation from group consensus. The measures were compared with regard to (I) their sensitivity to variations over time and to expected differe…
Stereotypes and implicit social comparison
Acceptance of Feedback by the Stigmatized and Non-Stigmatized
We examined the acceptance of interpersonal performance feedback and its effect on self-esteem among participants who received feedback from evaluators who were likely to be racially biased or unbiased. Black and White participants were given positive or negative feedback by someone who could see them or not, and who was either pro-Black or pro-White. Blacks discounted positive feedback when seen by a pro-Black evaluator, whereas Whites discounte…
Science as Dissent
Threats to democracy loom around the world, but scientists of all kinds can resist. I begin by describing two practical opportunities offered at the 2017 Presidential Address in Albuquerque, NM, and quickly turn to the close connection between science and democracy. Science and education promote both scientific and democratic values by building the infrastructure of democracy. Science and democracy coevolved, rely on, and mutually benefit each ot…
Culture and Mobility Determine the Importance of Similarity in Friendship
We test whether the ability to start friendships-and end them-determines what we look for in friends. We hypothesized that individual differences in beliefs about relationship choice would translate into differences in similarity of relationship partners. To test the constructs across their spectrum, we sampled both American and Korean relationships ( N = 1,603). Study 1 field-sampled naturally occurring relationship pairs in the United States an…
The overcitation of examples of poor performance
The overcitation of examples of poor performance
Social contagion of binge eating
Multiple stigma and Aids
AIDS‐related stigmatization may come from both social and illness sources. The social stigma comes from the association between HIV‐related illness and stigmatized bheaviour associated with HIV infection, notably homosexuality and IV drug use. The illness stigma comes from the disease itself ‐ the severity and contagiability of the illness. To compare social and illness stigma, 16 versions of ‘Dan’ were presented to 393 undergraduates. Four ways …
Aids-Related Stigmatization and the Disruption of Social Relationships
This article describes the importance of stigma to understanding the experience of becoming infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), especially with respect to social relationships. Based on anonymous questionnaires from respondents who either have AIDS, AIDS-related complex or are infected but asymptomatic, we found that many of those infected with HIV do not feel stigmatized or show its effects. Those who do feel stigmatized also f…
The Personality of the Stigmatizer
Stereotyping and contact with social groups
In an attempt to understand and integrate various meanings of the stereotype concept, we conducted a longitudinal study in which we measured subjects' stereotypes of various target groups using multiple measurement techniques: trait ascription (Likert scales), group differentiation (diagnostic‐ratio), and deviation from group consensus. The measures were compared with regard to (I) their sensitivity to variations over time and to expected differe…
Some neo-Darwinian decision rules for altruism
A neo-Darwinian heuristic for decisions involving altruism is'hypothesized in this article. Following W. Hamilton's (1964) analysis of inclusive fitness, the assumption of this study is that tendencies to help another person are selected against, except when the donor and recipient are related and share genes underlying these tendencies. An important social psychological implication of Hamilton's formulation is that in group-living individuals (a…
Prejudice against fat people
Prejudice against fat people was compared with symbolic racism. An anti-fat attitudes questionnaire was developed and used in several studies testing the notion that antipathy toward fat people is part of an ideology of blame. Three commonalities between antifat attitudes and racism were explored: (a) the association between values, beliefs, and the rejection of a stigmatized group, (b) the old-fashioned antipathy toward deviance of many sorts, a…
Physical illness stigma and social rejection
We use the stigma of illness as a model for uncovering which dimensions of stigmas are critical for causing social rejection. Subjects responded to ‘medical case histories’ representing 66 illnesses, rating the illness on a variety of dimensions (e.g. contagious/not contagious, common/rare), and a measure of social rejection. Regression analysis revealed that two dimensions predicted rejection: the severity of the illness, and whether the illness…
Do Parents Discriminate Against their Heavyweight Daughters?
In a 1991 study, the author found that females were less likely to receive support from their parents for college education if they were fatter than average. This effect is replicated for female undergraduates (n = 576); no effect emerged for males (n = 450). Controlling for income, ethnicity, family size, and number of children attending college did not change the results. The selection bias against fat women was strongest for daughters of polit…
What kinds of social psychology experiments are of value to perform
What kinds of social psychology experiments are of value to perform
L. Wallach and M. A. Wallach (1994) argued that many hypotheses tested by social psychologists are either near-tautologies or derivable from near-tautologies and thus are of little interest. The authors of this article applaud their concern but find that their conclusions are based on flawed analyses and arguments. Their conceptualization of near-tautology is problematic. Their analysis is based on a misconceived notion of falsifiability and is i…
Culture, Ideology, and Antifat Attitudes
Research on antifat attitudes in the United States has shown the position of antifat attitudes in an ideological network and the importance of attributions of control to prejudice against fat people. To test the role of blame and ideology in antifat prejudice, the authors compared attitudes among students in the United States and Mexico. Mexican students were significantly less concerned about their own weight and more accepting of fat people tha…
Creating stereotypes and capturing their content
In two studies, attributes of target groups were manipulated and then stereotypes of those groups were assessed using multiple measurement techniques. A variety of trait ascription (e.g. Likert-type scales) and perceived variability (probability of differentiation, standard deviation) indexes were used. The measures were compared with regard to their sensitivity to experimentally created differences between the social groups. The data suggested t…
On the Purposes Served by Psychological Research and its Critics
We concur with Wallach and Wallach's (1998) subjective assessment that much psychological research contributes little to our corpus of knowledge, but we dispute their analysis of the causes of this problem. A critical assessment of their analysis reveals it to be (a) logically flawed, (b) irrelevant to hypotheses conceming psychological processes, and (c) potentially injurious to the processes through which creative scientific hypotheses are deve…
All that you can be
The authors tested the shifting standards model (M. Biernat, M. Manis, & T. E. Nelson, 1991) as it applies to sex- and race-based stereotyping of self and others in the military. U. S. Army officers attending a leadership training course made judgments of their own and their groupmates' leadership competence at 3 time points over a 9-week period. We examined the effects of officer sex and race on both subjective (rating) and objective/common-rule…
Individual goals in evolving organizations
Individual goals in evolving organizations
Understanding collective behavior requires a social-evolutionary perspective. Colarelli (September 1998) offered a worthwhile introduction to this perspective and identified how it can be used to predict stability and change in organizations. One element of this social-evolutionary perspective is of such fundamental importance that it merits greater clarification and elaboration. Colarelli (1998) stated slippery nature of organizational goals mak…
Newsworthy Moral Dilemmas
Acceptance of Feedback by the Stigmatized and Non-Stigmatized
We examined the acceptance of interpersonal performance feedback and its effect on self-esteem among participants who received feedback from evaluators who were likely to be racially biased or unbiased. Black and White participants were given positive or negative feedback by someone who could see them or not, and who was either pro-Black or pro-White. Blacks discounted positive feedback when seen by a pro-Black evaluator, whereas Whites discounte…
Group identity‐based self‐protective strategies
We examine the importance of group membership in stigma and its role in the effectiveness of self-protective cognitions in three experiments. In Experiment 1, men are asked to interact with an attractive female who will judge their value as a potential date, and either eat a mint or a clove of raw garlic prior to the interview. Although the stigmatized-by-garlic men discounted negative feedback and attributed it to their garlic breath, discountin…
Group identity-based self-protective strategies
We examine the importance of group membership in stigma and its role in the effectiveness of self-protective cognitions in three experiments. In Experiment 1, men are asked to interact with an attractive female who will judge their value as a potential date, and either eat a mint or a clove of raw garlic prior to the interview. Although the stigmatized-by-garlic men discounted negative feedback and attributed it to their garlic breath, discountin…
An Attribution-Value Model of Prejudice
The authors propose an Attribution-Value model of prejudice, which hypothesizes that people are prejudiced against groups that they feel have some negative attribute for which they are held responsible. The structure of prejudice against fat people was compared in six nations: Australia, India, Poland, Turkey, the United States of America, and Venezuela. Both a negative cultural value for fatness and a tendency to hold people responsible predicts…
Social Psychology and the Pragmatic Conduct of Science
We chart our agreements and disagreements with Wallach and Wallach's (2001) arguments. After listing some areas of agreement, we then make four arguments that undermine the Wallachs' project. First, we argue the discovery of `laws' is a goal neither of scientists nor of the discipline. Second, we suggest the Wallachs' claim that social psychological theories are infused with unfalsifiable theories about the nature of psychological variables misse…
Psychology (48 works) · Social Psychology (41 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (27 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (18 works) · Social Psychology (16 works) · Political science (13 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Developmental psychology (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Prejudice (legal term) (10 works)