Neil A Lewis
Biographic Data
| ID | 178965 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Neil A Lewis |
| GIVEN NAMES | Neil A |
| FAMILY NAME | Lewis |
| SIGNATURE | LEWIS N A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Cornell University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7912-1689 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 37 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 75 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 37 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
How People Make Meaning in a Fragmented Democracy: Implications for Incorporating Public Opinion into Public Policy
Scientists and policymakers often rely on polls to measure the opinions of the American public. They collect brief responses from large samples of Americans and use quantitative methods to aggregate those responses in ways that allow them to construct measures of what the “average American” thinks. Policymakers then (sometimes) use those averages to inform public policy. In this article, I raise questions about the utility of that approach for po…
Testing message strategies that minimize White Americans’ backlash to racial equity information
Scholars have worried that messages about racial equity can produce backlash from White respondents. Drawing upon psychological reactance theory, we compared cognitive and affective responses to a message emphasizing how a redistributive policy would benefit everyone (universalist message) to a message that also emphasized how the policy would especially benefit minoritized racial groups (targeted universalist message) among a sample of 871 White…
The Challenges and Solutions of In‐Person Big‐Team Science
Big‐Team Science (BTS) offers a powerful framework for advancing psychological research through large‐scale collaboration, yet the unique challenges of conducting in‐person BTS studies remain under‐examined. This manuscript draws on the Psychological Science Accelerator's in‐person stereotype threat study, which involved 2500+ Black undergraduate students at over 20 U.S. universities, to illustrate these challenges and solutions in action. The pr…
Beyond fear of backlash: Effects of messages about structural drivers of Covid-19 disparities among large samples of Asian, Black, Hispanic, and White Americans
Although U.S. health disparities are well-documented, the very communities that bear the brunt of those disparities are, ironically, underrepresented in scientific efforts to understand and address them. In two experiments (total N = 9523), we explored the consequences of omitting those perspectives for efforts to understand and address disparities in the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that, by prioritizing the perspectives of White Americans, studi…
Power to Detect What? Considerations for Planning and Evaluating Sample Size
ACADEMIC ABSTRACT: In the wake of the replication crisis, social and personality psychologists have increased attention to power analysis and the adequacy of sample sizes. In this article, we analyze current controversies in this area, including choosing effect sizes, why and whether power analyses should be conducted on already-collected data, how to mitigate the negative effects of sample size criteria on specific kinds of research, and which p…
How Can Transitional Housing Be Improved? Insights from Residents’ Experiences and Perceptions in New York City
Homelessness, affecting over half a million Americans, significantly elevates the risks of mental and physical health issues, consequently diminishing life expectancy when compared with the general population. Homelessness is a critical public health issue, and efforts are needed to address lack of housing as a social determinant of health. Transitional housing (TH) programs emerge as vital interventions, offering a place to stay with various sup…
Politicizing Masks? Examining the Volume and Content of Local News Coverage of Face Coverings in the U.S. Through the Covid-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic quickly became a political and health communication crisis whose impact varied by geographic location in the United States. Although local television is known to be an important source of public information, little is known about how it covered the pandemic. We analyze the volume and content of local TV coverage of masks from 758 stations across all 210 U.S. media markets in the first 22 months of the pandemic to assess how …
Author Correction: US universities are not succeeding in diversifying faculty
How Do People Come to Judge What Is “Reasonable”? Effects of Legal and Sociological Systems on Human Psychology
How do people decide what is reasonable? People often have to make those judgments, judgments that can influence tremendously consequential decisions—such as whether to indict someone in a legal proceeding. In this article, we take a situated cognition lens to review and integrate findings from social psychology, judgment and decision-making, communication, law, and sociology to generate a new framework for conceptualizing judgments of reasonable…
Universities claim to value community-engaged scholarship: So why do they discourage it
With current crises of academic relevance and legitimacy, there is a need for epistemic equity inherent to community-engaged research. Scholars in science communication and science and technology studies have analyzed, advocated for, and conducted public engagement in pursuit of this goal. However, despite desires to celebrate public engagement, US academic institutions and organizations often present barriers to meaningful community-engaged rese…
Identities, drinking behaviors and cancer beliefs among African-American and White American adults: A qualitative analysis
Insights from these interviews confirm the relevance of racial and other identities in shaping responses to alcohol-cancer messaging, and emphasize the need to consider both behavior change and policy change to create supportive environments for such changes
Cultivating Equal Minds: Laws and Policies as (De)biasing Social Interventions
To address issues of bias and discrimination in many areas of social life, scientists have developed a variety of strategies to debias people's minds and reduce discrimination and the disparities that stem from it. A large body of research has documented, however, that debias trainings have short-lived effects on changing patterns of thinking (i.e., they last less than 24 hours) and minimal effects on behaviors. In this article, I argue that such…
The Pandemic as a Portal: Reimagining Psychological Science as Truly Open and Inclusive
Psychological science is at an inflection point: The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated inequalities that stem from our historically closed and exclusive culture. Meanwhile, reform efforts to change the future of our science are too narrow in focus to fully succeed. In this article, we call on psychological scientists—focusing specifically on those who use quantitative methods in the United States as one context for such conversations—to begin rei…
Do We Report the Information That Is Necessary to Give Psychology Away? A Scoping Review of the Psychological Intervention Literature 2000–2018
Psychologists are spending a considerable amount of time researching and developing interventions in hopes that their efforts can help to tackle some of society’s pressing problems. Unfortunately, those hopes are often not realized—many interventions are developed and reported in journals but do not make their way into the broader world they were designed to change. One potential reason for this is that there may be a gap between the information …
Surveys as conversations between makers and takers: A conversational framework for assessing and responding to community needs
Surveys, commonly employed in the social and behavioral sciences, are practical tools that can be used to assess the needs and attitudes of a given population. If not implemented in thoughtful ways, however, surveys can be inefficient or even harmful. With surveys often informing critical policy decisions, survey administrators must make careful methodological choices in order to obtain meaningful results and make sound decisions. In this paper, …
Legal descriptions of police officers affect how citizens judge them
Local TV News Coverage of Racial Disparities in Covid-19 During the First Wave of the Pandemic, March–June 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted health and social outcomes for people of color in the United States. This study examined how local TV news stories attributed causes and solutions for COVID-19-related racial health and social disparities, and whether coverage of such disparities changed after George Floyd’s murder, during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. We systematically validated keywords to extract relevant news co…
Inequality and Misperceptions of Group Concerns Threaten the Integrity and Societal Impact of Science
Racial and ethnic minority and lower-income groups are disproportionately affected by environmental hazards and suffer worse health outcomes than other groups in the United States. Relative to whites and higher-income groups, racial-ethnic minority and lower-income Americans also frequently express greater concern about high-profile global environmental threats like climate change, but they are widely misperceived as being less concerned about th…
What universities say versus do about diversity, equity and inclusion
US universities are not succeeding in diversifying faculty
Integrating Qualitative Methods and Open Science: Five Principles for More Trustworthy Research
Recent initiatives toward open science in communication have prompted vigorous debate. In this article, we draw on qualitative and interpretive research methods to expand the key priorities that the open science framework addresses, namely producing trustworthy and quality research. This article contributes to communication research by integrating qualitative methodological literature with open communication science research to identify five broa…
Critical Pedagogy and Children’s Beneficial Development
Ongoing controversy debates whether public schools should implement critical pedagogy—curricula centering on the perspectives of marginalized peoples. Despite much contention, students (particularly racially marginalized students) enrolled in courses that employ critical pedagogy demonstrate more school engagement, higher grade point averages (GPAs), and more civic engagement than students who do not. Building on previous reviews, this article br…
Moving Beyond Implicit Bias Training: Policy Insights for Increasing Organizational Diversity
Many organizations are working to address diversity, equity, and inclusion. Organizations frequently use implicit bias to explain disparities and marshal implicit bias training as a solution. Implicit bias is difficult to change and trainings do not yield more diversity in organizations, so organizations should move beyond implicit bias trainings in their diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Organizations should (a) use trainings to educate …
Communicating What We Know and What Isn’t So: Science Communication in Psychology
The field of psychology has a long history of encouraging researchers to disseminate their findings to the broader public. This trend has continued in recent decades in part because of professional psychology organizations reissuing calls to “give psychology away.” This recent wave of calls to give psychology away is different because it has been occurring alongside another movement in the field—the credibility revolution in which psychology has …
The Behavior of Same-Race Others and Its Effects on Black Patients’ Attention to Publicly Presented HIV-Prevention Information
Black Americans make up 13% of the U.S. population, yet account for 54% of HIV deaths and 44% of new HIV diagnoses. Why do Black Americans die from HIV at such a disproportionate rate? In the current study, we asked whether the presence and behavior of in-group peers in public health settings may influence Black Americans' attention to HIV information, given the racialized nature of HIV-stigma in Black American communities. In a quasi-experimenta…
Seeing the Destination and the Path: Using Identity-Based Motivation to Understand and Reduce Racial Disparities in Academic Achievement
African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans aspire to do well in school but often fall short of this goal. We use identity-based motivation theory as an organizing framework to understand how macrolevel social stratification factors including minority-ethnic group membership and low socioeconomic position (e.g., parental education, income) and the stigma they carry, matter. Macrolevel social stratification differentially exposes students to …
Use caution when applying behavioural science to policy
Who Comes to Mind? Dynamic Construction of Social Networks
Much remains unknown about moment-to-moment social-network cognition—that is, who comes to mind as we go about our day-to-day lives. Responding to this void, we describe the real-time construction of cognitive social networks. First, we outline the types of relational structures that comprise momentary networks, distinguishing the roles of personal relationships, social groups, and mental sets. Second, we discuss the cognitive mechanisms that det…
Open Communication Science: A Primer on Why and Some Recommendations for How
Communication scientists devote large amounts of resources to conducting studies to improve our understanding of the social world, in hopes that our efforts contribute to improving people’s life outcomes. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, the process by which our research is conducted is not always clear in journal articles or books reporting our research. This lack of process-insight (a) limits our ability to build on each other’s researc…
Local TV News Coverage of Racial Disparities in Covid-19 During the First Wave of the Pandemic, March–June 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted health and social outcomes for people of color in the United States. This study examined how local TV news stories attributed causes and solutions for COVID-19-related racial health and social disparities, and whether coverage of such disparities changed after George Floyd’s murder, during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. We systematically validated keywords to extract relevant news co…
Seeing more and eating less: Effects of portion size granularity on the perception and regulation of food consumption
Overeating and resulting obesity is a public health concern in the United States, and portion size is a factor that contributes to these problems (Zlatevska, Dubelaar, & Holden, 2014). The present research demonstrates that the granularity of labels used to describe portions also influences food consumption, independent of previously documented portion size effects. Across 6 studies and 7 different food items, we find a robust and reliable effect…
Politicizing Masks? Examining the Volume and Content of Local News Coverage of Face Coverings in the U.S. Through the Covid-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic quickly became a political and health communication crisis whose impact varied by geographic location in the United States. Although local television is known to be an important source of public information, little is known about how it covered the pandemic. We analyze the volume and content of local TV coverage of masks from 758 stations across all 210 U.S. media markets in the first 22 months of the pandemic to assess how …
Cultivating Equal Minds: Laws and Policies as (De)biasing Social Interventions
To address issues of bias and discrimination in many areas of social life, scientists have developed a variety of strategies to debias people's minds and reduce discrimination and the disparities that stem from it. A large body of research has documented, however, that debias trainings have short-lived effects on changing patterns of thinking (i.e., they last less than 24 hours) and minimal effects on behaviors. In this article, I argue that such…
US universities are not succeeding in diversifying faculty
Inequality and Misperceptions of Group Concerns Threaten the Integrity and Societal Impact of Science
Racial and ethnic minority and lower-income groups are disproportionately affected by environmental hazards and suffer worse health outcomes than other groups in the United States. Relative to whites and higher-income groups, racial-ethnic minority and lower-income Americans also frequently express greater concern about high-profile global environmental threats like climate change, but they are widely misperceived as being less concerned about th…
What universities say versus do about diversity, equity and inclusion
Health in context: New perspectives on healthy thinking and healthy living
Betrayal: The Story of Aldrich Ames, an American Spy
A systems approach to information flows in construction management
Betrayal: The Story of Aldrich Ames, an American Spy
The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus
Each volume in this series of companions to major philosophers contains specially commissioned essays by an international team of scholars, together with a substantial bibliography, and will serve as a reference work for students and non-specialists. One aim of the series is to dispel the intimidation such readers often feel when faced with the work of a difficult and challenging thinker. John Duns Scotus (1265/6–1308) was (along with Aquinas and…
An Identity-Based Motivation Framework for Self-Regulation
Seeing the Destination and the Path: Using Identity-Based Motivation to Understand and Reduce Racial Disparities in Academic Achievement
African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans aspire to do well in school but often fall short of this goal. We use identity-based motivation theory as an organizing framework to understand how macrolevel social stratification factors including minority-ethnic group membership and low socioeconomic position (e.g., parental education, income) and the stigma they carry, matter. Macrolevel social stratification differentially exposes students to …
Seeing more and eating less: Effects of portion size granularity on the perception and regulation of food consumption
Overeating and resulting obesity is a public health concern in the United States, and portion size is a factor that contributes to these problems (Zlatevska, Dubelaar, & Holden, 2014). The present research demonstrates that the granularity of labels used to describe portions also influences food consumption, independent of previously documented portion size effects. Across 6 studies and 7 different food items, we find a robust and reliable effect…
Health in context: New perspectives on healthy thinking and healthy living
Open Communication Science: A Primer on Why and Some Recommendations for How
Communication scientists devote large amounts of resources to conducting studies to improve our understanding of the social world, in hopes that our efforts contribute to improving people’s life outcomes. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, the process by which our research is conducted is not always clear in journal articles or books reporting our research. This lack of process-insight (a) limits our ability to build on each other’s researc…
Modeling gender counter-stereotypic group behavior: A brief video intervention reduces participation gender gaps on STEM teams
Who Comes to Mind? Dynamic Construction of Social Networks
Much remains unknown about moment-to-moment social-network cognition—that is, who comes to mind as we go about our day-to-day lives. Responding to this void, we describe the real-time construction of cognitive social networks. First, we outline the types of relational structures that comprise momentary networks, distinguishing the roles of personal relationships, social groups, and mental sets. Second, we discuss the cognitive mechanisms that det…
Use caution when applying behavioural science to policy
Integrating Qualitative Methods and Open Science: Five Principles for More Trustworthy Research
Recent initiatives toward open science in communication have prompted vigorous debate. In this article, we draw on qualitative and interpretive research methods to expand the key priorities that the open science framework addresses, namely producing trustworthy and quality research. This article contributes to communication research by integrating qualitative methodological literature with open communication science research to identify five broa…
Critical Pedagogy and Children’s Beneficial Development
Ongoing controversy debates whether public schools should implement critical pedagogy—curricula centering on the perspectives of marginalized peoples. Despite much contention, students (particularly racially marginalized students) enrolled in courses that employ critical pedagogy demonstrate more school engagement, higher grade point averages (GPAs), and more civic engagement than students who do not. Building on previous reviews, this article br…
Moving Beyond Implicit Bias Training: Policy Insights for Increasing Organizational Diversity
Many organizations are working to address diversity, equity, and inclusion. Organizations frequently use implicit bias to explain disparities and marshal implicit bias training as a solution. Implicit bias is difficult to change and trainings do not yield more diversity in organizations, so organizations should move beyond implicit bias trainings in their diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. Organizations should (a) use trainings to educate …
Communicating What We Know and What Isn’t So: Science Communication in Psychology
The field of psychology has a long history of encouraging researchers to disseminate their findings to the broader public. This trend has continued in recent decades in part because of professional psychology organizations reissuing calls to “give psychology away.” This recent wave of calls to give psychology away is different because it has been occurring alongside another movement in the field—the credibility revolution in which psychology has …
The Behavior of Same-Race Others and Its Effects on Black Patients’ Attention to Publicly Presented HIV-Prevention Information
Black Americans make up 13% of the U.S. population, yet account for 54% of HIV deaths and 44% of new HIV diagnoses. Why do Black Americans die from HIV at such a disproportionate rate? In the current study, we asked whether the presence and behavior of in-group peers in public health settings may influence Black Americans' attention to HIV information, given the racialized nature of HIV-stigma in Black American communities. In a quasi-experimenta…
Combating sharenting: Interventions to alter parents’ attitudes toward posting about their children online
The Pandemic as a Portal: Reimagining Psychological Science as Truly Open and Inclusive
Psychological science is at an inflection point: The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated inequalities that stem from our historically closed and exclusive culture. Meanwhile, reform efforts to change the future of our science are too narrow in focus to fully succeed. In this article, we call on psychological scientists—focusing specifically on those who use quantitative methods in the United States as one context for such conversations—to begin rei…
Do We Report the Information That Is Necessary to Give Psychology Away? A Scoping Review of the Psychological Intervention Literature 2000–2018
Psychologists are spending a considerable amount of time researching and developing interventions in hopes that their efforts can help to tackle some of society’s pressing problems. Unfortunately, those hopes are often not realized—many interventions are developed and reported in journals but do not make their way into the broader world they were designed to change. One potential reason for this is that there may be a gap between the information …
Surveys as conversations between makers and takers: A conversational framework for assessing and responding to community needs
Surveys, commonly employed in the social and behavioral sciences, are practical tools that can be used to assess the needs and attitudes of a given population. If not implemented in thoughtful ways, however, surveys can be inefficient or even harmful. With surveys often informing critical policy decisions, survey administrators must make careful methodological choices in order to obtain meaningful results and make sound decisions. In this paper, …
Legal descriptions of police officers affect how citizens judge them
Local TV News Coverage of Racial Disparities in Covid-19 During the First Wave of the Pandemic, March–June 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted health and social outcomes for people of color in the United States. This study examined how local TV news stories attributed causes and solutions for COVID-19-related racial health and social disparities, and whether coverage of such disparities changed after George Floyd’s murder, during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. We systematically validated keywords to extract relevant news co…
Inequality and Misperceptions of Group Concerns Threaten the Integrity and Societal Impact of Science
Racial and ethnic minority and lower-income groups are disproportionately affected by environmental hazards and suffer worse health outcomes than other groups in the United States. Relative to whites and higher-income groups, racial-ethnic minority and lower-income Americans also frequently express greater concern about high-profile global environmental threats like climate change, but they are widely misperceived as being less concerned about th…
What universities say versus do about diversity, equity and inclusion
US universities are not succeeding in diversifying faculty
Psychology (24 works) · Political science (19 works) · Social Psychology (17 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Medicine (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Public relations (8 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (8 works) · Social Psychology (7 works)