Luz E Molina
Biographic Data
| ID | 81719 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Luz E Molina |
| GIVEN NAMES | Luz E |
| FAMILY NAME | Molina |
| SIGNATURE | MOLINA L E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Kansas |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7651-5797 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 499 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Body Size Perceptions Associated with Body Mass Index and Weight Loss Intentions Among Two Immigrant Populations
“You're overreacting!”: The ambiguity of Asian American microaggressions delegitimizes collective action
Asian Americans are lauded as the model minority who are intelligent and industrious. Simultaneously, they are deemed as perpetual foreigners. The current research examines how racial microaggressions expressed by a White American source toward an Asian American target affect perceptions of the perpetrator and target. White Americans and Asian Americans read about an interaction between two college students, where the racial microaggression made …
If You Don’t Speak English, I Can’t Understand You!”: Exposure to Various Foreign Languages as a Threat
The number of non-English speaking and bilingual immigrants continues to grow in the U.S. Previous research suggests that about one third of White Americans feel threatened upon hearing a language other than English. The current research examines how exposure to a foreign language affects White Americans’ perceptions of immigrants and group-based threats. In Study 1, White Americans were randomly assigned to read one of four fictional transcripts…
Consequences of interminority ingroup rejection for group identification and well-being
We discuss implications of interminority ingroup rejection for people who belong to intersecting minority groups and make recommendations for extending research on this issue. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
Common Academic Experiences No One Talks About: Repeated Rejection, Impostor Syndrome, and Burnout
Academic life is full of learning, excitement, and discovery. However, academics also experience professional challenges at various points in their career, including repeated rejection, impostor syndrome, and burnout. These negative experiences are rarely talked about publicly, creating a sense of loneliness and isolation for people who presume they are the only ones affected by such setbacks. However, nearly everyone has these experiences at one…
“Threatening Others”: National Identity and Group Threats Predict Immigration Policy
The present research examines the relationship between national identity, perceived group threats, and immigration policy. Across two studies, we examine how patriotism (an arguably critical form of national identity) and nationalism (an ethnocentric and dominance‐oriented form of national identity) predict strong stances on immigration policy (Studies 1 and 2). Furthermore, does the inclusion of symbolic threat (Studies 1 and 2) and realistic th…
Immigrant to citizen: Identity concerns regarding immigrants’ motivation to naturalize
We discuss the implications of the present work for theory and the social issue of naturalization and citizenship. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)
Family ties: Exploring the influence of family legacy on self and identity
In three studies we introduce the idea of the family legacy – shared practices, beliefs, and other psychological materials within a family that are passed on from one generation to another – and examine its role in shaping individuals’ self and identity. In three quasi-experimental studies, we compare students who have had family attend the university (legacy) to those who have not (non-legacy) on identity-relevant variables. In Study 1a, legacy …
A cultural psychological analysis of collective memory as mediated action: Constructions of Indian history
The present research applies a cultural psychological perspective on collective memory as mediated action to examine how constructions of a national past serve as tools that both reflect and shape national identity concerns. We employ a situation-sampling method to investigate collective memory in a series of studies concerning intergroup relations in the Indian context. In Study 1, participants (N = 55) generated three historical events that the…
Support for Tough Immigration Policy: Identity Defense or Concern for Law and Order
Across two studies, U.S. participants read a fictional transcript of a law enforcement officer who observed a speeding infraction and made a discretionary traffic stop. The car carried occupants who displayed either high or low fit with Anglocentric constructions of U.S. identity and were of presumptive Mexican (Studies 1 and 2), Canadian (Study 1), or Irish (Study 2) origin. The officer decided over the course of the traffic stop that the occupa…
Acculturation
Acculturation has historically focused on how cultural change occurs when people from different cultural backgrounds come into contact to seek ways to negotiate roles, with the possibility of one or both cultures changing. This entry provides an overview of early conceptualizations of acculturation and common frameworks most utilized in acculturation research today. Specific strategies/categories of acculturation and the outcomes that may occur a…
Contact Hypothesis
The contact hypothesis proposes that contact between individuals of different groups (e.g., race, gender, religion) can lead to lower levels of prejudice. In particular, when contact occurs under certain optimal conditions (e.g., cooperative interdependence, equal status between groups), then it is likely that prejudice reduction will occur. The specification of the conditions under which group contact is likely to reduce prejudice has been one o…
Gender Asymmetry in the Construction of American National Identity
Dominant groups (e.g., White U.S. citizens) are more associated with “American” identity and they feel greater ownership over American national identity compared to ethnic minority groups. We extended this perception to gender and tested whether American national identity is constructed in masculine, versus feminine, terms. We examined whether U.S. men feel greater symbolic ownership over the nation and represent what it means to be a prototypica…
Notes on decolonizing psychology: From one Special Issue to another
In this article, we describe a special thematic section on the topic of “Decolonizing Psychological Science” that we have edited for the Journal of Social and Political Psychology. Three approaches to decolonization were evident in contributions to the ongoing project. In the indigenous resistance approach, researchers draw upon local knowledge to modify “standard” practice and produce psychologies that are more responsive to local realities. In …
Group identity as a source of threat and means of compensation: Establishing personal control through group identification and ideology
Compensatory control theory proposes that individuals can assuage threatened personal control by endorsing external systems or agents that provide a sense that the world is meaningfully ordered. Recent research drawing on this perspective finds that one means by which individuals can compensate for a loss of control is adherence to ideological beliefs about the social world. This prior work, however, has largely neglected the role of social group…
How Discrimination Shapes Social Identification Processes and Well-Being Among Arab Americans
The increasingly xenophobic U.S. climate warrants a close investigation of Arab American responses to discrimination. We conducted secondary analyses of two large data sets to examine social identity processes and their relationship to well-being. In a representative sample of Muslim Arab Americans (Study 1, n = 228), discrimination was related to decreased American identification, which in turn predicted lower well-being. Another large sample of…
Infrahumanizing Praise: Athletic Admiration Decreases Perceptions of Agency and Support for College Athletes’ Rights
Five studies demonstrate that athletic praise can ironically lead to infrahumanization. College athletes were seen as less agentic than college debaters (Studies 1 and 2). College athletes praised for their bodies were also seen as less agentic than college athletes praised for their minds (Study 3), and this effect was driven by bodily admiration (Study 4). These effects occurred equally for White and Black athletes (Study 1) and did not depend …
Decolonizing Psychological Science: Introduction to the Special Thematic Section
Despite unprecedented access to information and diffusion of knowledge across the globe, the bulk of work in mainstream psychological science still reflects and promotes the interests of a privileged minority of people in affluent centers of the modern global order. Compared to other social science disciplines, there are few critical voices who reflect on the Euro-American colonial character of psychological science, particularly its relationship…
A Compensatory Control Account of Meritocracy
Why are people motivated to support social systems that claim to distribute resources based on hard work and effort, even when those systems seem unfair? Recent research on compensatory control shows that lowered perceptions of personal control motivate a greater endorsement of external systems (e.g., God, government) that compensate for a lack of personal control. The present studies demonstrate that U.S. citizens’ faith in a popular economic id…
National and ethnic identity in the face of discrimination: Ethnic minority and majority perspectives
Does the United States afford people of different backgrounds a sense of equal identification with the nation? Past research has documented ethnic/racial group differences on levels of national identity but there has been little research examining what psychologically moderates these disparities. The present research investigates how perceived group discrimination is associated with national and ethnic identification among ethnic majority and min…
Reasonable suspicion” about tough immigration legislation: Enforcing laws or ethnocentric exclusion
We examined whether support for tough immigration legislation reflects identity-neutral enforcement of law or identity-relevant defense of privilege. Participants read a fabricated news story in which law-enforcement personnel detained a person due to "reasonable suspicion" that he was an undocumented immigrant. We manipulated descriptions of the detainee so that he was either (a) an undocumented immigrant (both studies), (b) a documented immigra…
Displacing blame over the ingroup's harming of a disadvantaged group can fuel moral outrage at a third-party scapegoat
Testing an Integrative Model of Respect: Implications for Social Engagement and Well-Being
Prior research demonstrates that feelings of respect affect important aspects of group functioning and members’ psychological well-being. One limitation is that respect has been variously defined as reflecting individuals’ status in the group, degree to which they are liked by the group, and how fairly they are treated in interactions with group members. These different conceptions are integrated in the dual pathway model of respect. The authors …
Subgroup respect, social engagement, and well-being: A field study of an ethnically diverse high school
Recent research points toward the utility of the pluralist (multicultural) model as a viable alternative to the traditional assimilation model of cultural integration. In this study, we extend this work by evaluating when and to what extent feelings that members of a common group respect and value one's ethnic group membership (subgroup respect) shape social engagement and well-being. We do so in the context of a survey of students at a diverse, …
Prejudice at the nexus of race and gender: An outgroup male target hypothesis
Adopting an evolutionary approach to the psychology of race bias, we posit that intergroup conflict perpetrated by male aggressors throughout human evolutionary history has shaped the psychology of modern forms of intergroup bias and that this psychology reflects the unique adaptive problems that differ between men and women in coping with male aggressors from groups other than one's own. Here we report results across 4 studies consistent with th…
Decolonizing Psychological Science: Introduction to the Special Thematic Section
Despite unprecedented access to information and diffusion of knowledge across the globe, the bulk of work in mainstream psychological science still reflects and promotes the interests of a privileged minority of people in affluent centers of the modern global order. Compared to other social science disciplines, there are few critical voices who reflect on the Euro-American colonial character of psychological science, particularly its relationship…
Ethnic Minority-Majority Asymmetry in National Attitudes around the World: A Multilevel Analysis
Using data from the International Social Survey Programme, this research investigated asymmetric attitudes of ethnic minorities and majorities towards their country and explored the impact of human development, ethnic diversity, and social inequality as country-level moderators of national attitudes. In line with the general hypothesis of ethnic asymmetry, we found that ethnic, linguistic, and religious majorities were more identified with the na…
Prejudice at the nexus of race and gender: An outgroup male target hypothesis
Adopting an evolutionary approach to the psychology of race bias, we posit that intergroup conflict perpetrated by male aggressors throughout human evolutionary history has shaped the psychology of modern forms of intergroup bias and that this psychology reflects the unique adaptive problems that differ between men and women in coping with male aggressors from groups other than one's own. Here we report results across 4 studies consistent with th…
The Interpretation of Multiracial Status and Its Relation to Social Engagement and Psychological Well‐Being
This research examines how multiracial individuals chose to identify themselves with respect to their racial identity and how this choice relates to their self‐reported psychological well‐being (e.g., self‐esteem, positive affect) and level of social engagement (e.g., citizenship behaviors, group alienation). High school students who belong to multiple racial/ethnic groups (N = 182) were asked to indicate the group with which they primarily ident…
Exemplary efforts in psychology to recruit and retain graduate students of color
Many psychology departments are striving for a greater representation of students of color within their graduate preparation programs with the aim of producing a more diverse pool of psychological service providers, scientists, and educators. To help improve the minority pipeline in psychology, the authors identify and describe recruitment and retention strategies used at 11 departments and programs considered to be making exemplary efforts to at…
Is Pluralism a Viable Model of Diversity? The Benefits and Limits of Subgroup Respect
In this paper, we focus on a key psychological principle underlying pluralism, subgroup respect, defined as feelings that one's subgroup is recognized, accepted, and valued by members of a common group (e.g. Americans' respect for various ethnic subgroups). Analyzing survey data collected from a large and diverse sample of respondents in two US cities (Oakland, California, and Los Angeles; N = 1,229), we found that subgroup respect was linked to …
How Discrimination Shapes Social Identification Processes and Well-Being Among Arab Americans
The increasingly xenophobic U.S. climate warrants a close investigation of Arab American responses to discrimination. We conducted secondary analyses of two large data sets to examine social identity processes and their relationship to well-being. In a representative sample of Muslim Arab Americans (Study 1, n = 228), discrimination was related to decreased American identification, which in turn predicted lower well-being. Another large sample of…
Subgroup respect, social engagement, and well-being: A field study of an ethnically diverse high school
Recent research points toward the utility of the pluralist (multicultural) model as a viable alternative to the traditional assimilation model of cultural integration. In this study, we extend this work by evaluating when and to what extent feelings that members of a common group respect and value one's ethnic group membership (subgroup respect) shape social engagement and well-being. We do so in the context of a survey of students at a diverse, …
Displacing blame over the ingroup's harming of a disadvantaged group can fuel moral outrage at a third-party scapegoat
Gender Asymmetry in the Construction of American National Identity
Dominant groups (e.g., White U.S. citizens) are more associated with “American” identity and they feel greater ownership over American national identity compared to ethnic minority groups. We extended this perception to gender and tested whether American national identity is constructed in masculine, versus feminine, terms. We examined whether U.S. men feel greater symbolic ownership over the nation and represent what it means to be a prototypica…
National and ethnic identity in the face of discrimination: Ethnic minority and majority perspectives
Does the United States afford people of different backgrounds a sense of equal identification with the nation? Past research has documented ethnic/racial group differences on levels of national identity but there has been little research examining what psychologically moderates these disparities. The present research investigates how perceived group discrimination is associated with national and ethnic identification among ethnic majority and min…
Vladimir's Choice and the Distribution of Social Resources: A Group Dominance Perspective
`Vladimir's choice' refers to the tendency for people to favor the ingroup relative to the outgroup—even when doing so requires that people sacrifice ingroup profits in absolute terms. We investigated correlates of this tendency by asking a sample of White undergraduates to complete an allocation task using a resource allocation matrix. While there was a slight tendency for Vladimir's choice to increase with increasing levels of ethnic identifica…
Personal reflections: Barriers and strategies in increasing diversity in psychology
In this article, six faculty and students of color who participated in a panel discussion at a symposium during the National Multicultural Conference and Summit of 2003 talk about the barriers they encountered and continue to encounter in their graduate training and places of employment. They also discuss strategies they found to be effective, enhancing, and positive and suggest other possibilities. The contributors describe their relationships w…
Reasonable suspicion” about tough immigration legislation: Enforcing laws or ethnocentric exclusion
We examined whether support for tough immigration legislation reflects identity-neutral enforcement of law or identity-relevant defense of privilege. Participants read a fabricated news story in which law-enforcement personnel detained a person due to "reasonable suspicion" that he was an undocumented immigrant. We manipulated descriptions of the detainee so that he was either (a) an undocumented immigrant (both studies), (b) a documented immigra…
Relative Importance of Contact Conditions in Explaining Prejudice Reduction in a Classroom Context: Separate and Equal
Research on contact theory has typically presented four major situational conditions of intergroup contact as separate and equally important in creating an environment that leads to lower levels of racial/ethnic prejudice. We empirically test this “separate and equal” assumption with a variety of student samples and outcome variables. Using data from three cohorts of high school students, as well as one middle school sample, we demonstrate that a…
A Compensatory Control Account of Meritocracy
Why are people motivated to support social systems that claim to distribute resources based on hard work and effort, even when those systems seem unfair? Recent research on compensatory control shows that lowered perceptions of personal control motivate a greater endorsement of external systems (e.g., God, government) that compensate for a lack of personal control. The present studies demonstrate that U.S. citizens’ faith in a popular economic id…
Mutual Acculturation and Social Categorization: A Comparison of Two Perspectives on Intergroup Bias
Using Berry, Trimble, and Olmedo's (1986) theorizing as a foundation, the present article applies acculturation constructs to the domain of intergroup bias and compares them to social categorization variables. The paper comprises three school-based studies that test the predictive and mediating roles of acculturation and social categorization, respectively. Results of Studies 1 and 2 with ethnically diverse classes of ninth graders support the hy…
Notes on decolonizing psychology: From one Special Issue to another
In this article, we describe a special thematic section on the topic of “Decolonizing Psychological Science” that we have edited for the Journal of Social and Political Psychology. Three approaches to decolonization were evident in contributions to the ongoing project. In the indigenous resistance approach, researchers draw upon local knowledge to modify “standard” practice and produce psychologies that are more responsive to local realities. In …
Support for Tough Immigration Policy: Identity Defense or Concern for Law and Order
Across two studies, U.S. participants read a fictional transcript of a law enforcement officer who observed a speeding infraction and made a discretionary traffic stop. The car carried occupants who displayed either high or low fit with Anglocentric constructions of U.S. identity and were of presumptive Mexican (Studies 1 and 2), Canadian (Study 1), or Irish (Study 2) origin. The officer decided over the course of the traffic stop that the occupa…
A cultural psychological analysis of collective memory as mediated action: Constructions of Indian history
The present research applies a cultural psychological perspective on collective memory as mediated action to examine how constructions of a national past serve as tools that both reflect and shape national identity concerns. We employ a situation-sampling method to investigate collective memory in a series of studies concerning intergroup relations in the Indian context. In Study 1, participants (N = 55) generated three historical events that the…
Consequences of interminority ingroup rejection for group identification and well-being
We discuss implications of interminority ingroup rejection for people who belong to intersecting minority groups and make recommendations for extending research on this issue. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)
Group identity as a source of threat and means of compensation: Establishing personal control through group identification and ideology
Compensatory control theory proposes that individuals can assuage threatened personal control by endorsing external systems or agents that provide a sense that the world is meaningfully ordered. Recent research drawing on this perspective finds that one means by which individuals can compensate for a loss of control is adherence to ideological beliefs about the social world. This prior work, however, has largely neglected the role of social group…
Leadership and the management of conflicts in diverse groups: Why acknowledging versus neglecting subgroup identity matters
Past research suggests that reactions to an authority's decision are most influenced by treatment quality when individuals value their relationship with the authority and the group s/he represents. The present experiments examine how institutional recognition of self-relevant identities (implicit in Study 1 and explicit in Study 2) affects the relationship between treatment quality and reactions to the delivery of a negative outcome by an outgrou…
Infrahumanizing Praise: Athletic Admiration Decreases Perceptions of Agency and Support for College Athletes’ Rights
Five studies demonstrate that athletic praise can ironically lead to infrahumanization. College athletes were seen as less agentic than college debaters (Studies 1 and 2). College athletes praised for their bodies were also seen as less agentic than college athletes praised for their minds (Study 3), and this effect was driven by bodily admiration (Study 4). These effects occurred equally for White and Black athletes (Study 1) and did not depend …
Mutual Acculturation and Social Categorization: A Comparison of Two Perspectives on Intergroup Bias
Using Berry, Trimble, and Olmedo's (1986) theorizing as a foundation, the present article applies acculturation constructs to the domain of intergroup bias and compares them to social categorization variables. The paper comprises three school-based studies that test the predictive and mediating roles of acculturation and social categorization, respectively. Results of Studies 1 and 2 with ethnically diverse classes of ninth graders support the hy…
Leadership and the management of conflicts in diverse groups: Why acknowledging versus neglecting subgroup identity matters
Past research suggests that reactions to an authority's decision are most influenced by treatment quality when individuals value their relationship with the authority and the group s/he represents. The present experiments examine how institutional recognition of self-relevant identities (implicit in Study 1 and explicit in Study 2) affects the relationship between treatment quality and reactions to the delivery of a negative outcome by an outgrou…
Is Pluralism a Viable Model of Diversity? The Benefits and Limits of Subgroup Respect
In this paper, we focus on a key psychological principle underlying pluralism, subgroup respect, defined as feelings that one's subgroup is recognized, accepted, and valued by members of a common group (e.g. Americans' respect for various ethnic subgroups). Analyzing survey data collected from a large and diverse sample of respondents in two US cities (Oakland, California, and Los Angeles; N = 1,229), we found that subgroup respect was linked to …
Relative Importance of Contact Conditions in Explaining Prejudice Reduction in a Classroom Context: Separate and Equal
Research on contact theory has typically presented four major situational conditions of intergroup contact as separate and equally important in creating an environment that leads to lower levels of racial/ethnic prejudice. We empirically test this “separate and equal” assumption with a variety of student samples and outcome variables. Using data from three cohorts of high school students, as well as one middle school sample, we demonstrate that a…
Personal reflections: Barriers and strategies in increasing diversity in psychology
In this article, six faculty and students of color who participated in a panel discussion at a symposium during the National Multicultural Conference and Summit of 2003 talk about the barriers they encountered and continue to encounter in their graduate training and places of employment. They also discuss strategies they found to be effective, enhancing, and positive and suggest other possibilities. The contributors describe their relationships w…
Exemplary efforts in psychology to recruit and retain graduate students of color
Many psychology departments are striving for a greater representation of students of color within their graduate preparation programs with the aim of producing a more diverse pool of psychological service providers, scientists, and educators. To help improve the minority pipeline in psychology, the authors identify and describe recruitment and retention strategies used at 11 departments and programs considered to be making exemplary efforts to at…
Vladimir's Choice and the Distribution of Social Resources: A Group Dominance Perspective
`Vladimir's choice' refers to the tendency for people to favor the ingroup relative to the outgroup—even when doing so requires that people sacrifice ingroup profits in absolute terms. We investigated correlates of this tendency by asking a sample of White undergraduates to complete an allocation task using a resource allocation matrix. While there was a slight tendency for Vladimir's choice to increase with increasing levels of ethnic identifica…
The Interpretation of Multiracial Status and Its Relation to Social Engagement and Psychological Well‐Being
This research examines how multiracial individuals chose to identify themselves with respect to their racial identity and how this choice relates to their self‐reported psychological well‐being (e.g., self‐esteem, positive affect) and level of social engagement (e.g., citizenship behaviors, group alienation). High school students who belong to multiple racial/ethnic groups (N = 182) were asked to indicate the group with which they primarily ident…
Testing an Integrative Model of Respect: Implications for Social Engagement and Well-Being
Prior research demonstrates that feelings of respect affect important aspects of group functioning and members’ psychological well-being. One limitation is that respect has been variously defined as reflecting individuals’ status in the group, degree to which they are liked by the group, and how fairly they are treated in interactions with group members. These different conceptions are integrated in the dual pathway model of respect. The authors …
Subgroup respect, social engagement, and well-being: A field study of an ethnically diverse high school
Recent research points toward the utility of the pluralist (multicultural) model as a viable alternative to the traditional assimilation model of cultural integration. In this study, we extend this work by evaluating when and to what extent feelings that members of a common group respect and value one's ethnic group membership (subgroup respect) shape social engagement and well-being. We do so in the context of a survey of students at a diverse, …
Prejudice at the nexus of race and gender: An outgroup male target hypothesis
Adopting an evolutionary approach to the psychology of race bias, we posit that intergroup conflict perpetrated by male aggressors throughout human evolutionary history has shaped the psychology of modern forms of intergroup bias and that this psychology reflects the unique adaptive problems that differ between men and women in coping with male aggressors from groups other than one's own. Here we report results across 4 studies consistent with th…
Ethnic Minority-Majority Asymmetry in National Attitudes around the World: A Multilevel Analysis
Using data from the International Social Survey Programme, this research investigated asymmetric attitudes of ethnic minorities and majorities towards their country and explored the impact of human development, ethnic diversity, and social inequality as country-level moderators of national attitudes. In line with the general hypothesis of ethnic asymmetry, we found that ethnic, linguistic, and religious majorities were more identified with the na…
Reasonable suspicion” about tough immigration legislation: Enforcing laws or ethnocentric exclusion
We examined whether support for tough immigration legislation reflects identity-neutral enforcement of law or identity-relevant defense of privilege. Participants read a fabricated news story in which law-enforcement personnel detained a person due to "reasonable suspicion" that he was an undocumented immigrant. We manipulated descriptions of the detainee so that he was either (a) an undocumented immigrant (both studies), (b) a documented immigra…
Displacing blame over the ingroup's harming of a disadvantaged group can fuel moral outrage at a third-party scapegoat
A Compensatory Control Account of Meritocracy
Why are people motivated to support social systems that claim to distribute resources based on hard work and effort, even when those systems seem unfair? Recent research on compensatory control shows that lowered perceptions of personal control motivate a greater endorsement of external systems (e.g., God, government) that compensate for a lack of personal control. The present studies demonstrate that U.S. citizens’ faith in a popular economic id…
National and ethnic identity in the face of discrimination: Ethnic minority and majority perspectives
Does the United States afford people of different backgrounds a sense of equal identification with the nation? Past research has documented ethnic/racial group differences on levels of national identity but there has been little research examining what psychologically moderates these disparities. The present research investigates how perceived group discrimination is associated with national and ethnic identification among ethnic majority and min…
Decolonizing Psychological Science: Introduction to the Special Thematic Section
Despite unprecedented access to information and diffusion of knowledge across the globe, the bulk of work in mainstream psychological science still reflects and promotes the interests of a privileged minority of people in affluent centers of the modern global order. Compared to other social science disciplines, there are few critical voices who reflect on the Euro-American colonial character of psychological science, particularly its relationship…
Infrahumanizing Praise: Athletic Admiration Decreases Perceptions of Agency and Support for College Athletes’ Rights
Five studies demonstrate that athletic praise can ironically lead to infrahumanization. College athletes were seen as less agentic than college debaters (Studies 1 and 2). College athletes praised for their bodies were also seen as less agentic than college athletes praised for their minds (Study 3), and this effect was driven by bodily admiration (Study 4). These effects occurred equally for White and Black athletes (Study 1) and did not depend …
Acculturation
Acculturation has historically focused on how cultural change occurs when people from different cultural backgrounds come into contact to seek ways to negotiate roles, with the possibility of one or both cultures changing. This entry provides an overview of early conceptualizations of acculturation and common frameworks most utilized in acculturation research today. Specific strategies/categories of acculturation and the outcomes that may occur a…
Contact Hypothesis
The contact hypothesis proposes that contact between individuals of different groups (e.g., race, gender, religion) can lead to lower levels of prejudice. In particular, when contact occurs under certain optimal conditions (e.g., cooperative interdependence, equal status between groups), then it is likely that prejudice reduction will occur. The specification of the conditions under which group contact is likely to reduce prejudice has been one o…
Gender Asymmetry in the Construction of American National Identity
Dominant groups (e.g., White U.S. citizens) are more associated with “American” identity and they feel greater ownership over American national identity compared to ethnic minority groups. We extended this perception to gender and tested whether American national identity is constructed in masculine, versus feminine, terms. We examined whether U.S. men feel greater symbolic ownership over the nation and represent what it means to be a prototypica…
Notes on decolonizing psychology: From one Special Issue to another
In this article, we describe a special thematic section on the topic of “Decolonizing Psychological Science” that we have edited for the Journal of Social and Political Psychology. Three approaches to decolonization were evident in contributions to the ongoing project. In the indigenous resistance approach, researchers draw upon local knowledge to modify “standard” practice and produce psychologies that are more responsive to local realities. In …
Group identity as a source of threat and means of compensation: Establishing personal control through group identification and ideology
Compensatory control theory proposes that individuals can assuage threatened personal control by endorsing external systems or agents that provide a sense that the world is meaningfully ordered. Recent research drawing on this perspective finds that one means by which individuals can compensate for a loss of control is adherence to ideological beliefs about the social world. This prior work, however, has largely neglected the role of social group…
How Discrimination Shapes Social Identification Processes and Well-Being Among Arab Americans
The increasingly xenophobic U.S. climate warrants a close investigation of Arab American responses to discrimination. We conducted secondary analyses of two large data sets to examine social identity processes and their relationship to well-being. In a representative sample of Muslim Arab Americans (Study 1, n = 228), discrimination was related to decreased American identification, which in turn predicted lower well-being. Another large sample of…
Family ties: Exploring the influence of family legacy on self and identity
In three studies we introduce the idea of the family legacy – shared practices, beliefs, and other psychological materials within a family that are passed on from one generation to another – and examine its role in shaping individuals’ self and identity. In three quasi-experimental studies, we compare students who have had family attend the university (legacy) to those who have not (non-legacy) on identity-relevant variables. In Study 1a, legacy …
Psychology (33 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (26 works) · Social Psychology (25 works) · Social Psychology (19 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (17 works) · Political science (16 works) · Ethnic group (12 works) · Racial and Ethnic Identity Research (12 works) · Law (9 works)