Critical Race Science and Critical Race Philosophy of Science

Over several decades, feminist philosophy of science has revealed the ways in which much of science has proceeded from “mainstream” assumptions that privilege men and other hierarchically superordinate groups and existing socially constructed conceptions of gender. In doing so, it has produced a research program that, while rooted in the post- Kuhnian philosophy and sociology of science that has been taken up by many students of scientific method more generally, has been used to critique great swathes of modern science and to reveal both the biases of the mainstream, and the transformative potential of a science that proceeds from the epistemic standpoints of women as well as men and from the research questions and concerns that arise from the goal of promoting equality between men and women

The power of external influences to modify judgments of facial and moral beauty

Empirical evidence shows that the often-made positive correlation between human physical and moral beauty is tenuous. In this study, we aimed to learn whether facial and moral beauty can be psychophysically separated. Participants (n = 95) provided beauty and goodness (i.e., trustworthiness) ratings for pictures of faces, after which they were presented with a fictitious peer rating for the same face and asked to re-rate the face. We used the difference between the initial and final ratings to quantify the degree of resistance to external influence. We found that judgments of facial beauty were more resistant to external influence than judgments of facial “goodness”; in addition, there was significantly higher agreement within beauty ratings than within goodness ratings. These findings are discussed in light of our Bayesian–Laplacian classification of priors, from which we conclude that moral beauty relies more upon acquired “artifactual” priors and facial beauty more on inherited biological priors

Wearing Many (Social) Hats: How Different are Your Different Social Network Personae?

This paper investigates when users create profiles in different social networks, whether they are redundant expressions of the same persona, or they are adapted to each platform. Using the personal webpages of 116,998 users on About.me, we identify and extract matched user profiles on several major social networks including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. We find evidence for distinct site-specific norms, such as differences in the language used in the text of the profile self-description, and the kind of picture used as profile image. By learning a model that robustly identifies the platform given a user's profile image (0.657--0.829 AUC) or self-description (0.608--0.847 AUC), we confirm that users do adapt their behaviour to individual platforms in an identifiable and learnable manner. However, different genders and age groups adapt their behaviour differently from each other, and these differences are, in general, consistent across different platforms. We show that differences in social profile construction correspond to differences in how formal or informal the platform is.Comment: Accepted at the 11th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM17

Racial Exemplars And Their Effects On The Race-Implicit Association Test

Research on prejudice has long been skewed by participants’ ability to monitor their reactions on overt measures of such attitudes. Accordingly, researchers created an implicit measure to study prejudice (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). The Implicit Association Test (IAT) was thus developed. Though the IAT has long been purported as the only ‘true’ measure of participants’ feelings and cognitions, recent research has suggested the measure is not as infallible as once purported (e.g., Smith & Zarate, 1990). The purpose of this study was to integrate existing research on exemplars and how they affect scores on the IAT. Results showed that priming participants with racial exemplars that vary in terms of stereotypicality and valence had little effect on Race-IAT scores. Further, contrary to previous research, significant differences between African American and European American participants on the Race-IAT did emerge

Racial Exemplars And Their Effects On The Race-Implicit Association Test

Research on prejudice has long been skewed by participants’ ability to monitor their reactions on overt measures of such attitudes. Accordingly, researchers created an implicit measure to study prejudice (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). The Implicit Association Test (IAT) was thus developed. Though the IAT has long been purported as the only ‘true’ measure of participants’ feelings and cognitions, recent research has suggested the measure is not as infallible as once purported (e.g., Smith & Zarate, 1990). The purpose of this study was to integrate existing research on exemplars and how they affect scores on the IAT. Results showed that priming participants with racial exemplars that vary in terms of stereotypicality and valence had little effect on Race-IAT scores. Further, contrary to previous research, significant differences between African American and European American participants on the Race-IAT did emerge

Second Annual Graduate Student Research Symposium [Program], 2009

Schedule and Table of Contents--Welcome Letter from Dr. Sue Joseph--Creative Performances--Keynote Address--Poster Presentations--Acknowledgements & Noteshttps://scholarworks.uni.edu/agssprograms/1005/thumbnail.jp

The effects of memory knowledge on attributions of forgetfulness in younger and older adults

This study examined the relationship between memory knowledge and peoples\u27 perceptions of forgetful younger and older adults in two ways. First, using an experimental approach, younger and older research participants were assigned to one of three information conditions: control (received no information about memory and aging), grandparent (received information about grandparent-grandchild relationships), and memory aging (received information about normative age-related changes in memory functioning in later adulthood). One week later, participants read six vignettes describing fictitious persons experiencing everyday instances of forgetting who were either younger (23-35 years of age) or older (63-75 years of age). Following Erber, Szuchman, and Rothberg (1990a), participants rated the likelihood of six possible causes for the memory failures: ability, effort, task difficulty, luck, and two scales measuring attention (external and internal distractions). Participants also rated the degree to which: (a) the forgetting was a sign of mental difficulty, (b) the person should seek training to improve his/her memory, and (c) the person should seek medical and/or psychological evaluation for the forgetting. Participants made their evaluations on separate 7-point Likert scales. Contrary to expectations, the groups did not differ in perceptions of older forgetful persons; however, participants in the memory aging seminar group showed significant pre- to posttest gains on the Knowledge of Memory Aging Question (KMAQ; Cherry, West, Reese, Santa Maria, & Yassuda, 2000), indicating that the information presented increased knowledge of normal age-related memory changes. Second, individual differences in memory aging knowledge were analyzed by evaluating the relationship between pretest performance on the KMAQ and ratings on the causal attribution and memory opinion scales for participants in the two control conditions only (control and grandparent seminar participants). Contrary to expectations, but confirming findings from the experimental approach, pretest knowledge of normal age-related memory changes were not correlated with evaluations of forgetful individuals. Taken together these data suggest that perceptions of forgetfulness in older adults are not necessarily influenced by explicit knowledge of normative age-associated memory changes

Stereotype and representation of Near and Middle Eastern peoples in la bande dessinee

Representation of social groups in the comics is serious. In 2006, a series of twelve cartoons published in a Danish newspaper sparked a controversy that precipitated the deaths of hundreds of people. The images depicted Mohammed and other images that supposedly mocked Islam. All across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa protesters paraded through the streets, some calling for the death of the cartoonists. Trials in Europe over the publication of these cartoons resulted in several firings. Counter protests have also arisen. These protesters found grievance with the firings, claiming that the freedom of the press was being violated (especially in France, concerning the publication Charlie Hebdo). Aside from these inflammatory images, comics’ artists have been depicting peoples of the Near and Middle East since the foundations of the medium by Rodolphe T&oumlpffer. Over approximately 150 years, representation of these peoples have changed in some ways and remained the same in others. Specifically, the franco-belgian tradition of comics (also known as la bande dessin&eacutee) have been instrumental in the creation and proliferation of several stereotypes about Near and Middle Eastern peoples. This thesis examines the relationships between these stereotypes and the medium of the bande dessin&eacutee. Through a wide variety of criticisms and sources, the researcher found that there exists a focused trend to lessen the degree to which stereotyping of Arabs occurs. Via content and context analysis, the researcher discovered several key factors in the evolution of the Arab stereotype. These factors include political and religious affiliations of the authors and publishers, the type of narrative chosen, and artistic style of the author/ illustrator, amongst others. The additions these authors and illustrators make to the available bodies of literature provide a framework in which to ground psychological and sociological studies of a particular nature, that being the sensitivities of artists in regards to representation