A neurocognitive approach to studying processes underlying parents’ gender socialization

Parental gender socialization refers to ways in which parents teach their children social expectations associated with gender. Relatively little is known about the mechanisms underlying gender socialization. An overview of cognitive and neural processes underlying parental gender socialization is provided. Regarding cognitive processes, evidence exists that parents’ implicit and explicit gender stereotypes, attitudes, and gendered attributions are implicated in gender socialization. Other cognitive factors, such as intergroup attitudes, gender essentialism, internal motivation for parenting without gender stereotypes, gender identity, and conflict resolution are theoretically relevant mechanisms underlying gender socialization, but need further investigation. Regarding neural processes, studies demonstrated that attentional processing, conflict monitoring, behavior regulation, and reward processing might underlie stereotypes and biased behavior. However, more research is necessary to test whether these neural processes are also related to parental gender socialization. Based on this overview, a framework is presented of neural and cognitive factors that were theoretically or empirically related to gender socialization

Who am I to judge? Intellectual Humility and Dispositional Attributions

According to the attribution-value model, a great deal of stigmatization and prejudice stem from the belief that an individual’s character is to blame for their “negative” traits or qualities. Such dispositional attributions are also known to predict less forgiveness after a transgression. While investigations into the antecedents of such dispositional attributions have been numerous, a positive psychology approach has been underutilized, especially in the case of intellectual humility. In three investigations, I examine the hypothesis that those high in intellectual humility will be more likely to make complex attributions about the reason behind an individual’s behavior or appearance, leading to lower levels of dispositional blame. This model is examined in the context of one’s attitudes toward a hypothetical roommate showing signs of alcohol use disorder, obesity prejudice, and forgiveness after a hypothetical transgression. Internal motivation to control prejudice and perspective taking serve as additional mediators in the context of obesity prejudice and forgiveness, respectively. Results from these investigations show that intellectual humility displays significant indirect effects on these outcomes through lower blame, internal motivation to respond without prejudice and attributional judgments. Implications of these findings are discussed

Racial Identity and its Impact on Job Applicants

Drawing from Social Dominance Theory and Prejudice Distribution Theory, the purpose of these three experimental studies was to examine how Whites evaluate racial minorities (African American and Latino) with a strong racial identity. In Study 1, participants evaluated applicants for an athletic director position. Relative to their weakly identified counterparts, applicants believed to possess a strong racial identity were rated as a poorer fit for the job. Results from Study 2, which was also set within the context of hiring an athletic director, show that participant social dominance orientation moderates the relationship between racial identity and subsequent evaluations. Study 3 explored the impact of racial identity on salary and job-related attributes for African American and Latina applicants in the fitness industry as well as gender biases of participants. Study 3 results revealed a relationship between rater gender, applicant race or racial identity and job-related attributes as well as suggested salary. Specifically, strongly identified Latina applicants were rated most negatively by male reviewers in comparison to weakly identified Latina and African American applicants. Interestingly, the inverse was found for female raters. These studies support and extend the current literature as well as highlight the unique way displays of racial identity impact minority applicants in sport and fitness contexts. These findings have both theoretical and practical implications for organizations and minority applicants. The author also discusses limitations and future directions

Attitudes: A Memory Systems Perspective

This dissertation develops and defends the memory systems pluralist (MSP) theory of attitudes. This holds that there are a relatively large number of species of attitudes (hence &lsquo;pluralism&rsquo;), each of which is subserved by a distinct causal mechanism best conceived of as a memory system (hence &lsquo;memory systems&rsquo;). On the MSP theory, attitudes are mental states that cause a special class of behaviors known as evaluative responses. Though this perspective is compatible with memory systems models on which all attitudes are of the same representational format, I will argue that data from both cognitive neuroscience of memory and social cognition research best supports a version of MSP according to which some types of attitude are associations, and some types of attitude are propositional structures. For these reasons, I suspect that the most successful MSP models will be those that license pluralism both in regard to attitudes qua class of psychological entities and in regard to their representational format. Moreover, I will tentatively conclude, contra social psychological orthodoxy, that the best available evidence does not warrant the view that implicit attitudes are categorically distinct from explicit attitudes. The central argument for this version of MSP theory takes the form of an inference to best explanation. In particular, I argue that the MSP theory has the best prospects for resolving two sets of anomalies that have long plagued social psychological theorizing on attitudes. One set of anomalies, which I call the core anomalies, suggests that measures of implicit attitudes have low predictive validity, weakly correlate with other measures of (putatively) the same phenomenon, and suffer from unacceptably low levels of test-retest reliability. The other set of anomalies, which I call the format anomalies, suggest that implicit attitudes paradoxically possess the defining features characteristic of both associations and propositionally structured representations.</p