Balloting in churches sways attitudes and votes towards more conservative policies and candidates

During elections, churches often act as voting sites – they are common and often centrally placed within most American communities. But does voting in a church building influence the way that people vote? Using evidence from survey research, Jordan P. LaBouff finds that church voting promotes more conservative attitudes in voters on issues ranging from immigration to tax policy. He argues that with this in mind, selecting more neutral community sites for polling places would better serve the public

Honors Flourishing in the Midst of Change

In the wake of formidable institutional change, and in response to administrative concerns about honors’ place within the university, authors describe the development of a pilot course that led to a program’s critical self-study and course transformations that were long overdue. Citizen Scholarship and Human Flourishing incorporates specific practices such as peer instruction and “ungrading” to align with new institutional learning objectives and broadly defined undergraduate research experiences across disciplines. The experimental course presents honors as a model for progressive curricular change in the midst of shifting administrative landscapes

One size does not fit all: gender implications for the design of outcomes, evaluation and assessment of science communication programs

As science communication programs grow worldwide, effective evaluation and assessment metrics lag. While there is no consensus on evaluation protocols specifically for science communication training, there is agreement on elements of effective training: listening, empathy, and knowing your audience - core tenets of improvisation. We designed an evaluation protocol, tested over three years, based on validated and newly developed scales for an improvisation-based communication training at the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science. Initial results suggest that 'knowing your audience' should apply to training providers as they design and evaluate their curriculum, and gender may be a key influence on outcomes

Towards an implicit measure of religiousness-spirituality.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 77-81).This series of studies examined statistical associations between a newly-developed implicit measure of religiousness-spirituality, well-validated explicit measures and pro-social behavior. In Study 1, undergraduates (n = 109) at a private institution completed self-report measures of a broad spectrum of religiousness-spirituality and related constructs (i.e. religious fundamentalism, authoritarianism, empathy). Participants also completed an Implicit Association Test designed to assess religiousness-spirituality. Informants also rated the participants’ religiousness-spirituality. We found acceptable implicit-explicit correspondence providing convergent validity for the new measure. Study 2 tested the relationship between religiousness-spirituality and helping behavior in spontaneous and controlled opportunities. Undergraduates (n = 102) completed a similar battery to Study 1 and were also given the opportunity to help a student in need. Self-reported religiousness predicted helping when pressure was high. Future research directions and applications are discussed.by Jordan LaBouff.M.A

The ecological validity of priming religiousness : context and culture.

Across four studies, the paradox of religiousness and prejudice was examined through self-report and priming methods in both a laboratory setting in an evangelical culture and a culturally agnostic field setting. Across all cultures and methods greater religiousness was associated with more positive attitudes towards the religious ingroup and more negative attitudes towards religious value-violating outgroups (i.e., intergroup bias) whether religion was inherently salient in the culture examined, or activated by a religious context. These studies indicate that priming religiousness through subtle ecologically valid methods is possible but difficult, and the activation of these constructs is seated in the culture in which those constructs are activated. In a highly religious series of American samples, subtle religious primes did not significantly influence self-reported religiousness, attitudes towards outgroups, or political attitudes. In a more religiously heterogeneous European sample, however, the mere presence of a religious stimulus in a participant’s visual field was associated with more conservative attitudes, higher self-reported personal religiousness, and greater intergroup bias.Ph.D

Prejudice among nonreligious group members

Datasets and codebooks for Studies 1-3 of manuscrip

More Than Political Ideology: Subtle Racial Prejudice as a Predictor of Opposition to Universal Health Care Among U.S. Citizens

Political rhetoric surrounding Universal Health Care in the United States typically deals only with differences in political ideology. Research on symbolic racism, however, indicates that subtle racial prejudice may also predict attitudes toward policies like universal health care that are assumed to benefit racial minorities. This subtle racial prejudice hypothesis was supported across three studies conducted in the U.S. A measure of attitudes toward universal health care was found to be a reliable, single-dimension measure associated with political ideology (Pilot Study). Subtle racial prejudice (as measured by the Modern Racism Scale) predicted opposition to universal health care, even when statistically controlling for political ideology and attitudes toward the poor (Study 1). Moreover, reading about a Black individual (compared to a White individual) receiving universal health care benefits reduced support for universal health care, even when statistically controlling for political ideology and right-wing authoritarianism (Study 2). Being a person who takes advantage of the system (e.g., free rides) was a significant predictor of universal health care attitudes while race was not (Study 3). This work demonstrates that subtle racial prejudice plays a critical role in predicting universal health care attitudes among U.S. citizens, reflecting a long-standing history of associations between subtle racial prejudice and opposition to governmental assistance programs in the U.S

University of Maine Community Pieces_LaBouff Commute Video

Video of University of Maine Psychology professor Jordan LaBouff\u27s commute around the City of Bangor during the COVID-19 pandemic

The Genesis of an Honors Faculty: Collective Reflections on a Process of Change

In the early twentieth century, Woodrow Wilson introduced the concept of “preceptors” at Princeton University (Office of the Dean of the College). At the University of Maine a century later, we have adapted Wilson’s concept by hiring faculty members who lead small-group discussions in our interdisciplinary, two-year, four-course core Civilizations sequence, which is a requirement for all first- and second-year honors students. Like Wilson, we hope to “import into the great university the methods and personal contact between teacher and pupil which are characteristic of the small college, and so gain the advantages of both” (Leitch). During the 2010–2011 academic year, the University of Maine Honors College tripled its number of salaried preceptors, expanding from two to six. With that expansion came new challenges: an innovative, albeit periodically strained, collaboration with the UMaine College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and four of its departments; an experimental and precarious foray into non-tenure-track interdisciplinary academia with fresh consideration for undergraduate research; and an evolving sense of what it means to be honors faculty members—or, more broadly, academics—at a twenty-first-century university rife with change. Various perspectives illustrate the difficulties and possibilities endemic to this faculty formation and collectively belie the assumption that faculty members necessarily best cohere around a single discipline and familiar professional constructs. We suggest that a university today, as it has done in the past, can and should coalesce around and be invigorated by untried models and pioneering colleges whose faculty members are willing and eager to take risks. Administrators and search committees at other institutions, as well as prospective honors faculty members, may be able to learn from our experience at the University of Maine. To this end, we share multiple perspectives on our new preceptor positions by the dean of the UMaine Honors College (Charlie Slavin); two honors faculty members (Mark Haggerty & Mimi Killinger) who served on the search committees; and the four new hires (Rob Glover, Sarah Harlan-Haughey, Jordan LaBouff, and Justin Martin). Our seven personal narratives each engage thematically with several central issues: newness and institutional resistance, identity formation, interdisciplinarity, and faculty retention. We try to be as honest as possible as we present our individual assessments of the initiative so far. We believe that a discussion of such thorny issues as nontenure- track appointments and the creation ex nihilo of a new kind of position will enable other institutions to make informed decisions as they consider implementing such a model