Evaluation of Dominican Clinical Psychology Practice

Clinical psychology, as an application of psychological science, must undergo a constant process of revision and development of its empirical foundations. The current study explores the scientific status of clinical psychology in the Dominican Republic, with a focus on three main elements: use of evidence-based practices, preference for clinical judgment over actuarial judgments, and knowledge of research methods and statistics. Additionally, we explore professional development practices, and other important elements for the responsible application of science. Our results indicate multiple weaknesses in clinical practice, including an excessive use of techniques with poor validity, strong endorsement of clinical judgments, general apathy towards active involvement in research, and lack of knowledge of basic methodological and statistical concepts. We discuss factors potentially related to these weaknesses, and propose possible steps to take in order to strengthen clinical psychology in the Dominican Republic

Warmth and competence perceptions of key protagonists are associated with containment measures during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from 35 countries

It is crucial to understand why people comply with measures to contain viruses and their effects during pandemics. We provide evidence from 35 countries (Ntotal = 12,553) from 6 continents during the COVID-19 pandemic (between 2021 and 2022) obtained via cross-sectional surveys that the social perception of key protagonists on two basic dimensions—warmth and competence—plays a crucial role in shaping pandemic-related behaviors. Firstly, when asked in an open question format, heads of state, physicians, and protest movements were universally identified as key protagonists across countries. Secondly, multiple-group confirmatory factor analyses revealed that warmth and competence perceptions of these and other protagonists differed significantly within and between countries. Thirdly, internal meta-analyses showed that warmth and competence perceptions of heads of state, physicians, and protest movements were associated with support and opposition intentions, containment and prevention behaviors, as well as vaccination uptake. Our results have important implications for designing effective interventions to motivate desirable health outcomes and coping with future health crises and other global challenges.publishedVersio

SPONTANEOUS STEREOTYPE CONTENT: MEASUREMENT AIMING TOWARD THEORETICAL INTEGRATION AND DISCOVERY

Categorizing and stereotyping others are unavoidable features of human life. However, despite decades of research, there is still no complete consensus on the dimensions that perceivers use to make sense of others. Various models have proposed dimensions such as warmth, competence, socioeconomic status, and progressive-conservative beliefs, but how to integrate these models and whether other dimensions should also be modeled remains controversial. A limitation of current models is their reliance on predetermined numerical ratings on dimensions that are explicitly queried. Here I develop and introduce free response measures of stereotype content in order to study more spontaneous impressions. This approach has several advantages over traditional metrics: (a) it circumvents researcher biases in the selection of evaluative dimensions, (b) it provides information about the salience of evaluative dimensions, and (c) it allows for an examination of additional relevant cognitive processes (e.g., reaction times). Across three chapters, I describe the process of developing text analysis instruments, their application to studying information-gathering processes (in an “adversarial” collaboration), and a spontaneous stereotype content model, a taxonomy of free-response stereotypes. These chapters provide evidence for the role of spontaneous stereotypes in an integrative and generative framework, uncovering moderators of stereotype dimension priority, dimensional usage rates and intercorrelations, as well as stereotype processes and properties that improve our understanding of person perception. This research has implications for the measurement of psychological dimensions in text (e.g., hateful stereotypes in social media), the integration of adversary models of social cognition, and the discovery of novel constructs that may better model the complexity of an increasingly diverse social world

Perceptions of Economic Inequality at the Intersection of Race and Gender

Past research indicates that the public tends to underestimate the extent of economic inequality based on race or gender. However, little work has explored perceptual patterns regarding inequality based on both identities (i.e., intersectional inequality). Through an online survey, 725 Americans estimated the relative size of earnings gaps between two targets with differing racial, gender, or racial-gender identity combinations for six years (1969-2019). Some sets of comparisons followed the anticipated patterns of underestimation of earnings gaps and larger differences between estimates and objective data for more recent than for earlier years, but others (including some intersectional comparisons) did not, demonstrating differences between perceptions based on racial or gender identity alone versus together. Participants also estimated prototypical racial-gender identity gaps more closely to those based on race or gender alone compared to less prototypical identities, indicating the potential role of prototypicality in how social inequality is perceived

Spontaneous Content of Impressions of Naturalistic Face Photographs

Social impressions from faces have been studied in psychology for over 100 years. These impressions are rapid, efficient, and consequential. Yet, disagreements about the content of face impressions remain. Across two studies (N = 4,526), we develop a taxonomy of spontaneous face impressions content by applying novel interdisciplinary methods from Artificial Intelligence text analysis to thousands of free-response descriptions of computer-generated faces. We identify a taxonomy of face impression dimensions, and describe their coverage, prevalence, directionality, and correlational structure. We characterize a diverse and nuanced taxonomy of content that, when compared to just the content that dominant low-dimensional models focus on, increases the coverage of spontaneous responses from about 50% to almost 100%. Our results describe general patterns of prevalence, indicating that dimensions from low-dimensional models (e.g., Sociability, Morality, Assertiveness) are highly prevalent, but that alternative dimensions such as Uniqueness and Health, among others, are also significantly prevalent in face impressions of naturalistic face photographs. Most dimensions show a positivity bias, and the correlational structure of the dimensions further supports the clustering of low-dimensional model’s content as separate from the expanded taxonomy dimensions. Finally, this expanded taxonomy improves predictions of general evaluations and decision making in various real-world relevant contexts. The derived taxonomy of spontaneous face impressions content is a foundation for further theoretical development and practical applications in an area central to human behavior