Perverse Effects of Unfulfilled Norms: A Look at the Roots of Favoritism

In four experiments, 120 subjects had to judge and reward the performance of players in a game. When no player fulfilled the norm of the game, subjects gave rewards arbitrarily or favored their friends among the players; when some players fulfilled the norm of the game, subjects made fair judgments, rewarding the players who fulfilled the norm, and they did not favor their friends. These findings suggest that research on in-group favoritism should include a serious discussion of the formal norms that regulate people's decisions when they have to allocate rewards.     

To Our Benefit or at Your Expense? Justice Considerations in Intergroup Allocations of Positive and Negative Resources

Several studies consistently demonstrated a positive-negative asymmetry in social discrimination. In line with classical minimal group experiments, laboratory groups favored their in-group when allocating positive resources or evaluating positive dimensions. However, they refrained from discriminating behavior as soon as negative resources had to be distributed between groups. We propose that this is due to valence-specific differences in the consideration and perception of social justice. Several studies tested whether social norms inhibiting in-group favoritism and out-group derogation are differently interpreted or weighed due to the valence of resources. Consequently, a survey of these studies is given and their implications for classical theories on intergroup behavior and future research on social discrimination are discussed.     

Implicit Outgroup Favoritism and Intergroup Judgment: The Moderating Role of Stereotypic Context

Implicit outgroup favoritism has been documented in a variety of socially disadvantaged groups, yet little is known about the implications of having such bias. The present research examined whether implicit outgroup favoritism predicts judgments of ingroup versus outgroup members, and whether that relationship depends on stereotypic context. One hundred and ten African-American participants were assigned a Black versus a White work partner for a task that required skills that are stereotypically White (e.g., intellect) versus Black (e.g., athleticism). Participants rated Black partners as less competent than White partners on the stereotypically White task. Furthermore, participants who implicitly favored Whites liked Black partners less than White partners, but only on the stereotypically White task. Implications for system justification theory are discussed.

“It’s All About Something We Call Wasta”: A Motivated Moralization Approach to Favoritism in the Jordanian Workplace

There has been a limited focus on the construal of justice judgments in contexts where norms are potentially conflicting, despite the relevance of norms in justice research. The present study aimed to close this gap by looking at the case of favoritism in Jordan where such conflicting norms are highly salient. A qualitative approach was chosen to facilitate ample exploration of the contextual complexities of the study’s setting. The main data basis were 22 problem-centered interviews conducted with managers and employees in Jordanian non-profit organizations. Data collection and analysis were guided by grounded theory methodology. The resulting theoretical framework of motivated moralization demonstrated that people flexibly construed favoritism as either unjust or justifiable to pursue a number of goals. Instead of relying on a single norm or standard, people strategically adopted the norms that were best suited to substantiate or legitimize a desired position. The norm conflict surrounding favoritism in Jordan facilitated this process by providing a selection of fitting norms for appropriation.     

Of Eggshells and Thin-skulls: a consideration of racism-related mental illness impacting Black women

Recent research has indicated that the prevalence of mental disorders is estimated to be higher among Blacks than among Whites, most likely due to the nexus of race and socioeconomic disparity. Blacks are under-represented in in-patient populations and more likely than Whites to use the emergency rooms for mental health treatment. Numerous studies confirm that Blacks drop out of mental health services at a significantly higher rate than Whites and use fewer treatment sessions for mental health issues. Furthermore, Blacks enter mental health treatment at a later, more advanced stage than Whites, under-consume community mental health services of all kinds, are misdiagnosed more often than Whites, and are more often diagnosed with a severe mental illness than Whites. People from diverse ethnic backgrounds often are prevented from receiving adequate mental health treatment due to misdiagnoses and lack of access to the services they need. Factors contributing to this disparity include a general mistrust of medical health professionals, cultural barriers, co-occurring disorders, socioeconomic factors, and primary reliance on family and the religious community during times of distress. Unfortunately, the traditional institutions of racialized research largely ignore the disparate social and political exposures confronting people of color, such as residential and occupational segregation, racial profiling, tokenism, discrimination, racism, and the consequential physiological and psychological effects flowing from the macro and micro effects of such interactions and intersectionalities. This article explores these issues and proposes civil law legal frameworks for addressing these disparities. In particular, it is suggested that renewed consideration be made of the Thin-skull and Eggshell doctrines in the United States and comparable traditional international doctrine.     

Public Support for Punishment and Progressive Criminal Justice Policy Preferences: The Role of Symbolic Racism and Negative Racial Stereotype

Prior studies have found that symbolic racism and negative African-American stereotypes are linked to public preferences for punitive criminal justice policy. But prior studies have mostly focused attention on White respondents and have not adequately examined whether the effects of symbolic racism and negative African American stereotypes are the same across race and ethnicity. This study used the 2000 American National Election Study data to fill this gap in the empirical literature. The study found that the effects of symbolic racism were broad and generally impact Whites, African-Americans, and members of other races/ethnicities the same. The effects of negative African-American stereotype were more limited. This variable predicted punishment policy preference for members of other races/ethnicities and there were significant differences in how stereotypes impacted policy preferences across race and ethnicity. Implications for theory are discussed.     

“EXPERIENCE OF THE EXPECTED?” RACE AND ETHNICITY DIFFERENCES IN THE EFFECTS OF POLICE CONTACT ON YOUTH*

Proponents of police reform have called for changes in the way police interact with citizens, particularly with people of color. The rationale, in part, is that when people have more favorable perceptions of their police encounters, they view the police as more just and are more willing to cooperate and comply with the law. To assess whether perceptions of police‐initiated encounters shape law‐related outcomes, we examine how satisfaction with treatment during prior police contact affects procedural injustice, reporting intentions, norms supporting the use of violence, and delinquency. We also explore whether these relationships vary among Blacks, Whites, and Latinos. Our results indicate that youth who have been stopped or arrested fare worse than their counterparts with no police‐initiated contact; however, the potentially negative ramifications of these encounters on all outcomes except violence norms are generally mitigated when youth are satisfied with their treatment. The effects of contact are mostly invariant across racial/ethnic groups when a robust set of control variables are included. We conclude that changing the perceptions of youth regarding how they are treated by the police may mitigate some of the harms of being stopped or arrested, but we caution that these perceptions are shaped by factors aside from police behavior during encounters.     

Are There Ethnic Differences in Levels of Psychopathy? A Meta-Analysis

Although considerable research on psychopathy has been conducted over the past 30 years, relatively few studies have examined key issues related to potential ethnic differences in this constellation of socially maladaptive personality traits. Given recent sociopolitical and scientific developments, an issue of considerable debate is whether Black individuals possess "more" traits of psychopathy than do Whites. To address this issue, a meta-analysis of differences between these groups' scores on the Psychopathy Checklist--Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 1991) was performed, using 21 studies (N = 8,890) of correctional, substance abuse, and psychiatric samples. Blacks exceeded Whites by an average of less than 1 point on the PCL-R total score. Effect sizes for core interpersonal and affective traits of psychopathy (Factor 1) were sufficiently homogeneous to clearly interpret, although other features manifested statistically significant heterogeneity. Our finding that Blacks and Whites do not meaningfully differ in their levels of core psychopathic traits is consistent with community-based findings for self-report measures of psychopathy and clinical diagnoses of antisocial personality disorder.     

Differentiating among racial/ethnic groups and its implications for understanding juvenile justice decision making

Both theory and research have been refined to gain a better understanding of when race and ethnicity matter in justice proceedings. In the present research, this line of inquiry was continued by differentiating among minority youth to assess the extent being African American, Native American, and Asian American influenced juvenile justice decision making and how these effects compared to one another and Whites. Utilizing an interpretation of the symbolic threat thesis that emphasizes stereotyping, the authors anticipated Native Americans to be responded to more severely than African Americans, followed by Asian Americans who were anticipated to be responded to more like Whites. The results indicated partial support for these expectations.     

Post-Hurricane Katrina Racialized Explanations as a System Threat: Implications for Whites’ and Blacks’ Racial Attitudes

This experiment drew upon theoretical perspectives on group and system justification to examine whether exposure to media coverage arguing that racism was responsible for the ineffective Hurricane Katrina disaster response affected White and Black Americans’ intergroup attitudes. Consistent with a system justification perspective, Whites exposed to video clips arguing that the hurricane Katrina disaster response was due to racism displayed greater racial ingroup attachment and ingroup love compared to Whites exposed to videos conveying that the government’s incompetence was to blame for the disaster response. In contrast, Blacks displayed strong levels of ingroup attachment and ingroup love across both video conditions. This research highlights how insights from social psychology are valuable in understanding psychological responses to social justice-related events, such as the tragic response to hurricane Katrina.

Effects of Uncertainty and Mortality Salience on Worldview Defense Reactions in Turkey

This research explores effects of uncertainty and mortality salience on reactions to violations or bolstering of cultural norms and values. Some recent studies have suggested that worldview defense reactions are better accounted for by reminders of personal uncertainty than mortality. These findings have been disputed, however, as they have not been found outside the Netherlands. The current research was conducted in Turkey, a culture distinguished by high uncertainty avoidance values compared to both the USA and the Netherlands. Results reveal that both uncertainty and mortality salience influence reactions of Turkish participants to essays negative about basic rights of Turkish women, but that uncertainty salience had larger effects than mortality salience. We argue that mortality salience may be an indirect manipulation of uncertainty concerns, which explains why a direct manipulation of uncertainty salience may have a bigger impact on reactions to violations of important cultural norms and values.     

Construing Motive in Videotaped Killings: The Role of Jurors' Attitudes Toward the Death Penalty

Death-qualified jurors are generally able to impose the death penalty, whereas excludable jurors are generally either unable or unwilling to do so. A long line of research studies has shown that the former are more likely than the latter to convict criminal defendants. Ellsworth (1993) argues that jurors' attitudes toward the death penalty predict verdicts because they are embedded in a cluster of beliefs and theories about the criminal justice system. Her studies show that jurors interpret ambiguous conduct based on these belief structures. The present study examines the possibility that death penalty attitudes also influence jurors' conceptions of criminal intent. We showed mock jurors the filmed murder of a convenience store clerk and examined the inferences they drew from this evidence. Jurors who favored the death penalty tended to read criminal intent into the defendant's actions and jurors who opposed the death penalty were less likely to do so. These data provide further explanation of the conviction-proneness of death-qualified jurors.     

NATIONAL ATTITUDES REGARDING GENDER BIAS IN CHILD CUSTODY CASES

Recent changes in family law have mandated equal treatment in child custody cases. Surveys of 4,579 attorneys and judges from four states, deemed to be nationally representative, were used to discover whether attorneys or judges perceive any favoritism toward mothers' or fathers' claims in the awarding of custody of children. Whereas attorneys, particularly males, perceive that mothers continue to be favored over fathers in custody cases, judges do not share this opinion.     

Dialect on trial: use of African American Vernacular English influences juror appraisals*

ABSTRACT

We investigated the effect of dialect and race on juror decision making. Mock jurors read a summary of an ambiguous criminal case, which included audio of a defense witness (Study 1) or defendant (Study 2). Both speaker dialect [General American English (GAE)/African American Vernacular English (AAVE)] and race (White/Black) were crossed; Study 2 also included three levels of case (Ambiguous/Pro-Prosecution/Pro-Defense) to evaluate any effects of evidentiary context. In both studies, jurors who listened to the AAVE recording found the AAVE-speaking witness to be less professional and less educated than their GAE-speaking counterparts. Interestingly, jurors in Study 2 who heard the defendant use GAE were more likely to find him guilty and found him less credible when the case favored the prosecution, hinting that ingroup biases such as the black sheep effect may also play a role in perceptions of dialect. Secondary analyses found that AAVE predicted more negative overall evaluations of the speaker, and these negative evaluations were associated with an increase in guilty verdicts. Together, these findings suggest that dialect plays an under-investigated role in the courtroom, and that bias against AAVE negatively impacts juror appraisals of its speakers and can potentially influence juror decision making.     

Racial differences in violence and self-esteem among prison inmates

Recent scholarship in social psychology suggests that individuals with an elevated sense of self-esteem may respond aggressively or violently when this heightened egoism is threatened. The present study explores differences in self-esteem, aggression, and violent behavior among a sample of 644 male state prison inmates. The results indicated that Black inmates expressed higher levels of self-esteem than White inmates. Although Blacks and Whites did not differ on a psychological measure of aggressive personality, Black prisoners reported more violent behavior than Whites. Moreover, high self-esteem predicted violent behavior inside prison, but only for Whites. This finding suggests that the relationship between high self-esteem and violence may be race-specific.     

Understanding (Mis)classification Trends of Latin Americans in Fordisc 3.1: Incorporating Cranial Morphology,Microgeographic Origin,and Admixture Proportions for Interpretation

Assigning correct population affinity to a skeleton can contribute important information to an investigation—yet recent work highlights high error rates when classifying Latinos with a traditional tool, Fordisc 3.1 (FD3). Our study examines whether misclassification trends exist, and whether these can be used to infer population affinity. We examine the relationships among ancestry, geography, and FD3 misclassifications of Latinos using canonical variate analysis and unsupervised model‐based clustering of craniometrics. Northern Mexicans appear more strongly associated with FD3 references samples with elevated amounts of European ancestry (e.g., American Blacks and Whites), while Southern Mexicans are more strongly associated with FD3 reference samples with reduced amounts of European ancestry (e.g., Guatemalans and Native Americans). FD3 classifications revealed that Latinos exhibited lower posterior probabilities when compared to other common case demographics (Whites and African Americas), even when the classification was “correct.” We make recommendations for practitioner interpretation of FD3 reports for casework.     

Does the nonprofit form fit the hospital industry?

Nonprofit hospitals currently enjoy favored legal status. In this Article, Professor Clark critically examines the basis for such preferential treatment. He begins by identifying endemic problems in the health care industry and then explores the relationship between nonprofit hospitals and these problems. He finds that the evidence does not persuasively establish that nonprofit hospitals serve as fiduciaries rather than exploiters, and that nonprofits engage in much involuntary cross-subsidization of medical services. He concludes that the legal favoritism for the nonprofit form is based not on sound reasoning and hard data but on intuition. Professor Clari proposes that the legal rules affecting nonprofit hospitals reflect this reality by treating both nonprofits and for-profits neutrally, by controlling cross-subsidization, and by strengthening consumers' information about and control over health care decisionmaking.