Selection procedure and responses to affirmative action

Although it has been recognized that a large number of issues linked to the social policy of affirmative action are of a social psychological nature, research investigating such issues has not considered the social psychological importance of implementation procedures. Social policy analysts have differentiated implementation procedures on the degree to which they include relevant achievement criteria. In the present research this differentiation is couched within the theoretical framework of procedural justice and is utilized to critique the work of Austin et al. (1977). These researchers investigated the responses of individuals favorably treated in an affirmative action like situation and conclude that affirmative action is evaluated as absolutely unfair by these individuals. Based on the critique, a 2 (qualifications)×2 (history of discrimination)×2 (procedure) role play experiment was conducted. The results of the experiment unambiguously support the hypothesis that implementation procedure will greatly affect a variety of individual responses such as general affect, evaluations of procedural fairness, evaluations of outcome fairness, and evaluations of a relevant subunit of the involved institution.This article is based in part on a dissertation submitted to the Department of Psychology at the University of North Carolina in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Ph.D. Special thanks are extended to the members of the dissertation committee, Drs. John Thibaut (Chair), David Eckerman, Chester A. Insko, Lynn Kahle, and John Schopler.     

Recollections of a robbery

One week after committing a simulated robbery while intoxicated or sober, each of 142 subjects recalled the event within a “cognitive interview”. In an initial exploratory experiment, alcohol consumption reduced the accuracy of recall of a variety of types of information, in particular, information about persons. In the second experiment, person identification suffered following the consumption of alcohol, but only when arousal was low. Higher levels of arousal appeared instead to minimize the negative impact of alcohol upon encoding and recall. Second, whereas the recollections by subjects of what they saw during the crime were not impaired by alcohol consumption, their recollections of what they did were impaired. Both experiments examined the effects of arousal upon the subjects' recalls, and Experiment 2 tested the hypothesis that increased arousal serves to reduce attention to peripheral sources of information. This hypothesis was supported because the identification of persons central to the crime benefited from increased arousal but the identification of persons peripheral to the crime did not. A similar hypothesis about the effects of alcohol received only mixed support because the subjects' behaviors reflected “alcohol myopia” but their identifications of target persons did not. Finally, manipulations at the time of retrieval of the subjects' beliefs about how much alcohol had been consumed also altered accuracy of recall. These experiments were supported by research grants from the Alberta Law Foundation to the first author and from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada to the second author. The authors are indebted to the following people, whose assistance was invaluable: Matthew Davidson, Vanessa Farr, Corinne Kuzma, Eileen McFadzen, Laura Mensch, Debbie Robb, Todd Schultz, and Evelyn Tan. We also thank John Vokey, Brian Cutler, Beth Loftus, Garrett Berman, Marisa Caiola, and an anonymous reviewer who provided critical comments on an earlier version of this paper. This research was presented at the meetings of the American Psychology—Law Society, Williamsburg, March, 1990.     

MERIT VERSUS KINSHIP: A CATEGORY MISTAKE? THE CASE OF THE PHILIPPINE CIVIL SERVICE

Acceptance of merit's pivotal role in establishing and maintaining effective bureaucracies has become second nature. In this paper I explore the association between merit and kinship in the Philippine civil service, although the conclusions that emerge are not peculiar either to the case of the Philippines or to the ‘developing’ world in general. I argue that merit is no less social than kinship; that its meaning for actors is broader, and the value of kinship and other ‘traditional’ social categories of behavior greater, than commentators and reformers often allow for. Indeed, when merit is narrowly defined (as it so often must be for practical reasons) and its complex dimensions ignored, it is socially divisive, produces deep inequalities, and leaves organizations less flexible and less capable of innovation. I suggest that, however paradoxical it might seem, more effective, humanitarian, flexible, and creative organizations thrive in what is often portrayed as an unsatisfactory transitional state between third‐world informality and Weberian‐style formality. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.