Are We Speaking the Same Language When It Comes to Diversity?

You do not have to be a political scientist to sense the increasing animosity and viewpoint divide between liberals and conservatives in the United States. Anyone who has a Facebook or Twitter page, or has discussed politics with family around the dinner table, has either witnessed, or participated in, a heated political disagreement. Research has confirmed that these political disagreements may be increasing in number and intensity.

Diversity Is Increasingly Central In Debates

Diversity has become increasingly central to the public and political eye. Steadily increasing racial, ethnic, gender, and cultural diversity in the United States, coupled with movements such as Black Lives Matter (BLM), have emphasized the need to create new social policies to accommodate the evolving nature and demands of society.

However, much like other social issues, political disagreement stands in the way of quick reform.  A comparative viewing of Fox News and CNN quickly reveals that liberals and conservatives do not agree on the best way to navigate diversity-related issues. One reason for this disagreement could be simply attitudinal: liberals inherently like diversity, and conservatives do not. 

But, an alternative reason may have to do with the actual meaning of the word itself. Diversity may take on different meanings for different people. Liberals and conservatives may possess different prototypical understandings of the word diversity. If liberals and conservatives don’t agree upon the meaning of the term, how can we expect them to cooperate on future diversity-related policy?

Prototypes of Diversity

A prototype represents the most ideal, or stereotypical, object for a category. It is what comes to mind first. For example, a robin, rather than an ostrich, would likely be the most prototypical bird for a person living in the U.S. A person’s knowledge, culture, and life experiences determine how prototypes are formed. Thus, it is possible liberals and conservatives possess different prototypical understandings of diversity, and these different understandings shape attitudes and behavior.

My colleagues and I investigated this possibility. Participants were presented with a list of community features that may be relevant to diversity, such as race, gender, age, political ideology, attitudes towards global warming, music preferences, etc. Participants then rated how much diversity they would want in their ideal community for each feature. For example, when presented with the feature “ethnicity,” participants rated the extent they wanted no diversity in ethnicity (everyone the same), to complete diversity in ethnicity (everyone is different from each other).

Next, we assessed participants’ prototypical understandings of diversity. For this, participants were asked to rate the extent each community feature came to mind when they imagined a diverse community. For example, when presented with the feature “many different ethnicities,” participants rated on a scale whether ethnicity was “not at all” relevant to their thinking, or “highly relevant” to their thinking.

Indeed, we found that diversity is not understood as a single concept. People actually held at least three different notions of diversity:

  • Demographic (such as race, age, gender, language),
  • Viewpoint (such as political ideology, attitudes toward global warming, attitudes toward gay marriage), and
  • Consumer diversity (as in stores, restaurants, music).

Ideological differences also emerged: conservatives reported more tolerance towards viewpoint diversity than liberals, and liberals were more tolerant towards demographic diversity than conservatives. Thus, conservatives may be more open to living in a community where people have many different ideological attitudes, and liberals may be more open to living in a community with many different racial and ethnic identities. These findings are somewhat surprising because previous research often concludes that liberals are more open to diversity across the board.

These differences connect to differences in understandings of what diversity is. Although both liberals and conservatives considered demographic features as part of their prototypical understanding of diversity, conservatives also perceived viewpoint features and consumer features as part of diversity. On the contrary, liberals only perceived demographic features as part of diversity. In other words, when liberals think about diversity, they are primarily thinking about people from diverse race, age, and gender backgrounds. Conservatives, on the other hand, tend to also think about different political viewpoints, and different types of music, stores, and restaurants, when they think about diversity. Thus, conservatives may have a looser definition of diversity compared to liberals.

Thus, liberals and conservatives are not quite speaking the same language when they talk about diversity. One reason is that conservatives and liberals tend to expose themselves to different news and social media worlds. Sole exposure to such sources may teach people different definitions of diversity. Personal experience may also enter in. For example, living in a highly homogeneous environment may make someone’s understanding of diversity more general compared to a person who lives in a highly populated, highly diverse, area. If a person lives in a community where people are demographically the same but vary in political viewpoints, then that person may be more likely to perceive viewpoint features as relevant to diversity, as that is the only type of diversity they are exposed to.

In this research we learned that diversity itself has multiple components. By breaking the concept of diversity into smaller parts, we may be able to identify the parts on which liberals and conservatives do agree. This agreement could be one small step in the direction of reducing political polarization, and encouraging future cooperation on diversity policy.


For Further Reading

Howard, K. A., Cervone, D., & Motyl, M. (2021). On the varieties of diversity: Ideological variations in attitudes toward, and understandings of, diversity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. doi: 10.1177/01461672211028141.

Danbold, F., & Unzueta, M. M. (2020). Drawing the diversity line: Numerical thresholds of diversity vary by group status. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology118(2), 283-306. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000182.

Mason, L. (2015). “I disrespectfully agree”: The differential effects of partisan sorting on social and issue polarization. American Journal of Political Science59(1), 128-145. doi: 10.1111/ajps.12089.
 

Kathryn A. Howard is a PhD candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago where she studies ideological conflict, voting behavior after political candidates transgress, and perceptions of diversity.

 

Citizens’ Racism and Sexism ≠ Opposition to Minority and Female Politicians

BY Hui Bai

The intuitive explanations for why racists opposed Obama and sexists disliked Clinton usually focus on demographics: Barack Obama is Black and Hillary Clinton is a woman, an idea I called the “demographic hypothesis.” But is it really the case?

In a recent project, I found that the picture is a bit different. For example, people who scored high on racism still supported Ben Carson, a Black politician, but they opposed Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, two White politicians. Additionally, people who scored high on sexism still supported Carly Fiorina, but opposed Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama, two male politicians. These results don’t fit with the demographic hypothesis.

So what is going on?

The Ideology Hypothesis

Prejudice can be understood as beliefs that racial and gender hierarchies are legitimate and justified. These ideas dovetail with many assumptions of conservative policies in the United States. If so, racists and sexists may support conservatives because they are perceived to share similar values and beliefs. Although racism and sexism are concepts about race and gender, they are beliefs on how the society should be arranged based on race and gender, not about who should do the arrangement. So in this perspective, the politician’s demographic background probably does not play much role.

Based on these ideas, I proposed that how citizens’ prejudice relates to their support of politicians is mostly determined by the politicians’ political ideology, which I called the “ideology hypothesis.” The findings about racism’s benefit for Ben Carson and sexism’s benefit for Carly Fiorina do not make sense for the demographic hypothesis, but they are very consistent with the ideology hypothesis, given that they are both ideologically conservative.

To pit the demographic hypothesis against the ideology hypothesis, I did studies with over 40,000 participants. For example, I measured participants’ racism level by asking them how much they agree with statements like “I would rather work alongside people of my same racial/ethnic origin.” They would then report how much they like a hypothetical politician and how likely they will vote for him. Importantly, the politician they saw either had a Black or White headshot as a profile picture, and independent of race, was paired with either a liberal or conservative statement. Like the results about Carson and Sanders, the hypothetical politician’s race did not matter for how citizens’ prejudice related to support for him, and the only thing that mattered was his ideology.

In a similar study, I found the same thing for sexism. In a different ongoing project, I also found the same thing for “implicit racism”: people who have strong mental associations between Black people and negative concepts also support conservatives and oppose liberals, regardless of their race. In the competition between the two hypotheses, the ideology hypothesis wins; the demographic hypothesis loses.

Revisiting the case about Obama and Clinton, although prejudiced citizens did not like them, it is unlikely because of their race and gender. Most likely, it is because they are liberal politicians whose political agenda is egalitarian.

Why Do These Findings Matter?

These studies help us understand how prejudice works by clarifying exactly how citizens’ prejudice may be translated into political preferences. Additionally, it helps us understand exactly whom citizens’ prejudice benefits or undermines.

Despite assumptions to the contrary, citizens’ prejudice did not seem to undermine candidates who are minorities and women very much. Instead, citizens’ prejudice will most likely undermine candidates who advocate for egalitarianism, and therefore undermine the growing number of citizens who are minorities and women who are entering the society and the workforce. As the diversity of our society continues to grow, and more minorities and women are entering the political arena, I think the topic of these findings is particularly timely.

Concluding Remark

This project is one of many where I compare the roles of values versus identity. In one other project, I found that White Americans who value their Whiteness or support White identity politics similarly support conservative politicians and oppose liberal politicians, regardless of whether the politicians are Black or White. In another, I found that even our identification of someone’s race and skin tone are shaped by that person’s ideology, as we perceive racially ambiguous persons as more likely Black and having darker skin if they are liberal than conservative. Therefore, in closing, when we are evaluating someone, my studies suggest that we often attend to other’s values and beliefs more than their identities. In the battle between values versus identity, values often (though perhaps not always) win.


For Further Reading

Bai, H. (2021). When racism and sexism benefit black and female politicians: Politicians’ ideology moderates prejudice’s effect more than politicians’ demographic background. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000314.

Brandt, M. J., Reyna, C., Chambers, J. R., Crawford, J. T., & Wetherell, G. (2014). The ideological-conflict hypothesis: Intolerance among both liberals and conservatives. Current Directions in Psychological Science23(1), 27-34. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721413510932


Hui Bai is a Stanford Impact Labs postdoctoral fellow and a member of the Polarization and Social Change Lab at Stanford University.

 

SPSP Fall 2021 Call for Volunteers

The Society for Personality and Social Psychology has several new volunteer opportunities available. Whether you are looking to make connections, gain insights into society operations or expand your service to the field, now is the time to get involved. Volunteering on a task force or advisory group increases future opportunities within SPSP as the Nomination & Elections Committee considers these engagement activities when evaluating for leadership roles.

We are currently recruiting for approximately 20 volunteers for the following two roles:

Strategic Planning Task Force: SPSP would like to invite volunteers to become a member of the Strategic Plan Task Force. The board recently approved the formation of a task force to develop and then monitor an organizational strategic plan. This task force will ensure that SPSP continues to evolve and serve the ever-changing needs of its members. The goal is to have a strategic plan in place by Summer 2022.

Award Review Panelists: Review panelists review the nominations for various awards and make recommendations. If you would prefer to review submissions for a specific award, please indicate this in the sign up form.

We would also like to notify members of an upcoming opportunity to get involved with SPSP - the Advocacy Advisory Board. This group will provide expertise to SPSP leadership (Executive Committee and Board of Directors) on the society-wide advocacy priorities throughout the year. Note: We are not yet accepting volunteers for the Advocacy Advisory Board but please stay tuned for updates.

 
 

The deadline to be considered for these opportunities is Nov. 8 at 11:59pm USA PDT.

We look forward to working with you in the near future and are happy to answer any questions about these roles.


Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, Past President
Chair, SPSP Nominations and Elections Committee

Rachel Puffer, Executive Director
[email protected]

New SPSP Volunteer Opportunities

Strategic Planning Task Force

Purpose: The purpose of strategic planning is to set overall goals for SPSP and to develop a plan to achieve them. It involves stepping back from day-to-day operations and asking where SPSP is headed and what its priorities should be over the next 4 years. The incoming SPSP President-Elect, Dolores Albarracín will chair the Strategic Planning Task Force.

Selection notification: Early December

Time commitment: Jan. 1 - July 31, 2022

  • Approximately 4 hours of independent work per month
  • 2-hour meeting at the Annual Convention in February
  • 4-hour virtual retreat in March
  • (4) 1-hour virtual meetings in May-June

Eligibility to serve:

  • We are looking for a diverse representation of 13 SPSP members including, but not limited to, past committee chairs, past presidents, journal editors, members who have not been in leadership roles, members in various career stages and work settings
  • Maintaining representation in academic discipline, career stage, geographic location, place of employment (e.g. size of institution, non-academic settings), age, gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity and other diverse factors is an important factor in volunteer composition.
  • Volunteers must maintain their SPSP membership throughout their tenure as a volunteer.

Task force members will be selected by the Executive Committee.

Award Panelists

Purpose: SPSP has a robust recognition program that recognizes the achievements of the top social and personality psychologists around the world. The review process is peer led and is a great opportunity to get a first-hand look at the emerging industry research. It is also a great volunteerism pathway for future board members. If you would like to be considered for one of our review panels, please take a look at our current awards, then fill out the interest form.

Time commitment: The review period is May 2 - June 3, 2022.

Eligibility to serve:

  • Maintaining representation in academic discipline, career stage, geographic location, place of employment (e.g. size of institution, non-academic settings), age, gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity and other diverse factors is an important factor in volunteer composition.
  • Volunteers must maintain their SPSP membership throughout their tenure as a volunteer.

Upcoming Opportunity: Advocacy Advisory Board

Purpose: The Advocacy Advisory Board will provide expertise to SPSP leadership (Executive Committee and Board of Directors) on the society-wide advocacy priorities throughout the year. The group will serve under the Government Relations Committee.

Time commitment: Jan. 1 - Dec. 31, 2022

  • Approximately 10 hours of collaborative work to develop the “state of the research” materials for each priority area in the first quarter of the year
  • Approximately 1 hour of work each month to be available as issues arise for society leadership to respond

Eligibility to serve:

  • We are looking for a diverse representation of 8-12 SPSP members who have relevant expertise and experience with the priority areas identified.
  • Maintaining representation in academic discipline, career stage, geographic location, place of employment (e.g. size of institution, non-academic settings), age, gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity and other diverse factors is an important factor in volunteer composition.
  • Volunteers must maintain their SPSP membership throughout their tenure as a volunteer.

Advisory Board members will be selected with feedback from the Government Relations Committee and approved by the Executive Committee. Please note that we are not yet accepting volunteers for our Advocacy Advisory Board but will be contacting our members with an update as soon as possible.

 

What are College Teacher Evaluations Really Based on?


In his TED talk, Chris Anderson reminded us that nonverbal communication and its enormous impact were fine-tuned and perfected by millions of years of evolution. He believes that online video lectures, such as TED and MOOCs, will revolutionize the spread of ideas in a magnitude similar to the impact that the Guttenberg print-revolution had on the spread of ideas in printed language.

Our research demonstrates that teachers’ expressiveness and enthusiasm plays a critical role in engaging students. Since higher education is going through vast changes towards a digital revolution, nonverbal communication becomes more critical than ever and thus, should have a salient presence in the methodology of evaluating teaching effectiveness.

How Is Instructor Effectiveness Typically Measured?

In the standard method (Students' Evaluations of Teaching or SET), students evaluate their teachers via questionnaires at course end, focusing on aspects such as clarity, organization, and exams. The consensual view is that these evaluations reflect "student satisfaction" as a proxy for learning outcomes and "objective" lecturer evaluations that are more difficult to measure.

Is There Another Way?

Yes. A different approach exists, which measures the teacher’s nonverbal cues of expressivity and enthusiasm that are called nonverbal immediacy or NVI. However, this approach and the SET approach have been totally estranged from each other for decades! And this is despite research showing that ratings of brief instances of instructors' nonverbal behavior also predict overall student evaluations. SET scholars reject the validity of teachers' nonverbal expressivity, viewing nonverbal predictors of teaching effectiveness as potential biases that might disguise unsatisfactory pedagogy, for example a teacher who is charming and likeable but whose students don’t learn much.

The estrangement between the two approaches could have been resolved long ago by administering both sets of questionnaires in the classrooms of the same teachers. That is exactly what we did in our 2021 research, hypothesizing that both sets of data reflect components of teaching effectiveness. Kahneman's theory of "fast and slow thinking" perfectly describes how NVI and SET might fit together in student evaluations. Students’ impressions of the teacher’s nonverbal expressiveness and enthusiasm, reflecting “fast thinking,” are formed intuitively right at the beginning of the course. Ratings of clarity, content, and didactic organization at the end of the course reflect slow and reasoned thinking.

At different points in time during their courses—with several hundred instructors in two colleges—we gave students both types of questionnaires. Correlations between the two sets of evaluations were extremely high, meaning an instructor either got high ratings on both, or low ratings on both—in other words, the two kinds of evaluations were close to being interchangeable. Thus, teaching effectiveness can be validly measured by both conventional didactic SET and expressive NVI delivery style. For three quarters of the teachers, their high or low standing matched on the two kinds of evaluation, and only for a quarter of the teachers was there a discrepancy—for example, where the traditional SET ratings were high while the nonverbal NVI ratings were low. Thus, a teacher can be good by conventional standards while being rather dull nonverbally, and vice versa, but such instances are very much in the minority.

The Importance of Teachers’ Nonverbal Communication

Thus, instead of viewing fast, intuitive evaluations as biased and educationally irrelevant, they must be viewed as effective predictors of subsequent slow evaluations. We actually believe it is likely that the later evaluations are heavily affected by the earlier impressions, meaning students are fitting their late, more complex judgments to their already existing intuitive judgments.

We maintain that in the 2020s, the emphasis of effective teaching is shifting from didactics to the style of delivery—from conveying information in a clear and organized manner, to inspiring enthusiasm and curiosity in students. The digital revolution of the last decades has been fully cemented by the COVID-19 epidemic and the necessity to abandon conventional frontal classroom teaching. Nonverbal communication plays a critical role in this revolution. Interactive online videos take center stage in online learning. Students would probably prefer to substitute a dull old-fashioned teacher with a charismatic and inspiring MOOC or TED instructor.

TED talks, in fact, are a good example of "acquired charisma." The long and massive training involved in the preparation of TED talks suggests that charisma and enthusiasm are trainable, rather than being some kind of natural endowment. Teachers will have to undergo massive training for improving their delivery style and nonverbal communication skills. And these aspects would need to be measured in student evaluations collected as early as possible in the course, so as to allow timely and effective feedback to the teachers.


For Further Reading

Babad, E., Sahar-Inbar, L., Hammer, R., Turgeman-Lupo, K., & Nessis, S. (2021). Student evaluations fast and slow: It's time to integrate teachers' nonverbal behavior in evaluations of teaching effectiveness. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 45,  321–338.  https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-021-00364-4

Kahneman, Daniel (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Macmillan.

Pinto, M. B., & Mansfield, P. M. (2010). Thought processes college students use when evaluating faculty: A qualitative study. American Journal of Business Education, 3(3), 55-61. 


Elisha Babad is Professor Emeritus in educational and social psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. His research includes teacher expectancy effects in classrooms and the teacher's pet phenomenon. More recent research is on the influence of TV interviewers’ nonverbal behavior on viewers' perceptions of the interviewee, voters' wishful thinking, and the role of nonverbal behavior in student evaluations of teachers.

Ronen Hammer is the head of the Center of the Advancement of Teaching and an instructor at the Instructional Technologies Department at HIT - Holon Institute of Technology, Israel.

Limor Sahar-Inbar is an instructor at the Industry Engineering and Technology Management Department and a team member at the Center of the Advancement of Teaching at HIT Holon Institute of Technology, Israel. Her research examines consumers' preferences between volume and similarity in electronic word of mouth.

Men Who Look Smart and Women Who Look Attractive Are Judged as More Human

Debates and discussions about gender now seem to be a mainstay in public consciousness. Our understanding of gender has been nudged and pulled, often through intense debate. As a result, changing ideas about gender now reverberate throughout daily life, affecting family dynamics, workplaces, and romantic relationships. In short, Western culture’s views regarding men and women seem to be changing.

It was not too long ago that men were viewed as breadwinners and women as homemakers. Prominent examples of caring men and competent women are now challenging these stereotypes, however. For instance, studies show that men are progressively taking on more domestic and parental duties compared to men of the past. At the same time, women now graduate from college in greater numbers than men do and occupy approximately one-third of senior management positions (for the first time in modern Western history).

But The Stereotypes Are Still There

With all this change, my colleagues and I asked how traditional views about men and women might still affect how they are judged based on two qualities often linked to gender: attractiveness (traditionally associated with the female gender) and intelligence (traditionally associated with the male gender). People likely still value attractiveness especially in women and intelligence especially in men.

Judging How “Human” A Person Is

Our way of getting at lingering stereotypes was to examine whether how “human” men and women appear depends on how attractive and intelligent they look. Why would we ask this—after all, isn’t everyone human? While the idea that some people may seem more or less human than others may sound strange at first, it actually has been investigated for decades. And equally notable, the rejection of another’s humanness, also called dehumanization, emerges in daily life. For instance, Nazis dehumanized Jews, calling them Untermenschen (“subhuman”); Hutus called Tutsis “cockroaches” during the Rwanda genocide; and slave ownership denigrated certain humans by definition.

Dehumanization is not a phenomenon that occurs only in such extreme historical examples, however. Everyday life has examples, such as in how we will often pass a homeless person on the street without any emotional impact or how drivers impassioned by road rage can treat fellow drivers like pylons in the way.

Back To Attractiveness And Intelligence

Because of stereotypes, we proposed that people would judge attractive women as more human than unattractive women, and judge intelligent-looking men as more human than unintelligent-looking men. To study this, we took photos of 206 women’s and 206 men’s faces. We then had strangers judge those photos for how attractive and intelligent each woman and man looked. We now had a set of faces to use for our main studies.

Testing For Humanness

We then asked another group of strangers to judge those same men and women on how “human” they appeared using a scale ranging from 0 (with an associated picture of a crawling ancestral primate) to 100 (with an associated picture of an upright man). We found what we expected: the more attractive the women looked, the more human they were judged to be, and the more intelligent the men looked, the more human they were judged to be. This isn’t to say that attractiveness didn’t matter for men’s humanness or that appearing intelligent didn’t matter for women’s humanness. However, we observed that looking attractive mattered more for women’s humanness than it did for men’s, and appearing intelligent mattered more for men’s humanness than it did for women’s.

In followup studies, we asked another group of strangers to make the same humanness ratings, but they also completed a scale measuring how much they endorse traditional gender stereotypes. We found that the more a rater endorsed traditional gender stereotypes, the more they cared about women’s attractiveness when rating women’s humanness and the more they cared about men’s perceived intelligence when rating men’s humanness.

In our final study, we again presented the face photos to strangers, but with a twist. Instead of asking raters to judge the faces on how human they seemed, we described a hypothetical ethical dilemma: Raters could either save the life of the individual photographed and allow five others to die, or they could sacrifice the life of the individual photographed to save the life of five others. We found that people were most willing to sacrifice the lives of unattractive women and of unintelligent-looking men, consistent with the idea that such individuals are viewed as less human and therefore more expendable.

Despite the great progress that has been made regarding gender values, traditional views about men and women remain impactful. People still pervasively value women more for their attractiveness and value men more for their intelligence. These stereotypical gender values are so deeply entrenched that they influence how “human” men and women seem. Even more, they influence the apparent worth of men and women’s lives.


For Further Reading

Alaei, R., Deska J. C., Hugenberg, K., & Rule, N. O. (2021). People attribute humanness to men and women differently based on their facial appearance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000364.

Haslam, N., & Loughnan, S. (2014). Dehumanization and infrahumanization. Annual Review of Psychology, 65(1), 399–423. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115045.

 

Ravin Alaei is a medical student at McMaster University. He obtained his PhD in psychology in 2019 from the University of Toronto and is interested in how one’s appearance and nonverbal behavior affect their social outcomes.

Advice for Finding a Summer Internship

Although next summer may feel far away, for students hoping to complete a summer internship in an industry setting, the fall is a key time for finding and applying for internships.

Where to begin: Finding positions

It can be hard to know where to begin when it comes to finding potential summer internships. Oftentimes, social and personality psychology departments may not be aware of what internships in industry are available for students, but looking online can be a good starting place. Check out websites of companies and organizations that be of interest and job-searching websites like LinkedIn, Glassdoor, or Indeed. Additionally, using one’s network can help identify potential options. There may be former graduate students affiliated with a department who have gone on to working full in industry after graduate. These people may be able to provide insight into whether their company has summer internships for graduate students. Social and personality psychology graduate students have a wide range of skills they’ve developed throughout graduate school that are applicable to many different fields outside of academia. Common fields for social and personality psychologists that offer internship experiences for students include user experience (UX) research, government work, and consulting. Many companies and organizations recruit for their summer internships throughout the fall, so it can serve interested students well to seek out positions during October and November.

The application process

Many internship programs have rolling applications (i.e., they evaluate applicants as they apply rather than all at once at the end of a time period). It still is important to look out for deadlines for applications, because these may vary by company. Perhaps the most essential component of an internship application involves submitting a resume. Notably, resumes are distinct from an academic CV. Whereas CVs tend to be several pages, resumes are typically only one page long. As a result, it is vital to be concise in describing one’s education, relevant work experiences, and skillset. The resume is a great way for an applicant to highlight how their experiences in graduate school and beyond qualify them for an industry internship even if they don’t have formal industry work experience yet. Applicants should read the job postings carefully and consider tailoring their resumes to showcase their most relevant skills and experiences for each internship application. Some internships may also require applicants to submit a cover letter or additional work samples, so applicants should review the requirements carefully.

After submitting an application, applicants who are considered to be strong candidates may be asked to interview for the position before a hiring decision can be made. Interviews can vary depending on the type of internship. Some positions may require multiple rounds of interviews where candidates demonstrate their qualitative or quantitative reasoning skills and/or share a sample presentation in addition to traditional interview questions. Again, it may be helpful to use one’s network or do some research online to learn more about the specific interview processes that are common in various industry settings. Learning more about what to expect in terms of interviews can help applicants feel more confident during the process.

Use SPSP as a resource!

While the process to finding an industry internship may seem overwhelming and ambiguous, there are many opportunities for social and personality psychology graduate students to dip their toes into non-academic jobs, and SPSP is here to help. For more information, check out SPSP’s Career Guidance page which contains more information about non-academic jobs more broadly including links to some informational videos about non-academic careers, links to several SPSP chats, the non-academic job market survey, and more!

SPSP also produced a webinar in 2019 designed to help attendees turn their CV into a resume. A recording of that discussion is available for SPSP members. 

When Congress Speaks (and Posts and Tweets)

Sigmund Freud, who wrote about “slips of the tongue,” was one of the first psychologists to see language as a device for exploring the human mind. He was by no means the last. Throughout the 20th century psychologists developed many coding schemes to investigate what people say in order to better understand their mental lives.

Analyzing texts was once done only by hand, and it was back-breaking work for researchers who were willing to undertake it. Nowadays, we have computer technologies that can automatically analyze mountains of words in order to detect themes and patterns. One example is the popular Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program developed by Jamie Pennebaker of the University of Texas. One of my former Ph.D. students, Joanna Sterling, and I used LIWC to quantify the ways in which liberals and conservatives use language differently.

First we looked at the use of language in nearly 25,000 English-speaking Twitter users and found that liberals and conservatives did indeed use language differently. Liberals used more benevolence language, including words and phrases such as improve, benefit, care for, assist, enhance, nurture, and lend a hand.

Conservatives, on the other hand, were more likely to use language emphasizing all of the following themes:

  • Threat, such as hurt, warning, terror, loss, and risk
  • Security, such as safety, defend, guard, protect, and shield
  • Tradition, such as family, faith, religion, custom, and foundation
  • Resistance to change, such as keep, normal, hold, continue, and prevent
  • Certainty, such as all, every, always, sure, indecision, and never
  • Power, such as big, up, God, and win
  • Anger, such as kill, fight, hate, attack, and murder
  • Anxiety, such as fear, doubt, worry, afraid, and stress
  • Negative emotion in general, such as bad, miss, problem, and wrong

Many political scientists believe that ordinary citizens take all of their ideological cues from political elites, such as members of the U.S. Congress—in other words, believing what respected authorities tell them to believe about politics. This is not our view: we believe that even among people who are not very engaged in politics there is a meaningful connection between how people think (their psychology) and what they think (i.e., their ideology). Nevertheless, the question of whether liberal and conservative members of Congress use language differently from one another—and the extent to which their language use parallels liberal and conservative members of the public—is an inherently interesting one.

Therefore, we analyzed the language used by members of the U.S. Congress on Twitter (88,874 tweets), Facebook (15,636 posts), and the floor of Congress (6,159 speeches) over the same four-month period in 2014. Of course, speeches and other forms of communication issued by legislators are often written by staffers, but they tend to be quite ideologically similar to the politicians for whom they work.

Consistent with our earlier findings based on tweets sent by ordinary citizens, conservative legislators used more language pertaining to threat, risk, inhibition, power, religion, and—only on the floor of Congress—tradition and resistance to change. Liberal legislators, on the other hand, used more language pertaining to benevolence, affiliation, achievement, and—on the floor of Congress—universalism, stimulation, and hedonism.

Of course, there were also many categories of language use on which liberal and conservative elites did not differ, especially when they were on the floor of Congress. For example, there were no consistent differences in the use of long words, swear words, or language that signified anxiety, anger, self-direction, or future orientation. Overall, while there were a number of telling differences in the communication of liberal and conservative legislators, these differences were weaker and less extensive than what we found for ordinary citizens.

One day the kinds of tools that researchers have been developing to study patterns of mass and elite forms communication may help us to understand not only the ways in which leaders influence their followers (and vice versa) but also the dynamics of social movements as they are still taking shape. This is because language is one of the strongest cues to what we are thinking and feeling, as individuals, groups, and even entire societies.


For Further Reading

Barberá, P., Casas, A., Nagler, J., Egan, P. J., Bonneau, R., Jost, J. T., & Tucker, J. (2019). Who leads? Who follows? Measuring issue attention and agenda setting by legislators and the mass public using social media data. American Political Science Review, 113, 883-901. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055419000352

Jost, J. T., & Sterling, J. (2020). The language of politics: Ideological differences in congressional communication on social media and the floor of Congress. Social Influence, 15, 80-103. https://doi.org/10.1080/15534510.2020.1871403

Sterling, J., Jost, J. T., & Bonneau, R. (2020). Political psycholinguistics: A comprehensive analysis of the language habits of liberal and conservative social media users. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 118, 805–834. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000275
 

John T. Jost is a Professor of Psychology, Politics, and Data Science at New York University. He is the author of A Theory of System Justification (Harvard University Press, 2020) and Left & Right: The Psychological Significance of a Political Distinction (Oxford University Press, 2021).

Good News: It’s Possible to Enhance Your Self-Esteem!


You probably know someone who, despite all the good qualities they have, tends to feel inferior to others, regularly devalues themself, and lacks self-confidence. This person regularly evaluates their attributes as negative or insufficient, resulting in low self-esteem.

This could be a major issue considering that self-esteem figures in many of our behaviors (such as perseverance or taking initiative) and could even be a trigger of serious mental problems such as depression.

The Good News

Today, many techniques are described as increasing self-esteem. The work of our research team has been to evaluate whether these techniques are really effective or whether they are just a way to sell new costly therapies or trendy books.

By analyzing 119 studies that tested these different methods, our team found that on the whole, they are effective on self-esteem—even if their effects remain small. A good thing to know, but is one technique better than the others?

The Main Self-Esteem Building Techniques

We grouped the various approaches into broad categories:

  • Cognitive and Behavioral Therapies (CBTs): Probably the most effective for increasing self-esteem, these therapies consist of helping people to better accept themselves, to criticize their negative self-views, and to establish more positive self-beliefs. For this purpose, different techniques are used, such as psychoeducation (explaining the psychological processes underlying low self-esteem), thought questioning, evidence finding, and exercises to develop self-confidence.
  • Reminiscence-Based Therapies: Initially used in the elderly, this approach is based on remembering positive past events (for example, recalling a successful personal situation) and/or the re-evaluation of negative memories (such as recalling a memory of a problematic situation and highlighting the coping strategies used at that time). Reminiscence-based therapies are effective for self-esteem enhancement but less so than CBTs.
  • Evaluative Conditioning: More experimental and not much used, this method involves repeatedly associating the self with positive things so that the self-concept gradually becomes more and more positive. To illustrate, the person might see the word "I" or "me" on a computer screen, and then a smiley face or a positive word (like "vacations" or "intelligent"). This surprising technique is also effective in increasing self-esteem, although we don't know if the positive effects last long after the technique is stopped.           

We also investigated whether other factors could have an impact on their effectiveness (such as format or methodological procedure). People with various mental health disorders (such as depression, anxiety, or eating disorders) benefit more than healthier people do. Maybe people with more serious problems see greater value in these techniques than healthier people do, thus enhancing their motivation and investment in the therapy.

What's Next?

There were many differences between the studies’ methods, as well as imperfections, meaning we still have much to learn about this important topic. It is especially important to remember that how we think of ourselves is based on a multitude of factors including how we think others perceive us, our feelings of competence, our body image, and many others. The most effective ways to increase self-esteem for these different aspects are still to be determined.


For Further Reading

Niveau, N., New, B., & Beaudoin, M. (2021). Self-esteem interventions in adults–A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Research in Personality, 94. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2021.104131

Fennell, M. J. V. (1998). Cognitive therapy in the treatment of low self-esteem. Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, 4(5), 296–304. https://doi.org/10.1192/apt.4.5.296

Sowislo, J. F., & Orth, U. (2013). Does low self-esteem predict depression and anxiety? A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies. Psychological Bulletin139(1), 213-240. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028931

 

Noémie Niveau, Ph.D., is a research and teaching assistant at the University Grenoble-Alpes in France. Her research interests include self-esteem, links between the self and memory, and psycho-oncology.

 

Dehumanization Is Threatening Democracy

Growing animosity between the political parties, rising support for anti-democratic norms, and outbursts of partisan violence threaten the social fabric of our nation. In fact, popular caricatures of political figures as “subhuman” animals suggest that blatant dehumanization, the assertion that another group of people is other than human, is also prevalent among American political partisans.

This is perhaps unsurprising, as Democrats and Republicans are deeply polarized and their dislike toward each other is at a 40-year high. But dehumanization goes beyond disagreement and dislike. When people are thought to be less than human, it justifies their mistreatment. For instance, people who dehumanize other groups are more likely to support discrimination, military aggression, and using torture against them.

Dehumanization Is Surprisingly Pervasive

Nour Kteily and his colleagues developed an innovative way to measure dehumanization by asking people to rate how “evolved” various groups in society are using the popular “Ascent of Man” image of evolutionary progress, shown in the image below—where it starts with the silhouette of an ape and progresses through silhouettes of different stages of human evolution, up to a silhouette of modern man. Several independent research teams have found Americans are more than willing to dehumanize their political opponents on this measure.

This image depicts the folk notion of human evolutionary progress. Five silhouettes range from an ape-like ancestor (corresponding to 0 on the scale) to a fully modern man (corresponding to 100 on the scale)

In a study I conducted just before the 2020 election, 2 out of every 3 Americans who support one of the major parties considered members of the other side to be less human than their own party. Democrats and Republicans rated the other political party on this image using a scale that ranged from 0 to 100. Dehumanization was pervasive on both sides of the aisle, and on average, American partisans rated the other side as 42 (out of 100) points less than human.

The Tit for Tat of Dehumanization

As dehumanization is both extremely overt and widespread, we must consider whether partisans perceive their own group to be dehumanized by the other side. Such a perception would influence self-image, attitudes towards others, and intentions. So, inspired by the work of Samantha Moore-Berg and her colleagues, I asked Democrats and Republicans how they thought the other side would rate them on the “Ascent of Man” scale. Despite evidence that high levels of actual dehumanization exist, partisans greatly overestimated how much the other side dehumanized them. On average, both sides thought the other dehumanized them more than twice as much as they actually did.

This misperception has important consequences, because when people think their group is dehumanized by another group, they lash back. A sort of “you dehumanize me, I dehumanize you” tit for tat. And it doesn’t stop there.

Feeling Dehumanized Erodes Democracy

Troublingly, partisans who dehumanized the other side were more likely to support using anti-democratic means to hurt them, agreeing with statements like (for Republicans) “Trump should use force to stay in power if the election results seem fraudulent” and (for Democrats) “The Democrats should do everything they can to hurt the Republicans, even if it is at the short-term expense of the country.” The more Democrats and Republicans overestimated how much the other side dehumanized them, the more likely they were to dehumanize the other side in turn, which made it more likely they would support actions that hurt the other side and hurt society.

Short-Circuiting This Cycle?

If partisans think the other side dehumanizes them far more than they actually do, how do such misperceptions arise? As with other misperceptions, one answer may lie in exposure to partisan media. In fact, those who reported viewing the most political news online also had the most exaggerated (that is, inaccurate) idea of how their group was viewed. This may be because partisan media often thrives on stoking division and heightening perceptions of difference between the parties.  

Can correcting people’s misperceptions of how much “the other side” dehumanizes them reduce their tendency to “give as good as they get?”  In a follow-up study, I provided partisans with the actual levels of the other side’s dehumanization of them (taken from the first study). Although this corrective information did indeed lead partisans to feel less dehumanized, it did not decrease their own dehumanization of the other side. Recall that, on average, partisans rated their opponents 42 (out of 100) points less than fully human. So even though participants felt somewhat less dehumanized after the intervention, they seem to have remained hostile toward those who don’t consider them fully human.

This points to a need to tackle the problem of dehumanization on two fronts. We must also reduce the actual dehumanization, not just the perception of it. We can take this important step ourselves by recognizing our own tendency to dehumanize those who seem misguided, immoral, or evil to us. We can also challenge it when we encounter dehumanizing language used by others, especially among those on our own side as we are often more receptive to the opinions of  “our own” over outsiders. Learning more about dehumanization and how to resist it can help a divided nation embrace coexistence, or even harmony, over discord.


For Further Reading

Landry, A. P., Ihm, E., Kwit, S., & Schooler, J. W. (2021). Metadehumanization erodes democratic norms during the 2020 presidential election. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1111/asap.12253

Landry, A. P., Ihm, E., & Schooler, J. W. (2021). Hated but still human: Metadehumanization leads to greater hostility than metaprejudice. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 1368430220979035. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430220979035
 

Alexander Landry researches the psychology of extreme intergroup conflict and violence. He will begin his pursuit of a Ph.D. at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business this fall.

The Tattoo Penalty

In recent years, tattoos have greatly increased in popularity in the United States and around the world as a form of self, cultural, or artistic expression, and to commemorate an impactful event or person. Despite the growing acceptance in society of tattoos, there may still be resistance to the presence of inked individuals in the workplace. As a result, employers may be hesitant to hire tattooed job applicants.

In three studies, we looked at how employment is affected by visible tattoos. We asked employees who had hiring and supervisory experience in companies to assume the role of a recruiter and to examine simulated LinkedIn profiles of fictitious job applicants for a sales manager position. We intentionally examined only Caucasian female applicants in their mid to late 20s due to the complexity of including other demographic groups that vary by sex, race, age, and so forth.

First, we compared equally qualified and attractive applicants with extreme tattoos, a mild tattoo, and no visible tattoo (done via Photoshopping). We found that job applicants with tattoos, especially extreme ones, were less likely to be hired than applicants without tattoos. Additionally, applicants with extreme tattoos or a mild one received lower salary offers than those without tattoos ($2267 and $2159 less annually, respectively). Even if the tattoo has no further effects on performance evaluations, promotions, or pay raises if the person is hired, the initial salary difference adds up over time. If a company gives a modest 2 percent annual raise, even a mild visible tattoo could cost the employee more than $23,000 over 10 years. Not a small price to pay for a mild tattoo!

Second, we wondered why tattooed job applicants suffer hiring discrimination. We speculated that tattooed applicants may be stereotyped by hiring managers as less competent. We discovered that applicants with tattoos were indeed perceived as less competent compared to applicants without tattoos and this negative stereotype was used to justify hiring discrimination and lower starting salary offers—even when tattooed applicants were as qualified as their non-tattooed counterparts.

Overcoming the Stereotype of Incompetence?

To find out if this was possible, we compared highly versus minimally qualified job applicants with or without visible tattoos. Our hope was that outstanding job qualifications could override perceptions of incompetence related to tattoos. Instead, we found that highly qualified applicants with extreme tattoos or a mild one were still less likely to be hired than those without tattoos. However, there were no differences in salary offers among the highly qualified tattooed and non-tattooed applicants. Thus, highly qualified tattooed applicants can overcome discrimination in starting salary, but not hiring.

Finally, we wanted to see if there is another way to neutralize discrimination because tattooed applicants still experienced hiring discrimination even when they were highly qualified. We believed that volunteer experience coupled with outstanding job qualifications could strengthen perceptions of competence among tattooed applicants. Volunteers are often believed to have motivation, intelligence, and leadership—all of which might signal competence. We compared highly qualified applicants with and without volunteer experience who either had extreme tattoos or no visible tattoo. But, unfortunately, volunteer experience did not mitigate discrimination related to hiring or starting salary offers.

Thus, stereotypes against visible tattoos may cause hiring managers to exclude this growing segment of the population, regardless of their qualifications. So, if you are considering body art, you may want to opt for less extreme tattoos in easily concealed locations. Furthermore, enhancing your job qualifications will aid in overcoming stereotypes of incompetence that punish those with visible tattoos.

And for those of you who do hiring at your business, you need to recognize biases you may hold against tattooed job applicants so you don’t overlook qualified applicants based solely on their appearance.   


For Further Reading

Henle, C. A., Shore, T. H., Murphy, K. R., & Marshall, A. D. (2021). Visible tattoos as a source of employment discrimination among female applicants for a supervisory position. Journal of Business and Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-021-09731-w

Timming, A. R. (2017). Body art as branded labour: At the intersection of employee selection and relationship marketing. Human Relations, 70, 1041–1063. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726716681654.

Timming, A. R., Nickson, D., Re, D., & Perrett, D. (2017). What do you think of my ink? Assessing the effects of body art on employment chances. Human Resource Management, 56(1), 133–149. https://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21770.
 

Chris Henle is a Professor of Management at Colorado State University. Her research interests include employment discrimination and counterproductive work behaviors such as abusive supervision and workplace ostracism.

Ted Shore is a Professor of Management at California State University, San Marcos. His research interests include employment discrimination and workplace bias.