Prejudice and Enforcement of Workforce Homogeneity as Explanations for Employment Discrimination1

We examined the effects of subtle and blatant prejudice and the enforcement of workforce homogeneity on employment discrimination in an experimental simulation. German participants who were advised to maintain a homogeneous (i.e., German) workforce, as hypothesized, selected fewer foreign applicants for a job interview than did participants who did not receive this advice. An interaction qualified this main effect, such that subtly prejudiced participants reacted to the advice to maintain a homogeneous workforce, but blatantly prejudiced and nonprejudiced individuals did not. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed.     

The Official Torturer: A Learning Model for Obedience to the Authority of Violence

The military training and selection procedures leading to the behavior of a torturer are discussed. The analysis is based on testimonies of army police servicemen at the first torturers' trial in Greece and on the interviews of ex-military policemen who served under the military dictatorship in Greece (1967–1974). It is concluded that, given the appropriate training condition, any individual is a potential torturer, and a model for obedience to the authority of violence is proposed.     

"竞和"之利——现代从商之道的企业伦理解读

对竞和的现代从商之道进行企业伦理解读,我们不难发现,企业如果以竞和为自己的从商之道,必能形成一幅企业内部和谐、外部和顺、整体协调以及企业与整个社会义利共生的和谐图景。而这种义利共生的和谐图景,带给企业和社会的也不只是遵循企业伦理原则之义,还有和实生物、和气生财、和能致祥以及和成天下之利。     

The Milgram Paradigm After 35 Years: Some Things We Now Know About Obedience to Authority1

Guided by the belief that we cannot make broad extrapolations from the obedience studies without first firmly establishing what has and has not been found using the paradigm itself, this article draws on 35 years of accumulated research and writings on the obedience paradigm to present a status report on the following salient questions and issues surrounding obedience to authority: (a) How should we construe the nature of authority in the obedience experiment? (b) Do predictions of those unfamiliar with the obedience experiment underestimate the actual obedience rates? (c) Are there gender differences in obedience? and (d) Have obedience rates changed over time?     

You're Just Saying That Because I'm a Woman: Stigma Consciousness and Attributions to Discrimination

This study adds to tests of the construct validity of stigma consciousness by asking if people high in stigma consciousness demonstrate a greater tendency than people low in stigma consciousness to make attributions to discrimination. In a study that approached this question from both an individual difference and a situational perspective, women high or low in stigma consciousness made attributions for a negative evaluation, ostensibly written by a male peer. Under control conditions, women low in trait stigma consciousness demonstrated less of a tendency to make attributions to discrimination than women high in trait stigma consciousness. When they experienced a situationally induced increase in stigma consciousness, however, participants low in trait stigma consciousness demonstrated just as great a tendency to make attributions to discrimination as their high stigma conscious counterparts. The results provide further validation for the stigma consciousness construct, and raise questions about who benefits from attributions to discrimination.     

Preferred Responses to Situations of Housing and Employment Discrimination1

Two studies were conducted to assess behavioral preferences in response to situations of discrimination in the workplace and in housing. In the first study, 72 black Canadians read a scenario in which they were ultimately denied an apartment on the basis of their color. The degree of evidence of discrimination in the scenario had an effect on the preference for some of the behaviors examined. In addition, it was found that some of the behaviors (e.g., seeking advice) were clearly preferred to others (e.g., organizing a boycott). In the second study, 42 Bengali Canadians read a scenario in which they applied for a position for which they had the qualifications. After an interview and notification that the offer was made to a more qualified person, they found out that they did not get the position because of their visible minority status. The results indicate that self-directed responses to the situation (e.g., working harder) were preferred to a variety of overt actions taken within or outside the company. The results are discussed in terms of the process and problems of responding to discrimination.     

International Employment Discrimination and Implicit Social Cognition: New Directions for Theory and Research

This article contends that a complete understanding of employment discrimination should consider conscious and unconscious sources of bias. Research on implicit social cognition has described how prejudice and stereotypes operate at an unconscious level. These processes are believed to be fundamental properties of human cognition and universal across cultures; although specific targets of discrimination may vary by culture. Within an employment framework, implicit social cognitions can be measured to determine the extent to which unconscious prejudices influence organisational behavior. Human resource practices designed to minimise unfair employment discrimination may require interventions that operate at conscious and unconscious levels.
Cet article soutient que la compréhension complète de la discrimination à l'embauche devrait prendre en compte les sources conscientes et inconscientes de ce phénomène. La recherche sur la cognition sociale implicite a décrit comment les préjugés et les stéréotype opèrent à un niveau inconscient. Ces processus sont pensés comme étant des propriétés fondamentales de la cognition humaine et universels du point de vue des cultures; bien que les cibles spécifiques de la discrimination puissent varier selon ces dernières. Dans le cadre d'une embauche, les cognitions sociales implicites peuvent être mesurées pour déterminer l'importance avec laquelle les préjugés inconscients influencent le comportement organisationnel. En matière de ressources humaines, les pratiques prévues pour réduire au minimum l'injuste discrimination à l'embauche peuvent exiger des interventions agissant aux niveaux conscient et inconscient.     

What Employment Counselors Need to Know About Employment Discrimination and the Civil Rights Act of 1991

Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 there are two theories of liability for employment discrimination: disparate treatment and disparate impact. While disparate treatment deals with the adverse treatment of a specified employee, disparate impact deals with discrimination against a class of individuals. The Civil Rights Act of 1991 modified the law to allow plaintiffs to more readily bring a discrimination case. This article reviews the major components of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Civil Rights Act of 1991, and a proactive approach to using equal opportunity law in employment counseling.     

Racism as a Disease: Etiology and Treatment Implications

The authors discuss racism from a disease perspective. An underlying schema of irrelevance is posited as a cognitive structure that is acquired in childhood to cope with the inconsistent data of racial oppression in an ideologically egalitarian society. As this schema comes into conflict with the increasing diversity of American life, the individual frequently manifests disease symptoms that are treatable with a variety of techniques. The utility of group treatment designed for Caucasians in the early stages of treatment is specifically addressed. Los autores discuten el racismo desde la perspectiva de la enfermedad. Proponen una esquema fundamental de irrelevancia como una estructura cognitiva que se adquire en la niñez para enfrentarse con los datos inconsistentes de opresión racial en una sociedad ideologicamente igualitaria. Según este esquema se va poniendo en conflicto con la diversidad creciente de la vida americana, el individuo frecuentamente manifiesta síntomas de enfermedad que se pueden tratar con diversas técnicas. Se discute la utilidad del tratamiento de grupos diseñado para caucásicos en las primeras etapas del tratamiento.     

Multicultural Counseling Competencies as Tools to Address Oppression and Racism

The Multicultural Counseling Competencies (Arredondo et al., 1996; Sue, Arredondo, & McDavis, 1992) provide developmental and evaluative guidelines for enhancing counselor education and practice. A reason for the articulation of the competencies was the need to address racism and other forms of interpersonal and institutional oppression in the profession. The Dimensions of Personal Identity Model is discussed as a reference point to recognize various personal criteria that are often the focal point of discriminatory behavior. Specific competencies and explanatory statements provide checkpoints that address racism and other forms of oppression that are part of the human experience, but more particularly so for people of color in the United States.     

Applicant Race, Job Status, and Racial Attitude as Predictors of Employment Discrimination

It is important to understand why biased employee selection occurs in the workplace. We examined applicant race, job status, and the evaluator's attitudes toward blacks as possible predictors of unfair selection decisions. After completing an attitude toward blacks scale, one hundred and eighty-one people evaluated the qualifications of either a black or white applicant for either a high or low status job. Results showed no differences in the hiring decision. However, evaluators with more negative attitudes toward blacks reported greater confidence in their decision to hire the black applicant than the white applicant for the low status job compared to the confidence of evaluators with more positive attitudes. They also reported greater confidence in their decision to hire the white applicant than the black applicant for the high status job as compared to evaluators with more positive attitudes towards blacks. We observed the opposite results for less biased individuals. Evaluator ratings do not explain these findings. These data suggest that unfair discrimination may operate in subtle ways.     

Getting Emotional About Explanations: Social Explanations and Social Explanatory Styles as Bases of Prosocial Emotions and Intergroup Attitudes

We are interested in the bases of social emotions such as compassion and hostility. Our analysis centers on social explanations, or people’s answers to the question: Why does the target behave that way or experience those outcomes? Below, we review classic approaches to social explanation and then review work linking explanations to emotions. Finally, we focus on work from our lab that connects explanations to prosocial emotions and intergroup attitudes, including compassion for the disadvantaged and reduced vengefulness toward the violent. A crucial contribution of our work is to illuminate complex connections between explanations and emotions: A given explanation has different socio‐emotional implications depending on the explainer’s motives. Finally, we review our work suggesting that individuals have social explanatory styles, and that particular styles are predictive of dispositional compassion. A key implication of our work is that social explanations are another basis of prosociality, in addition to factors such as empathy and moral principles.     

Not Just Doing Time: Distinct Typologies of Attitudes and Emotions among Juvenile Justice‐Involved Youth

Adolescents’ views of the legal system, just world beliefs, and moral emotions are interrelated and form an important frame of reference, particularly for young people involved in the juvenile justice system. Yet past scholarship has generally treated these as independent indices of youths’ experience. This study took a person‐centered, latent profile approach to attitudes and beliefs among 136 male youth incarcerated within secure US juvenile facilities. Three heterogeneous profiles were found (negative attitudes/low emotion, moderate attitudes/mixed emotions, and positive attitudes/positive emotion) which were differentially associated with antisocial behavior. Youth who belonged to historically marginalized populations had significantly lower odds of belonging to a protective profile characterized by positive legal attitudes, just world beliefs, and emotions (positive attitudes/positive emotion). Findings highlight our gaps in understanding young people’s experiences with legal and judicial entities and illustrate significant heterogeneity in youth’s frame of reference within the juvenile justice system.     

Parsimony in Intuitive Explanations for Behavior: Reconciling the Discounting Principle and Preference for Conjunctive Explanations

Age and gender differences were examined using the new Spatial Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (SSEQ) and the Misplaced Objects Test (MOT) for location recall. Analysis of the MOT scores revealed significant age differences with younger adults performing better than older adults. Women performed better than men did, but despite higher scores, the women showed consistently lower self-efficacy than the men. Analyses of the SSEQ measures revealed significant differences as a function of age and gender, with men showing greater spatial memory self-efficacy than women, and older adults showing less self-efficacy than younger adults. Analyses of congruence (accuracy of SSEQ responses relative to MOT scores) revealed that older adults and men tended to overestimate their ability to remember object locations. Explanations for these findings are based on self-efficacy theory, in particular, the possible influence of gender socialization on beliefs about ability.     

Attitudes and Attraction: Optimism and Weight as Explanations for the Similarity–Dissimilarity Asymmetry

The positive link between attitude similarity and attraction is one of the fundamental outcomes in social psychology. However, attitude dissimilarity seems to be a stronger driver of this relationship than attitude similarity. The authors review the evidence on this similarity–dissimilarity asymmetry, and discuss two explanations. One is that people generally enter into interactions with optimism, and so supposedly neutral partners are often seen as mildly positive. Another is that dissimilar attitudes carry greater weight than similar attitudes in cognitive processes. Implications of these mechanisms for wider issues in person perception and attitude structure are discussed, connecting them with more recent theories of attitudinal ambivalence and evaluative space.