Parental Divorce and Adult Religiosity: Evidence from the General Social Survey

This study explores the relationship between parental divorce and religiosity, including religious affiliation change and church attendance. Data from the 1991, 1998, and 2008 waves of the General Social Survey provide information both on current religiosity and religiosity in respondents’ families of origin. The results suggest that living with a single divorced parent—but not a remarried or widowed parent—increases church attendance and the odds of a change in religious affiliation. Catholics and Protestants from divorced families are disproportionately likely to become apostates as adults, while people growing up in unaffiliated divorced families more often become affiliated as adults. However, parental divorce has fewer effects on the likelihood of moving from one denomination to another.     

Affirmative Action as Help: A Review of Recipient Reactions to Preferential Selection and Affirmative Action

We review research on four areas of recipient reactions to affirmative action: (a) self-evaluations of ability and performance, (b) motivation and task interest, (c) performance and achievement, and (d) evaluations of selection procedures. Not surprisingly, the process by which affirmative action was implemented strongly affected the findings. Self-evaluations of ability and specific components of performance were adversely affected when selection procedures did not provide unambiguous, explicit, and focused evidence of recipient qualifications. In contrast, measures of motivation were largely unaffected by any type of selection, although task choice was adversely affected when the selection process did not provide clear evidence of recipient qualifications. Task performance was complexly affected by selection process and other contextual variables. Finally, selection procedures that did not provide unambiguous, explicit, and focused evidence of qualifications were regarded by recipients as less fair than procedures that did not provide evidence of competencies. We interpret the literature using a model of affirmative action as help (Turner, Pratkanis, & Hardaway, 1991), draw further parallels to research on recipient reactions to aid, and develop strategies for the effective management of affirmative action programs.     

Affirmative Action and the Doctrine of Double Effect

ABSTRACT  This article attempts to show that affirmative action can be supported by the doctrine of double effect which recognises distinctions between desired and unintended effects such that the responsibility for acts falls on the side of the former rather than the latter. With this doctrine it may also be seen why affirmative action programmes cannot be simply equated with numerical quota systems, nor can they be called discriminatory, at least not under the definition of discrimination utilised.     

From Social Withdrawal to Social Confidence: Evidence for Possible Pathways

Children born with a possible predisposition toward shyness face many social challenges. Researchers over the past four decades have begun to identify specific factors that influence shy children’s social skill development and their level of peer acceptance. The purpose of this article is to review factors across each developmental stage that have been found to either promote or hinder the development of social competence and peer acceptance in shy children. These factors include physiological differences, caregiver influences, emotion socialization, friendships, general peer support, coping skills, organized social activities, and socioeconomic status.     

From Social Withdrawal to Social Confidence: Evidence for Possible Pathways

Children born with a possible predisposition toward shyness face many social challenges. Researchers over the past four decades have begun to identify specific factors that influence shy children’s social skill development and their level of peer acceptance. The purpose of this article is to review factors across each developmental stage that have been found to either promote or hinder the development of social competence and peer acceptance in shy children. These factors include physiological differences, caregiver influences, emotion socialization, friendships, general peer support, coping skills, organized social activities, and socioeconomic status.     

Reactions to Affirmative Action: Seeking the Bases for Resistance1

It has been argued that affirmative action negatively affects the self‐perceptions of beneficiaries. In contrast, it was hypothesized that this would not occur when individual qualifications were explicitly considered and, indeed, that failure under discrimination would be more self‐detrimental. However, perceptions of reverse discrimination may buffer negative self‐attributions on the part of nonbeneficiaries. Responses in an experimental simulation indicated that, of several affirmative actions for women, passive nondiscrimination was viewed as the fairest response to discrimination. While women's self‐perceptions were not affected by affirmative actions, they did suffer under failure. The presence of affirmative actions did not alleviate the effects of failure on men's self‐perceptions. Possible alternatives for resistance to affirmative action are assessed and discussed.     

A comparative Perspective on Affirmative Action: Positieve Aktie in The Netherlands

The Netherlands has established a program for minority employment patterned after affirmative action in the United States. Thus, the Sutch experience allows a comparative perspective on American efforts, one made more instructive by the sharp differences in intergroup relations between the two nations. We report on our Dutch research on affirmative action among urban police involving almost 100 intensive individual interviews in yoked sets of three--the minority officer, her or his White co-workers, and their immediate supervisor. Based on this initial, rough comparison, we tentatively advance that contrasting national racial normative structures make critical differences in the reception of the policy. Such problems as solo role and stigma commonly reported in American research appear muted in our Dutch data. Thus, ironically, the American racist legacy that shapes the problems of affirmative action is the same legacy that requires affirmative-action policies in the first place.     

If Empowerment Is the Goal...: Affirmative Action and social Interaction

The goal of affirmative action policies is to empower formerly disenfranchised groups. But what if the procedures used to implement these policies activate a set of social psychological processes that prevent the occurrence of productive social interactions between target-group and non-target-group members? With that question in mind, a conceptual model is developed which focuses on the potential effects of affirmative action procedures on social interactions between members of policy target and nontarget groups. To conceptualize these potential effects of procedures, the concept of a policy schema is introduced. Special attention is paid to the conditions under which beliefs about procedures contained in policy schemas will influence patterns of interactions between target-group and non-target-group members. With that as background, a call is made for more complete analyses of the social psychology of affirmative action.     

Pluralistic Ignorance and Political Correctness: The Case of Affirmative Action

The pressure to appear politically correct can have important consequences for social life. In particular, the desire to appear politically correct, and to avoid being seen as racist, sexist, or culturally insensitive, can lead people to espouse publicly support for politically correct issues, such as support for affirmative action, despite privately held doubts. Such discrepancies between public behavior and private attitudes, when accompanied by divergent attributions for one's own behavior and the identical behavior of others, can lead to pluralistic ignorance. Two studies investigated pluralistic ignorance with respect to affirmative action among undergraduates. Their survey responses indicate that people overestimate their peers' support for affirmative action and underestimate their peers' opposition to affirmative action, that people's ratings of the political correctness of supporting affirmative action are correlated with their overestimation of support for affirmative action, and that people view their own attitudes toward affirmative action as unique.     

Competing Conceptions of Justice: Faculty Moral Reasoning About Affirmative Action

College faculty (N = 115) were recruited to investigate the influence of moral reasoning on hiring decisions about affirmative action dilemmas. Participants completed the Defining Issues Test (DIT), a standard test of moral reasoning, a measure that presented two hypothetical moral dilemmas about affirmative action that manipulated candidates' race and moral issues, and a scale evaluating the use of external norms versus self-chosen principles. Results indicated that moral issue but not race of a minority candidate affected hiring decisions. Faculty used greater percentages of principled reasoning when solving the more salient affirmative action dilemmas than when solving the hypothetical dilemmas of the DIT. Higher scores on the DIT were related to the use of principles rather than norms when making hiring decisions. Findings suggest that faculty decisions about hiring a hypothetical affirmative action candidate are more influenced by moral reasoning level and competing conceptions of justice than racial bias or ambivalence.     

The Influence of Affirmative Action on Perceptions of a Beneficiary's Qualifications1

Relative to females, males tended to discount the qualifications of a woman promoted into management. However, the male-female difference was dependent upon the promoting organization's Affirmative Action environment. There were no differences between males and females when females thought that the organization promoting the woman had an Affirmative Action program in place. Under these circumstances females behaved as males in discounting the woman's qualifications. In contrast, females who thought that the organization promoting the woman was anti-Affirmative Action augmented the woman's qualifications. The interpretation of this is that these women viewed the organization's anti-Affirmative Action position as an inhibitory factor that could only have been overcome on the basis of the promoted woman possessing the necessary qualifications. Results are interpreted in relation to practical implications for Affirmative Action programs.