Improving Intergroup Relations: The Effects of Empathy on Racial Attitudes1

Prior research indicates that information‐based intergroup relations programs are only moderately successful (MGregor, 1993; Stephan & Stephan, 1984). In order to explore a means of increasing the effectiveness of techniques used to change attitudes toward out groups, the current study examined the effects of giving Anglo American students information about everyday incidents of discrimination against African Americans either with or without empathy‐inducing instructions. The results indicate that reading about discrimination against African Americans or inducing empathy reduces in‐group‐out‐group bias in attitudes toward African Americans vs. Anglo Americans. The implications of these findings for models of the effects of empathy on intergroup relations are discussed.     

Can an aspect of consciousness be imprinted into an electronic device?

Although quantum mechanics allows consciousness to have some effect on the collapse of wave functions, most conventional scientists expect the effect to be quite small. Their experience with expert systems, computer-aided design, etc., would cause them to deny the possibility that a specific human intention could be imprinted into a simple electronic device via a meditative process and that this device could then influence a target experiment in accordance with the specific intention. Here, via two very different target experiments, that prevailing supposition has been experimentally tested and found to be fallacious! For each target experiment, one starts with two identical physical devices, isolates them from each other and “charges” one with the specific intention for the particular experiment. This charging process involved the services of four highly qualified meditators to imprint the device with the specific intention. The devices were then wrapped in aluminum foil and separately shipped, via Federal Express ∼2,000 miles to a laboratory where the actual target experiments were conducted by others. For the two experiments, the intentions were (1) to decrease (increase) the pH of water by one pH unit and (2) to increase the ATP/ADP ratio in fruit fly larvae so as to significantly decrease their development time. For (1), changes of 0.5 to 1.0 pH units were achieved while, for (2), reductions of ∼15 percent in larval development time for the imprinted vs. unimprinted device were observed (p<0.005). From a theoretical perspective, (1) a thermodynamic basis is provided for the effect of intention on both the electrochemical potential and flux of molecular species, (2) a conceptual model for linking subtle domains with the physical domain devices is given, and (3) a conceptual model is also given of how such devices may broadcast specific prime directive information via intention—augmented electromagnetism which can “tilt” chemical reactions in appropriate ways within the target experiment.     

Climate action now: How to fuel a social movement

Our research develops a framework that explores how to fuel the climate movement by accelerating grassroots, community-based climate action. Drawing on insights from consumer psychology, our framework identifies the psychological mechanisms that encourage and motivate people, both individually and collectively, to take climate action, thereby contributing to our understanding of how to advance social action and propel a social movement. Our climate action framework builds on: (1) individuals we describe as climate upstanders who rise up to take climate action with like-minded others, and (2) communities of climate upstanders who engage in collective action aimed at addressing the climate crisis. Our framework expands the field of consumer psychology by redefining the role of consumers to include the practice of social action and broadening the study of consumers to include collective, community-based action. We call on consumer psychologists to research individual and collective consumer practices related to social action and contribute to making social good central to the study of consumer psychology.     

Perceptions of injustice in intercultural relations

Perceptions of injustice are likely to occur in intercultural relations because cultures often define justice and its implementation differently. This article reviews factors and processes that are unique to intercultural relations and that may give rise to feelings of injustice during intercultural interactions. Antecedents that can trigger a sense of injustice with regard to distributive, procedural, and retributive justice are reviewed. The consequences of perceived injustice are also analyzed. The implications of our analysis for research and practice are discussed.     

The difference between generating counterexamples and using them during reasoning

The aim of this article is to provide insight into the types of long-term knowledge that are used for solving causal conditional inferences. Two taxonomies were constructed to map the types of counterexample. The available counterexamples are traditionally probed via a counterexample generation task. We observed that there are some significant differences in the types of counterexample retrieved in the reasoning task versus the generation task. The generation task can be used for predicting answers that sprout from a reasoning process that takes counterexample into account, but some participants use a different reasoning process in which the available semantic information is not used as contrasting evidence. Nonetheless, we found that the results of the generation task validly predicted the proportion of inferences accepted as well as the number of counterexamples used during reasoning.