Thank you to @jonds7.bsky.social for sharing work on how people respond to transgressions, particularly in the context of policing, with my moral psych class this morning! More info here: jedoriscar.wixsite.com/jonathandori....
11. We also see translational implications. Eg, because laypeople use religion to achieve societal goals, it may be beneficial to consider religion when trying to get people on board with these goals. Would love to hear your thoughts on these ideas! /End
10. Eg, theology interprets religious teachings about power; we show how laypeople actually use such teachings. Sociology shows THAT people use religion to attain power; we make suggestions rooted in psych processes about WHY religion might be particularly effective at achieving these goals.
9. We think incorporating a societal level of analysis benefits work on religion and on power by clarifying how & why people use religion to achieve societal goals. We also see connections to disciplines beyond psych.
8. Second, people have a basic need to see themselves & their groups as morally good (see work by @ejayawickreme.bsky.social & others). Because ppl often see religion as the source of morality, religion provides a particularly effective justification for the societal goals one seeks to accomplish.
7. First, societal goals are complex and encompass individual, interpersonal, and intergroup goals. To the extent that religion helps meet goals at each of these other levels, it's peculiarly well-positioned to achieve societal goals.
6. Religion may be particularly effective at helping people achieve societal goals for at least two reasons:
5. We argue that people also use religion to achieve goals related to societal power. Could include reinforcing current power structures (see work by @andrew-whitehead.bsky.social, @profsamperry.bsky.social, @joshuagrubbsphd.bsky.social, & others) or challenging them (eg the Black church).
4. (b) Interpersonal functions (eg, attachment, bonding, prosocial acts toward others). See work by @xygalatas.bsky.social, @mikeypasek.bsky.social, @paulbloomatyale.bsky.social, & others.
c) Intergroup functions (eg, viewing one's own group as moral). See work by @willgervais.com & others.
3. Past work has focused on:
(a) Individual functions (eg, meaning-making, coping with difficulties, explaining things that seem mysterious). See work by @kurtjgray.bsky.social, @tanialombrozo.bsky.social, & others.
2. Work on the psychology of religion has considered a bunch of different functions that religion might serve. We unify some of these accounts and propose that it may be beneficial to consider functions at the *societal* level as well as the levels past work has focused on.
1. New in-press paper on religion's functions, co-authored with amazing lab manager James Nesbit! Full text here, more info in thread below: columbiasamclab.weebly.com/uploads/5/9/....
#AcademicSky #PsychSciSky #SocialPsyc #DevPsyc #CogPsyc @socphilpsych.bsky.social 🧪
I am thankful that I got to talk about these papers in tandem. They feed off of each other by crafting a stronger framework for implementing EFFECTIVE equity efforts.
Big thank you to Tyler Jimenez for sharing his work on bias against Native Americans in our lab meeting today! Important research distinguishing between commission (eg hate speech) & omission (eg saying that Native people no longer exist). More here: psychology.arizona.edu/person/tyler...
This is the impact of the intervention on inclusive equitable policy on our Asian Am samples. Reminders of Asian racism during the pandemic and information about how remote work protected some people tended to boost support for inclusive equitable policy relative to a control. Interestingly, simply reminding about the pandemic racism also tended to increase support for equitable policy.
These studies found that the intervention increased support for inclusive anti-discrimination policies, and the study of those policies.
Anyway, check out the paper here: online.ucpress.edu/collabra/art...
...and congratulations to A. Chyei Vinluan for bringing it into the world!
Ooo, sounds interesting! Perhaps of interest to @willgervais.com as well?
Reminds me of work by @fierycushman.bsky.social & others showing that decisions to do stuff seen as more immoral than decisions not to do stuff. Could drive perception that decision not to vaccinate isn't as bad as decision to harm someone more actively & lay perceptions can drive laws.
Do individuals possess introspective access to their implicit evaluations? Although recent research shows that people can often predict their scores on indirect measures, it remains unclear whether this effect reflects genuine introspection or inferential reasoning. We tested an anchoring-and-adjustment account, proposing that individuals predict implicit evaluations by anchoring on accessible explicit evaluations and then adjusting based on available information, such as cultural knowledge. Across three experiments (N = 3,182), we used a relational evaluative conditioning paradigm with novel nonwords to isolate explicit evaluations as the primary source for inference. Manipulating the align-ment between explicit and implicit evaluations, between or within participants, yielded consistent support for the anchoring-and-adjustment hypothesis. Predictions were accurate only when explicit evaluations provided a valid cue; when the two dissociated, accuracy fell systematically below chance. These findings suggest that knowledge of one’s implicit evaluations is dominantly derived from explicit cues rather than discovered through direct introspection.
Excited to share this preprint with Yahel Nudler and @thatadammorris.bsky.social in which we provide further evidence that people’s awareness of implicit evaluations is shaky at best — when explicit evaluations provide a misleading cue, participants systematically mispredict: osf.io/preprints/ps...
Most recently, a project looking at how kids & adults think about intent when making moral judgments, and how social experiences shape these judgments. Would have supported a grad student, lab manager, etc as well as professional dev opportunities (eg conference travel for trainees).
A wide & growing range of laws are now subject to strict scrutiny if they burden a plaintiff's sincerely held religious belief. Current doctrine requires courts to defer to a claimant's characterization of her own beliefs & burdens when deciding a religious exemption request, making this threshold test exceptionally-indeed, many scholars argue, excessively-easy to pass. But a less deferential approach would risk making civil courts the arbiter of which religious beliefs are orthodox, reasonable, or true. This Article demonstrates that SCOTUS once had an effective solution to this double-bind. Historically, the Court expected religious exemption claimants to show that they were obligated to follow a religious "law" that shared basic features with secular laws, including generality, clarity, and administrability. The Article reaches this insight by reading religious exemption cases alongside a line of cases with which they are rarely linked: church property disputes. Starting in the late 19th c., the Court encouraged churches to give their religious commitments legally cognizable form in private law instruments like trusts and church "constitutions." During the 20th c., the Court imported this practice into the context of individual religious exemption claims. The source of religious rules of conduct could now be personal conscience rather than church doctrine-but believers still needed to frame these rules in legalistic terms when invoking the protection of civil courts. The choice between deciding religious questions or deferring absolutely to religious litigants, then, is a false one. From the 1870s through the 1980s, the Court's prophylactic legality requirement prevented courts from interfering in religious doctrine and minimized frivolous religious exemption claims. Recognizing this history reveals that the current "hands-off" approach to religious belief statements not only is not constitutionally required, but carries constitutional hazards of its own.
I’m thrilled, yes, & also stunned and bewildered, to announce that my job talk paper, Religion as Public Law, will be published in the Yale Law Journal next year. 1/6
OK folks, getting toward the end of my first mass public opinion survey on antisemitism (N=1,000) -- I showed Americans 100 pieces of real graffiti about Jews and/or Israel-Palestine, and asked them to rate the whether they were antisemitic (yes/no/unsure).
Even a cursory look is interesting...
I just met Annie B Jones's book Ordinary Time & am loving it. Are you looking for stillness and wisdom? This book is for you. bookshop.org/p/books/ordi...
#booksky
Thanks to Drew Jacoby-Senghor who shared fascinating studies on inequality in our lab meeting today! Advantaged group members misperceive equality-enhancing policies as harmful to their group. One paper he discussed: psycnet.apa.org/buy/2021-826.... And more here: haas.berkeley.edu/faculty/jaco...
Thank you to @pearlhanli.bsky.social for sharing her work with my moral psych class today! Neat data on how kids react when adult testimony conflicts with their own moral judgments: psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/201.... Plus many other cool findings about which you can learn here: www.pearlhanli.com.
A poll on the question "Do moral judgements necessarily motivate us?", to which 18 students answered "Yes" and 33 answered "No".
I was surprised by this distribution of intuitions among a group of Yr12 (aged 16-17) students yesterday!
Turns out most 16-17 year-olds are motivational externalists!
#philosophy
I drafted one section of one chapter for the book I'm writing on religious conflict, and a few paragraphs may not seem like a huge deal, but I am counting this as a big win for today.
The end goal of Christian nationalist policies likely aren't greater religiosity, but power.
New research shows laws that support Christianity or restrict non-Christian groups actually incline committed religious citizens to *disengage* from religious & civic participation. doi.org/10.1111/jssr...
Thank you to Yejin Park Roberts for presenting her work on religious & political polarization in lab yesterday! Interesting findings showing that, contrary to pastors' predictions, religious frames don't always reduce polarization. More here: www.yejinparkroberts.com.
What if you find out your own brother is a thief? We asked how people respond when a close other commits a moral transgression. -> It gets people to feel both as the victim + as the perpetrator & changes what punishment they seek. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
#socialpsyc #PsychSciSky
Ad on the wall of subway that says: rejection is hot
Important news for us writers from across the NYC subway tracks:
