Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences - Research Publications
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ItemThe many roles of dehumanization in genocide(Oxford University Press, 2019-12-09)How do otherwise ordinary people become perpetrators of genocide? Why are groups targeted for mass killing? How do groups justify these terrible acts? While there are no easy answers to these questions, social psychologists are especially well positioned to contribute to our understanding of genocide and mass killing. With research targeting key questions -such as how negative impressions of outgroups develop and how social influence can lead people to violate their moral principles and other norms - social psychologists have much to teach us about why groups of people attempt to exterminate other groups, why people participate in such atrocious projects, and how they live with themselves afterwards. By bringing together research previously available only to readers of academic journals, this volume sheds crucial light on human behavior at the extremes and in doing so, helps us take one more step towards preventing future tragedies.
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ItemIntergroup metaphors(Peter Lang, 2016)Intergroup metaphors represent human groups as nonhuman entities, such as animals, objects, plants, or forces of nature. These metaphors are abundant, diverse in meanings, and frequently but not invariably derogatory. Intergroup metaphors may be explicitly represented in language or implicitly represented as nonconscious mental associations. Research and theory on dehumanization offer a useful perspective on these metaphors, and show that likening outgroups to animals is a particularly common phenomenon. Frequently, groups are metaphorically compared to disgusting or degrading animals during times of conflict, but people also tend to view members of outgroups as subtly more animal-like or primitive than their own group even in the absence of conflict. Depending on the use of intergroup metaphors in the contexts of race, gender, social class, immigration, mental illness, and terrorism, intergroup metaphors can have damaging consequences for intergroup relations. Metaphors that represent some people as subhuman entities can diminish empathy and compassion for their suffering. Metaphors that represent certain groups as bestial or diabolical can enable violence, including support for harsh treatment by the state. Some metaphors not only promote violence and discrimination but also help people to legitimize violent behavior and injustice after the fact. Metaphors therefore offer an intriguing insight into the nature of intergroup relations, and how these relations are colored not only by positive or negative attitudes but also by dehumanizing perceptions.
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ItemLooping effects and the expanding concept of mental disorder(PACINI EDITORE, 2016-03)The concept of 'looping effects' helps to clarify how psychiatric conditions are moving targets. As professional understandings of mental disorders change, people shape their behaviour, experience and self-understanding in response. By this means, evolving concepts of mental disorder, carried by language, arose make up new kinds of person. The superordinate concept of 'mental disorder' is also a moving target. This article develops an account of the concept's semantic alterations, proposing that it has progressively expanded horizontally to encompass qualitatively new forms of distress and disability, and also vertically to encompass quantitatively less severe phenomena. Changes in the concept of mental disorder in successive editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders are examined to show that its meaning has not so much looped as spread in an ever-expanding vortex. Possible looping effects of this conceptual creep are discussed.
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ItemMotivational orientations and psychiatric stigma: Social motives influence how causal explanations relate to stigmatizing attitudes(PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD, 2016-01)It has been hoped that disseminating biological and genetic (biogenetic) explanations for mental disorders would reduce the tendency to stigmatize affected people. However, biogenetic explanations convey both stigmatizing and destigmatizing meanings (reducing blame but inducing perceived dangerousness and pessimism). This ambiguity may allow motivational factors to influence how individuals make sense of biogenetic explanations. In this research, we aimed: (1) to shed light on the motives that underpin stigmatizing attitudes, and (2) to investigate if these motives also predict how people interpret biogenetic explanations. In Study 1 (N= 177), we found that motivations to compete for group dominance (Social Dominance Orientation; SDO) and to maintain security and social cohesion (Right Wing Authoritarianism; RWA) were associated with stigmatizing attitudes toward individuals suffering from depression and schizophrenia. Further, biogenetic explanations had different implications for stigma as a function of RWA, predicting high stigma in high-RWA people and low stigma in low-RWA people. In Study 2 (N= 93), we found that the motives indexed by SDO and RWA predicted how people responded to a biogenetic explanation of schizophrenia, tending to reinforce stigmatizing attitudes. We discuss the implications of these findings for efforts to reduce stigma.
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ItemCreeping Forward REPLY(ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2016-01-02)
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ItemRecent research on dehumanization(ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV, 2016-10)Dehumanization has been a lively focus of social psychology research for the past decade and a half, and novel theoretical and empirical contributions have appeared at a rapid rate. The present review updates earlier overviews by calling attention to key developments over the past two years. The review indicates that researchers have broken new ground in recognizing the range of targets of dehumanization, the diversity of factors that contribute to it, the effects that it accounts for, and the implications and consequences that it has for intergroup relations. Theorists have also enhanced our understanding of how dehumanization phenomena can be conceptualized, assessed, and evaluated. These advances highlight the central but previously unacknowledged role that denials of humanness play in intergroup phenomena.
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ItemMore human than others? A critique of Cypryanska et al. (2017)(ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2017)Cypryańska and colleagues offer a critique of existing work on the self-humanizing effect and present some empirical findings motivated by their critique. In this commentary, I question their overly restrictive understanding of self-humanizing and argue that the phenomenon does not stand or fall on a definition based on a strict analogy to the better-than-average effect. I argue that defining self-humanizing exclusively in these terms is inappropriate: It fails to recognize the relationship between self-humanizing and self-enhancement, as well as the primary role of trait valence in comparative self-ratings. Finally, I observe that Cypryańska et al.'s empirical findings are highly consistent with past work rather than offering the deep challenge that the authors suppose.
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ItemScholarly productivity and citation impact of academic psychologists in Group of Eight universities(WILEY, 2017-09)Objective: This study sought to update norms for scholarly publication and citation impact for Australian Group of Eight (Go8) university psychology academics published by McNally (2010). Method: Publication and citation data for 279 Go8 psychology academics were extracted using the Scopus and Google Scholar databases. Norms for career-wise publications, citations, and the h-index were developed for each academic level (from Lecturer to Professor), and eight-year publication counts for 2009–2016 were compared with the 2001–2008 figures reported by McNally. Results: Evidence of a steep increase in scholarly productivity was found relative to McNally (2010), and new norms were generated. There was notable variation between psychology subdisciplines, with neuroscience and clinical science academics typically having higher publication and citation counts than their cognitive psychology peers. Conclusions: Norms for scholarly productivity and citation impact among Australian psychology academics have undergone substantial change in recent years. Caveats concerning the application of research metrics are discussed.
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ItemThe Origins of Lay Theories: The Case of Essentialist Beliefs(Springer International Publishing, 2017-07-15)This chapter explores the origins of lay theories, with a focus on theories associated with the concept of psychological essentialism such as Dweckian entity theories. I argue that the origins of essentialist lay theories can be approached from cognitive, developmental, cultural, and social perspectives. Cognitively, these theories appear to arise from deep-seated and possibly innate ontological assumptions and mental shortcuts, such as the proposed “inherence heuristic.” Developmentally, they appear to be promoted by particular kinds of language use (e.g., generics) and particular forms of communication by caregivers. The content of essentialist lay theories derives in part from idioms that circulate within a particular culture, making culture an important dimension of any account of theory origins. Finally, essentialist theories are promoted by certain social arrangements, including motivated maintenance of social hierarchies. A full account of the neglected issue of where lay theories come from requires an appreciation of these diverse factors.
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ItemUnicorns, snarks, and personality types: A review of the first 102 taxometric studies of personality(WILEY, 2019-03)Objective: The default assumption among most psychologists is that personality varies along a set of underlying dimensions, but belief in the existence of discrete personality types persists in some quarters. Taxometric methods were developed to adjudicate between these alternative dimensional and typological models of the latent structure of individual differences. The aim of the present review was to assess the taxometric evidence for the existence of personality types. Method: A comprehensive review yielded 102 articles reporting 194 taxometric findings for a wide assortment of personality attributes. Results: Structural conclusions differed strikingly as a function of methodology. Primarily older studies that did not assess the fit of observed data to simulated dimensional and typological comparison data drew typological conclusions in 65.2% (60/92) of findings. Primarily newer studies employing simulated comparison data supported the typological model in only 3.9% (4/102) of findings, and these findings were largely in the domain of sexual orientation rather than personality in the traditional sense. Conclusions: In view of strong Monte Carlo evidence for the validity of the simulated comparison data method, it is highly likely that personality types are exceedingly scarce or non-existent, and that many early taxometric research findings claiming evidence for such types are spurious.
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