Everyday Research Methods

Racial bias in psychological science journals

A recent study found that in psychology, the authors, participants, topics, and editors of empirical journal articles are mostly White.
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Is science fair?

You learned in Chapter 2 that empirical journals are the primary place where psychological scientists make their research public. Each empirical journal has an editorial board-- a group of scientists who have power to select the peer reviewers for each article and make the final decision about publication. 

Each step of the way, the stated goals of the publication process are to be fair, to focus on the quality of the science, and to publish the best science possible. But is the process fair?  In light of the renewed energy around anti-racism, a timely new study sheds light on racial diversity in the psychology publication process. The researchers asked, Is race an important variable in the scientific publication process?

The team coded all empirical journal articles that appeared in the most prestigious journals in psychology (over 26,000 articles). There were two journals each from social, cognitive, and developmental psychology. The authors measured:

• how often race was studied as a subject in these articles
• the race of the participants in the studies
• the proportion of the authors of scientific articles were White vs. Non-white
• the proportion of the editors of the journals themselves were White vs. Non-white

Here are some of the results of this published study of published studies, as summarized by the Association for Psychological Science's trade publication:

The results suggest that there is a hierarchy in psychology research that determines who and what gets published. “We are not saying anyone has bad intentions,” said Roberts [one of the study's authors]. “It’s a systemic problem across many fields, and psychological science is no exception.”

First, across the past five decades, articles in psychological journals that highlight race have been rare, and although developmental and social psychology journals have published a growing number of these articles, they have remained virtually nonexistent in cognitive psychology.

Second, most journals have been edited by White editors, under whom there has been a notable dearth of published articles highlighting race and racism.

Third, many of the publications that highlight race have been written by White authors, who employed significantly fewer participants of color.

Let's parse these claims. 

Questions

a) What kind of a claim is it (frequency, association, or cause) to state that "across the past five decades, articles in psychological journals that highlight race have been rare"

[And what's "rare"? The published report says that "only 5% of publications highlighted race" (p. 4). This 5% figure is an average across cognitive journals (less than 1%) and social (5%) and developmental journals (8%)]

b) Let's take the second claim, "most journals have been edited by White editors, under whom there has been a notable dearth of published articles highlighting race and racism"

The quoted text above provides two claims in one sentence. What is the frequency claim in the quoted text? What is the association claim in the quoted text? What are the two variables in the association claim?

c) Now for the third claim, "many of the publications that highlight race have been written by White authors, who employed significantly fewer participants of color."

As with b), the quoted test provides two claims in one sentence, a frequency claim and an association claim. What are these? 

d) In Chapter 1 of the 4th Edition (available Fall 2020), you will read about Merton's norms of science--a set of values that the community of scientists usually endorses and strives  to follow. Here they are, with short descriptions (for a full review, see Chapter 1 or this summary). 

Universalism: Anyone can do science as long as they follow the accepted criteria for science, which are established in advance, are objective, and are accessible to all.
Communality: Share! The process of science, including data, methods, and products, should be free and open for all to use. 
Disinterestedness: The quality of the science should be the only thing that matters, not the prestige of the person or place it was conducted. 
Organized Skepticism: Verify everything. Critical peer review matters, every study should be replicated, and criticism of one's evidence is expected and welcome. 

Roberts and his coauthors argued that psychology is too White. Which of Merton's norms does this result seem to violate, and why? 

Suggested answers:

a) This is a frequency claim--a statement about the frequency of the variable, "highlighting race" across 26,000 journal articles.

b) The frequency claim is about the proportion of journal editors who are White vs. a Person of Color (POC). The association claim is about a link between two variables: whether a journal has a White editor or not, and whether that journal published articles highlighting race or not.

c)  The frequency claim is about the proportion of article authors who are White vs. POC. The association claim is about a link between two variables: whether the article was written by a White author or not, and whether that article included POC as participants or not.

d) Open to discussion!

Here is a summary of this work.

Empathy and social justice

The more privilege people have, the less empathy they have for people lower in status. But that can change with increased perspective-taking. 
Photo credit: Clay Banks/Unsplash

The spring of 2020 has seen sustained, worldwide, democratic protests, led by Black Lives Matter and demanding social justice and police reform in the U.S.  After this spring, American support for Black Lives Matter and police reform are suddenly higher than it has ever been.  Psychologist Jamil Zaki asks in this opinion piece, Why now? Why did Americans react more strongly in 2020, after police killed George Floyd, compared to other highly publicized instances when police killed other unarmed Black people, including Breonna Taylor, Tamir Rice, Philando Castille, Michael Brown, and Stephon Clark?  

Dr. Zaki points to empathy as the answer. He writes, 

In the past few weeks, many people have opened their eyes to suffering they had previously ignored. Much credit for this should go to the activists and organizers who have made it harder to look away. 

Dr. Zaki supports his argument with evidence from psychological research on empathy, power, and structural change. For example, teams of psychological researchers have investigated how being in powerful positions is associated with being less able to understand others' suffering:

In one series of studies, the psychologist Michael Kraus and his colleagues measured people’s socio-economic status, as well as their ability to decipher emotions in pictures and in-person interactions. People higher in status were less accurate about other people’s feelings. More recent work has replicated these results and also found that high-status individuals make more errors when trying to take other people’s perspective.

a) What are the variables in Dr. Kraus's research? Were these variables measured or manipulated? (Hint: There are two studies--take one at a time.)

b) Given your answer to question a), were these studies correlational or experimental?

Here are two more brief research descriptions (the links go to the original empirical studies): 

Higher-status individuals display less interest when talking with strangers, and report less concern for the suffering of others. These gaps play out in racial contexts as well. In another study, Kraus found that high-income white Americans overestimate racial economic equality more than black Americans or low-income white Americans.

c) What about the studies above--what are the variables? Are the studies correlational or experimental? (Hint: There are two studies--decide the variables in each study separately.)

Zaki argues that one reason higher status people have less empathy is because the powerful are less motivated to think about others. In contrast, less-powerful people need to pay attention to others in order to function well in society. He writes, "This is one way privilege works its way into our minds. Not only are privileged people exempt from material struggles, they can comfortably ignore everyone else’s."

Here are two more brief study descriptions that Zaki uses in support of his argument:

[Power] expands the change a person could make while narrowing the aperture of who they truly see. But this is not inevitable. When powerful people choose to empathize, they become more cooperative and more invested in justice. In one particularly relevant series of studies, Emile Bruneau and his colleagues asked members of low-power groups to “perspective give,” sharing their stories, and high-power individuals to perspective take, paraphrasing what they’d heard. These dialogues increased connection and positive regard between groups — not by ignoring existing power structures, but by reversing them.

d) In the study by Bruneau and colleagues, what were the variables? Can you tell if the variables were manipulated or measured?  

e) What do you think--was Bruneau's study an experiment or a correlational study? Can it support the causal claim that "these dialogues increased connection and positive regard between groups?"

f) Dr. Zaki's descriptions of the studies are short on detail, likely the result of working under a word-limit and writing for a popular audience. Try following the links to one of the studies linked in Dr. Zaki's article. Are you able to access the full text of the study easily? If not, can you access the journal using your university's library? When you read the full text of the original study, were you correct about its correlational or experimental nature?