Research
Major book
Ecological beliefs and behaviors: Assessment and change.
(1985). Greenwood Press. With chapters by Richard Borden (College
of the Atlantic ) and Russell Weigel (Amherst).
Most recent publication concentration
Have developed a construct called "the belief in equality" (measured
by the BE scale). It is composed of a set of assumptions that general
abilities are widely distributed in the human population rather than being
bunched up in small elite minorities. BE has been validated using
organizational scenarios. High BE persons are more likely to delegate
appropriate responsibilities to others, train subordinates more, share
information and decision making, and minimize status differences.
These results from the United States have come from cooperative efforts
with many of my undergraduate students--Sheila Connors, Amy Dymond, Michael
DeCatur, Hileri Gardner, Sue Gardner, Laura Grove, Michael Leornard,
David and JoAnna Mizener, Douglas Osman, John Petrocelli, John Radinsky,
Kennon Rice, and Sara Rothenberger. These studies have been cross-validated
with with colleagues in Heidelberg, Warsaw, and Moscow, presented at the
last four annual meetings of the Internationa Society of Political Psychology,
and published in refereed international journals.
The importance of the belief in equality and
BE
Unfounded, global beliefs in the superiority of one's in-group and
the inferiority of out-groups may be reduced by strengthening the belief
in equality. The variable of equality or equal status plays a major
role in attribution theory, democratic political theory, expectation
theory, small group communication theory, and social categorization theory.
In practical terms, it is devastating to an individual to have a supervisor
unfairly deny attributions of ability; and large status differences magnify
intergroup biases and communication distortions.
Attitude formation and change
I have conducted and published studies of attitude change in the areas
race, religion, beliefs about ecology, and the belief
in equality. Am currently working with my students on attitude
change experiments about the growing size of the income
gap between top CEOs and average hourly workers using an attitude change
paradigm derived from Richard Petty
and John Cacciopo at Ohio State (elaboration likelihood model).
Personality/attitudinal constructs
Have ongoing examinations of simultaneous construct validity for the
belief in equality, authoritarianism, and social dominance orientation.
Looking carefully at the major negative correlation between the Belief
in Equality (BE) and social dominance orientation (SDO): what do they share,
and what is unique to each? Have a current study under
progress with two recent Westminster graduates (John Petrocelli and Sara
Rothenberger) examining the factor structure of authoritarianism, the belief
in equality, machiavellianism, and social dominance orientation.
Avocational personal lifelong learning related
to the belief in equality
Via my
intense interest and participation in international primitive and traditional
archery, a question is constantly begging for illumination.
How smart were these ancient peoples of one, two, even four and up to eight
thousand years ago? Based on 8,000 year old artifacts of bow and
arrow fragments recovered from bogs and burial sites, what do we learn
about their abilities and sense of aesthetics? A rather widespread
view is that the ancients, from any part of the world, were categorically
prescientific in their cognitive skills, and brutish and dull in their
aesthetic awareness. I expect that both of these stereotypes
are in-group biases.
While ancient regions, seasons, and times varied greatly in environmental
harshness and scarcity of survival elements and resources (from fairly
comfortable to life threatening), and individual differences undoubtedly
were great within any one group, I expect general ability and aesthetic
awareness was widely distributed in these ancient populations. I
have not yet had expert paleoarcheologists critique these insights, but
if they are relatively accurate, two apparently contradictory lessons may
be forthcoming. One, modern humans may be humbled at the realization
of the relative high development of these ancient peoples--modern scientifc
age humans may not be as categorically advanced as we thought we were.
Two, modern humans may take great pride and confidence that we are part
of such a long stream of relatively advanced intelligence and sensitivity.