David O. Sears

Bio: David O. Sears is an academic researcher from University of California, Los Angeles. The author has contributed to research in topics: Politics & Symbolic racism. The author has an hindex of 55, co-authored 117 publications receiving 17785 citations. Previous affiliations of David O. Sears include University of California & Stanford University.

College sophomores in the laboratory: Influences of a narrow data base on social psychology's view of human nature.

Abstract: For the 2 decades prior to 1960, published research in social psychology was based on a wide variety of subjects and research sites. Content analyses show that since then such research has overwhelmingly been based on college students tested in academic laboratories on academiclike tasks. How might this heavy dependence on one narrow data base have biased the main substantive conclusions of sociopsychological research in this era? Research on the full life span suggests that, compared with older adults, college students are likely to have less-crystallized attitudes, less-formulated senses of self, stronger cognitive skills, stronger tendencies to comply with authority, and more unstable peer group relationships. The laboratory setting is likely to exaggerate all these differences. These peculiarities of social psychology's predominant data base may have contributed to central elements of its portrait of human nature. According to this view people (a) are quite compliant and their behavior is easily socially influenced, (b) readily change their attitudes and (c) behave inconsistently with them, and (d) do not rest their self-perceptions on introspection. The narrow data base may also contribute to this portrait of human nature's (e) strong emphasis on cognitive processes and to its lack of emphasis on (f) personality dispositions, (g) material self-interest, (h) emotionally based irrationalities, (i) group norms, and (j) stage-specific phenomena. The analysis implies the need both for more careful examination of sociopsychological propositions for systematic biases introduced by dependence on this narrow data base and for increased reliance on adults tested in their natural habitats with materials drawn from ordinary life.

Prejudice and politics: Symbolic racism versus racial threats to the good life.

Abstract: Although theories of prejudice have been extensively catalogued, empirical confrontations between competing theories are surprisingly rare. The primary goal of the present research was to test two major theoretical approaches to prejudice by whites against blacks: realistic group conflict theory, which emphasizes the tangible threats blacks might pose to whites' private lives; and a sociocultural theory of prejudice termed symbolic racism, which emphasizes abstract, moralistic resentments of blacks, presumably traceable to preadult socialization. The main dependent variable in our analysis is suburban whites' voting behavior in two mayoral elections in Los Angeles, both strongly influenced by racial issues, that matched the same two candidates, one black and one white. In both elections, symbolic racism (sociocultural prejudice) was the major determinant of voting against the black candidate for people removed from possible personal threats posed by blacks as well as for those at risk. Direct racial threats to whites' private lives (to their jobs, their neighborhoods, their children's schooling, their families' safety) had little effect on either antiblack voting behavior or symbolic racism. The article closes by developing the implications of these results for theories of prejudice and, more speculatively, for interpretations of the effects of voters' private lives on their political behavior. Theories of racial prejudice suffer from benign neglect. Although the theories themselves have been extensively and ably catalogued (most notably, by Allport, 1954; Ashmore & DelBoca, 1976; LeVine & Campbell, 1972), empirical confrontations between alternative theories occupy surprisingly little

The Oxford handbook of political psychology

Abstract: 1. The Psychologies Underlying Political Psychology THEORETICAL APPROACHES 2. Models of Decision-Making 3. Childhood and Adult Political Development 4. Personality and Political Behavior 5. Evolutionary Approaches to Political Psychology 6. The Psychology of Emotion and Politics 7. Political Rhetoric INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 8. Political Psychology and Foreign Policy 9. Image Theory and Strategic Interaction in International Relations 10. Conflict Analysis and Resolution MASS POLITICAL BEHAVIOR 11. Communication and Politics in the Age of Information 12. Political Impressions: Formation and Management 13. Information Processing and Public Opinion 14. Values, Ideology, and the Structure of Political Attitudes INTERGROUP RELATIONS 15. Group Identity and Political Cohesion 16. Prejudice and Intergroup Hostility 17. Theorizing Gender in Political Psychology Research POLITICAL CHANGE 18. Education and Democratic Citizenship in a Changing World 19. Collective Political Action 20. Genocide, Mass Killing and Intractable Conflict: Roots, Evolution, Prevention, and Reconciliation EPILOGUE 21. Rescuing Political Science from Itself Index

Self-Interest vs. Symbolic Politics in Policy Attitudes and Presidential Voting

Abstract: This article contrasts short-term self-interest and longstanding symbolic attitudes as determinants of (1) voters' attitudes toward government policy on four controversial issues (unemployment, national health insurance, busing, and law and order), and (2) issue voting concerning those policy areas. In general, we found the various self-interest measures to have very little effect in determining either policy preferences or voting behavior. In contrast, symbolic attitudes (liberal or conservative ideology, party identification, and racial prejudice) had major effects. Nor did self-interest play much of a role in creating “issue publics” that were particularly attentive to, informed about, or constrained in their attitudes about these specific policy issues. Conditions that might facilitate more self-interested political attitudes, specifically having privatistic (rather than public-regarding) personal values, perceiving the policy area as a major national problem, being high in political sophistication, perceiving the government as responsive, or having a sense of political efficacy, were also explored, but had no effect. The possibility that some long-term self-interest might be reflected in either group membership or in symbolic attitudes themselves is examined. While such possibilities cannot be definitively rejected, problems with interpreting standard demographic findings as self-interest effects are discussed.

Amazon's Mechanical Turk A New Source of Inexpensive, Yet High-Quality, Data?

Abstract: Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is a relatively new website that contains the major elements required to conduct research: an integrated participant compensation system; a large participant pool; and a streamlined process of study design, participant recruitment, and data collection. In this article, we describe and evaluate the potential contributions of MTurk to psychology and other social sciences. Findings indicate that (a) MTurk participants are slightly more demographically diverse than are standard Internet samples and are significantly more diverse than typical American college samples; (b) participation is affected by compensation rate and task length, but participants can still be recruited rapidly and inexpensively; (c) realistic compensation rates do not affect data quality; and (d) the data obtained are at least as reliable as those obtained via traditional methods. Overall, MTurk can be used to obtain high-quality data inexpensively and rapidly.

The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter outlines the two basic routes to persuasion. One route is based on the thoughtful consideration of arguments central to the issue, whereas the other is based on the affective associations or simple inferences tied to peripheral cues in the persuasion context. This chapter discusses a wide variety of variables that proved instrumental in affecting the elaboration likelihood, and thus the route to persuasion. One of the basic postulates of the Elaboration Likelihood Model—that variables may affect persuasion by increasing or decreasing scrutiny of message arguments—has been highly useful in accounting for the effects of a seemingly diverse list of variables. The reviewers of the attitude change literature have been disappointed with the many conflicting effects observed, even for ostensibly simple variables. The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) attempts to place these many conflicting results and theories under one conceptual umbrella by specifying the major processes underlying persuasion and indicating the way many of the traditionally studied variables and theories relate to these basic processes. The ELM may prove useful in providing a guiding set of postulates from which to interpret previous work and in suggesting new hypotheses to be explored in future research.

Illusion and well-being: a social psychological perspective on mental health

Abstract: Many prominent theorists have argued that accurate perceptions of the self, the world, and the future are essential for mental health. Yet considerable research evidence suggests that overly positive selfevaluations, exaggerated perceptions of control or mastery, and unrealistic optimism are characteristic of normal human thought. Moreover, these illusions appear to promote other criteria of mental health, including the ability to care about others, the ability to be happy or contented, and the ability to engage in productive and creative work. These strategies may succeed, in large part, because both the social world and cognitive-processing mechanisms impose niters on incoming information that distort it in a positive direction; negative information may be isolated and represented in as unthreatening a manner as possible. These positive illusions may be especially useful when an individual receives negative feedback or is otherwise threatened and may be especially adaptive under these circumstances. Decades of psychological wisdom have established contact with reality as a hallmark of mental health. In this view, the well-adjusted person is thought to engage in accurate reality testing, whereas the individual whose vision is clouded by illusion is regarded as vulnerable to, if not already a victim of, mental illness. Despite its plausibility, this viewpoint is increasingly difficult to maintain (cf. Lazarus, 1983). A substantial amount of research testifies to the prevalence of illusion in normal human cognition (see Fiske& Taylor, 1984;Greenwald, 1980; Nisbett & Ross, 1980; Sackeim, 1983; Taylor, 1983). Moreover, these illusions often involve central aspects of the self and the environment and, therefore, cannot be dismissed as inconsequential. In this article, we review research suggesting that certain illusions may be adaptive for mental health and well-being. In particular, we examine evidence that a set of interrelated positive illusions—namely, unrealistically positive self-evaluations, exaggerated perceptions of control or mastery, and unrealistic optimism—can serve a wide variety of cognitive, affective, and social functions. We also attempt to resolve the following para

A meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory.

Abstract: The present article presents a meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. With 713 independent samples from 515 studies, the meta-analysis finds that intergroup contact typically reduces intergroup prejudice. Multiple tests indicate that this finding appears not to result from either participant selection or publication biases, and the more rigorous studies yield larger mean effects. These contact effects typically generalize to the entire outgroup, and they emerge across a broad range of outgroup targets and contact settings. Similar patterns also emerge for samples with racial or ethnic targets and samples with other targets. This result suggests that contact theory, devised originally for racial and ethnic encounters, can be extended to other groups. A global indicator of Allport's optimal contact conditions demonstrates that contact under these conditions typically leads to even greater reduction in prejudice. Closer examination demonstrates that these conditions are best conceptualized as an interrelated bundle rather than as independent factors. Further, the meta-analytic findings indicate that these conditions are not essential for prejudice reduction. Hence, future work should focus on negative factors that prevent intergroup contact from diminishing prejudice as well as the development of a more comprehensive theory of intergroup contact.

The WEIRDest People in the World

Abstract: Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior in the world's top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Researchers - often implicitly - assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that these "standard subjects" are as representative of the species as any other population. Are these assumptions justified? Here, our review of the comparative database from across the behavioral sciences suggests both that there is substantial variability in experimental results across populations and that WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species - frequent outliers. The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. The findings suggest that members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans. Many of these findings involve domains that are associated with fundamental aspects of psychology, motivation, and behavior - hence, there are no obvious a priori grounds for claiming that a particular behavioral phenomenon is universal based on sampling from a single subpopulation. Overall, these empirical patterns suggests that we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions of human nature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity. We close by proposing ways to structurally re-organize the behavioral sciences to best tackle these challenges.