Majorityrights Central > Category: Psychology

So Natalie Shook, a young and not unattractive, not-Jewish psychologist at Ohio State University, specialises in ...

exploring prejudice reduction through intergroup contact. Specifically, I am interested in how automatically activated racial attitudes are affected by successful interracial relationships, and vice versa.

Natalie may or may not be room-sharing with her gris eminence, Russell Fazio, but she certainly likes to work with him.  His research ...

centers upon the study of attitudes. ... We have proposed a model of attitudes as associations in memory between the attitude object and one’s evaluation of the object. Our concern has been with the likelihood that such evaluations will be activated automatically from memory upon the individual’s encountering the attitude object. ... In particular, the research has focused upon (a) the influence that accessible attitudes have upon attention, categorization, judgment and, ultimately, behavior, and (b) the functional value of such attitudes. The implications of this view of attitudes are currently being examined in the domain of prejudice. The role of both automatic and more motivated, controlled processes, on race-related judgments and behavior are under investigation. We also are conducting research on the implicit development of attitudes via classical conditioning, attitude formation via exploratory behavior, and implicit measures of attitude.

So what these intellectual lovebirds are setting out to do is prove that white prejudice is learned and can be unlearned.  Their latest two papers, which relate to studies conducted in 2001 and 2002, are:-

Shook, N. J., & Fazio, R. H. (2008). Roommate relationships: A comparison of interracial and same-race living situations. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 11, 425-437.

Shook, N. J., & Fazio, R. H. (2008). Interracial roommate relationships: An experimental test of the contact hypothesis. Psychological Science, 19, 717-723.

However, ISO’s press office marketed the Shook-Fazio papers thus:-

READ MORE...

This morning the Telegraph ran a short news feature titled, “People who believe in God are more helpful.

Scientists say that those who frequently pray and attend religious services report more charitable donations and volunteer work

However the review, published in the journal Science, does suggest that believers acting for the greater good may be doing so to enhance their own reputation among friends and acquaintances.

In one experiment, volunteers who had been told that a dead student’s ghost had been seen in the experiment room cheated less on a test than those who had not.

In another, children who were told that a fictional character called Princess Alice was watching them were less likely to disobey their instructions.

In Science, the authors wrote: “These findings are consistent with the idea that outward evidence of religious devotion may engender more trust.”

The evidence also suggests that trust in other members of a religious group is higher when those groups involve a greater degree of commitment, for example in stricter forms of religious belief, such as Mormonism.

The authors say that the research supports the idea that in early societies religion helped to foster social cohesion by encouraging cooperation.

The original paper is titled The Origin and Evolution of Religious Prosociality and is by Norenzayan and Shariff, Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia.  The abstract reads:-

READ MORE...

Richard D. Fuerle

The Flynn Effect, discovered by Richard Lynn (Lynn, 1977) and documented and named for James R. Flynn (Flynn, 1984, 1987), is a world-wide increase in IQ scores of about 3 IQ points per decade.  That is, people today score higher on an old IQ test than people the same age did who took the same test decades earlier.

By suggesting the malleability of intelligence and the possibility that tweaking the environment might increase it, the Flynn Effect has raised the hopes of egalitarians, who believe that “all the races are equal in intelligence” (United Nations, 1950;  also Flynn, 1999) and fervently want to erase the black-white IQ gap.  Unfortunately, the cause of the Flynn Effect has not yet been pinpointed and, until it is, a program cannot be designed that will put the cause of the Flynn Effect to work increasing black intelligence.  Moreover, as many experts suspect, the Flynn Effect may be only an increase in IQ scores, not an increase in real intelligence (i.e., the genetic potential for high intelligence), which may actually be declining (Lynn, 1996).

A possible explanation for the increase in IQ scores is that children today mature sooner, both physically and mentally, than children did decades ago (Sarich, 1999).  Today’s children score higher, not because their real intelligence has increased, but because their brains are more mature.  A 10 year old today has a brain that has grown faster and has more neural connections than the brain of a 10 year old who lived, say, 50 years ago.  Because today’s 10 year olds have brains that, perhaps, 12 year olds had 50 years ago, they do better on an IQ test taken by 10 year olds 50 years ago.  Psychologists think they are comparing identical groups of children – 10 year olds to 10 year olds, but they are actually comparing apples and oranges – 10 year old brains to 12 year old brains.  Real intelligence has not increased, children just acquire it sooner, and fully mature people today may actually be less intelligent than fully mature people were decades ago.

READ MORE...

How gratifying when some geek researches an area of extreme and totally unacceptable male prejudice, and only ... confirms it.  Plus, in this case, an unexpected bonus.

From the Mail article, with apologies for the eggregious use of dishonest homosexual labels:-

Gay men are as bad as women at navigating, research has shown.  Both share the same poor sense of direction and rely on local landmarks to get around, a study suggests.  They are also slower to take in spatial information than heterosexual men.

... researchers say it is likely to make driving in a strange environment more challenging for gay men and women than for straight male motorists.

Psychologists at Queen Mary, University of London, conducted computer-based tests of spatial learning and memory on 140 volunteers recruited through advertisements in newspapers and magazines.  They showed that gay men, straight women and lesbians navigated in much the same way and shared the same weaknesses.  But there were also differences between gay and heterosexual men and straight and lesbian women.

The Queen Mary team, led by Dr Qazi Rahman, used virtual reality simulations of two common tests of spatial learning and memory developed at Yale University. In one,

... the Morris Water Maze (MWM) test, volunteers were placed in a “virtual pool” and had to “swim” through a maze to find a hidden submerged platform.  Cues in the form of pictures, doorways, a lamp, a bookcase and other landmarks were sited in different places.

The other task,

... the Radial Arm Maze test (RAM), involved finding “rewards” - musical tones - by exploring eight “arms” radiating out from a circular central junction. Four arms contained a reward and four did not, and participants had to avoid traversing an arm more than once.

READ MORE...

We never knew for sure whether it was real, what caused it or whether it was limited only to the left side of the curve.  But the Flynn Effect appears to be at the end of its days in Europe, at least.

This from the Times:-

WE ARE ABOUT AS SMART AS WE’RE GOING TO GET, SAYS IQ PIONEER
* Test Results are starting to level out
* Morality skills are the next step

It is a common refrain, repeated in response to every new television reality show and every bumper crop of school exam results: society is dumbing down. Scientists have long argued the opposite, pointing to the now widely accepted “Flynn effect”, which shows that over the past century average IQ scores have improved across the developed world, irrespective of class or creed.

Now the man who first observed this effect, the psychologist James Flynn, has made another observation: intelligence test scores have stopped rising.

READ MORE...

A subject that crops up pretty regularly at MR is the profound unsuitability of the standard left-right political spectrum, as expressed in the seating arrangements in revolutionary French parliamentary life and employed in the standard political compass.  The correlation of anarchism <> fascism and collectivism <> libertarianism simply cannot process, and so mischaracterises, radical-right or even fundamentally Conservative thinking.  Nowhere is that more true than with the very normal human characteristic of racial consciousness, and if you want to know why just visit the front page of politicalcompass.org where you can read:-

The idea was developed by a political journalist with a university counselling background, assisted by a professor of social history.  They’re indebted to people like Wilhelm Reich and Theodor Adorno for their ground-breaking work in this field.

There is a body of psychological research that affirms the conventional axes, as John Ray has often attested here.  I contend that this is prejudiced by the researchers’ own immersion in the liberal analysis.  They do not ask the questions that would test true radical-right motivation and represent it accurately.  The result is nothing more than a test of liberalism.

So, I wondered whether political orientation could be addressed by using a system that, from the outset, describes the radical right and allows the liberal sleepers to fall where they will.  It does not matter where (it would likely be bottom right, off the chart!).

READ MORE...

Science Daily reports that: “In addition to triggering a depression-like social withdrawal syndrome, repeated defeat by dominant animals leaves a mouse with an enduring “molecular scar” in its brain that could help to explain why depression is so difficult to cure”.  I suspect one of the reasons “boys will be boys” public school violence is so tolerated is the fact that to oppose it would be racist due to the racial differences in testosterone level, age of onset of pubescent muscle mass and general aggression level.  After all, those young white males are just getting their commupance for their ancestral guilt!  And gays are born—not made—too.  If you don’t believe me, just ask The Federal Government of the United States: “sexual pressure [in prisons—JAB] ushers, guides or shepherds the process of sexual awakening.”  And since black and hispanics rape white male prisoners more often than any other interracial assault category we might think of this as more social justice from the government’s institutions.  On the other hand, since the government is doing those “born gay” white males a favor by “awakening” their homosexual potential, perhaps the white males should be charged a therapy fee for their being “sexually pressured”.  As a matter of fact, young white school boys should probably pay for having their neurological development altered by black and hispanic thugs in their schools since this, too, is simply to “usher, guide or shepherd” their naturally submissive posture toward their racial superiors!

A lot of feminists like to blither about how they aren’t mature enough to raise a child until they are running a risk of Downs syndrome if not menopause. Rational people wonder how they could be so stupid but it may be a natural result of childlessness.

The upshot of pregnancy, Dr. Kinsley says, is a maternal brain changed forever in critical ways—not just different, but vastly improved.

Can you imagine a drug to produce the neurological enhancements of pregnancy?  A number of young women might choose to enhance their mental function thinking they needed that “competitive edge” to “get established in a career”.  Then, much to their dismay, they realize they are being stupid and stand a hope of choosing to have children before it is too late!  Who knows, they might even choose to drop the entire project of political correctness for the sham it is.  As such they might start voting more rationally but also start demanding characteristics of the sires of their children that made more sense.

READ MORE...