Faculty and Student Research with Underrepresented Populations
Most of the work in our lab examines how people's motivations
and goals in interpersonal relationships influence the
establishment and validation of social beliefs and attitudes, as
well as how sharing beliefs with others facilitates relationship
development and belief affirmation. Specifically, we have been
conducting studies that examine how affiliative and epistemic
motives in interpersonal contexts motivate individuals to adjust
their beliefs and attitudes to match those of their relationship
partners. Using this model, we seek to better understand how
conscious or non-conscious stereotypic beliefs are attenuated or
perpetuated through social interactions, and the ways in which
stereotypic beliefs displayed in social relationships influence
self-evaluations and behavior of targets of stereotypes.
Our main interests concern thought and feeling that exists
outside of conscious awareness or conscious control. In
particular, we examine (a) the predictors of correspondence
between implicit and explicit preferences, (b) the presence of
cognitive-affective consistency in implicit social cognition,
(c) the role of implicit attitudes, beliefs, and identity in
orientation toward math and science, (d) evidence for multiple
or dynamic implicit evaluative processes, (e) the consequences
of implicit attitudes and beliefs in judgment and behavior, and
(f) methodological developments for investigations of implicit
social cognition. These interests are applied in domains of
social import such as: ethnicity and prejudice, the
participation of women in science, and the relationship between
ideology, beliefs, and bias. For example, stereotypes that are
not endorsed may still influence judgments or behaviors through
their representation in memory even when those representations
are not consciously accessible. The qualities of implicit social
cognition provide a novel avenue of investigation into the
relationship among concepts like attitude, belief and identity,
and the freedoms and constraints that accompany membership in
social groups.
George W. Bush said in his inaugural speech "What binds
America is not blood or birth or soil but ideals that
move us beyond our backgrounds" and that "every
immigrant, by embracing these ideals, makes our country
more, not less, American." Indeed, cultural diversity
has long been an ideal of American society. My students
and I believe that cultural diversity is not only an
important social issue, but also a critical empirical
issue in psychology. Our research aims to identify the
conditions under which people feel understood or
misunderstood by others with different socio-cultural
backgrounds (e.g., race, nationality, religion, SES,
political orientation). Our long-term goal is to
discover the factors that enhance cross-cultural
understanding.
Dr. Melvin Wilson has an extensive background in academic,
research and training activities generally focused on
understanding contextual processes and outcomes in African
American families and service delivery in domestic violence
issues. His current research interests focus on young,
low-income, unwed, and nonresident fathers. In addition, he is
working on developing intervention protocols aimed at helping
young men meet family responsibilities and involvements..
Currently, Dr. Wilson is conducting a preventative intervention
evaluation study as part of a multi-site research project
designed to prevent the early-onset of conduct problems among
720 toddlers from low-income African American, Latino and
Caucasian families. This project is embedded within the Women,
Infants, and Children Nutritional Supplement Program (WIC)
Centers in urban (Pittsburgh, PA), suburban (Eugene, OR), and
rural (Charlottesville, VA) locations and emphasizes client
concerns as momentum toward behavior change in the intervention
model. A primary focus of this study is tailoring the
intervention to diverse cultural and geographic backgrounds of
families.
My focus is on Children and the law, and preventive interventions, especially in
juvenile justice. There are three major projects currently ongoing in my research
lab: 1) police perceptions of juvenile offenders and their interrogation,
especially in terms of developmental maturity and competence; 2) etiology of
serious juvenile female offenders and their relation to aggression and violence,
with special attendance to resiliency, risk and protective factors; and 3)
transitions from incarceration to community for juveniles, with special attention
to schools and families. All of these areas have especial relevance for ethnic
minority members. Moreover on all of these projects we work closely with police
departments, the Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice and
Charlottesville/Albemarle Legal Aid Social Justice Center.
My research is focused on personality and ability development and change, broadly
defined. I also work on the development of methods and techniques for measuring
and modeling such changes. Both long-term, developmental changes and shorter-term,
within person variability are of interest to my students and me. Our research of
the past decade or so has been conducted primarily on older adult samples.
My principal research focus in recent years has been the development of a
simplified sign communication system. This project is built on the findings of
earlier studies of sign language acquisition in children of deaf parents and of
motor and language processing in children with autistic disorder. Because nearly
half of all children with autistic disorder historically have failed to acquire
useful speech, many of these speech-limited children were taught signs to
communicate. In many instances, the signs taught were from American Sign Language
(ASL), the sign language used by Deaf persons in the United States. These signs,
however, often are difficult for children with autistic disorder to form and to
remember. In our efforts to devise a simpler sign system, we have tried to create
signs that are easy to form motorically and that are highly iconic (i.e., clearly
resemble the concepts for which they stand). Studies of sign learning and recall
involving college students have shown that these simplified signs are much more
readily learned and recalled than ASL signs. Preliminary findings with atypical
populations also indicate that our simplified signs are quite successfully
learned. Finally, although our initial goal was to develop an effective sign
communication system for children with autistic disorder and with mental
retardation, we now believe that the system may prove beneficial for a much wider
population (e.g., hearing-impaired elderly clients in nursing home facilities).
Kids' Lives, Families, and Friends (KLIFF) is our ongoing longitudinal study
examining the influence of social relationships, autonomy, and attachment
processes on adolescent development. In this study, we are working to learn more
about how young teenagers develop and manage friendships with their peers, and how
family relationships influence qualities of these peer relationships and teens
susceptibility to peer pressure.
Sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students were recruited from a local middle
school in Charlottesville, Virginia. We have 185 families in our study, with over
700 visits happening each year! The sample included 105 European American
adolescents, 49 African American, and 20 that identified themselves as
other/unspecified. The adolescents were of diverse family socioeconomic status,
with the parents reporting a mean family income of $40,000 - $59,9999.
Thirty-three percent of the parents reported a total family income above $60,000
while 44% of reported an income below $40,000.
In our first wave of our study, our teens came in with their parental figures and
later came in with their closest friend. Two additional friends of the teen also
provide additional information. We are currently in our sixth wave of study and
are eager to continue learning more about them as they grow older.
Data is collected about several different areas of adolescence, such as the
quality of family relationships, friendships, peer pressure, school achievement,
delinquency, and internalizing behaviors. The project uses a variety of
measurement methods, including self-reports, semi-structured interviews,
parent-reports, peer reports, and observations of family and peer interactions.
We are doing work on racial differences (specifically Black/White) on measures of anxiety.
My primary area of research is the investigation of ethnic
differences in triggers of anxiety. I am currently working on
two studies which examine the relationship between anxiety and
cardiovascular triggers in African Americans. The first study
uses a series of anxiety provocations to investigate whether
African Americans show a unique sensitivity to cardiovascular
arousal symptoms. The second study evaluates emotional
vulnerability resulting from threat appraisals of cardiovascular
arousal. Using a false feedback paradigm, the study assesses the
effects of receiving elevated heart rate feedback on subsequent
physiological, subjective, cognitive and behavioral markers of
anxiety.
A third study that I am conducting with Dr. Bethany Teachman is
an empirical evaluation of age-differences in threat appraisals
of bodily sensations and other anxious symptoms, using a measure
of interpretation bias and through a series of anxiety
provocations to trigger symptoms of anxious arousal. Our sample
includes young adults (ages 18-35) and older adults (ages 60-85).
I study the psychology of prejudice and intergroup relations
from the perspective of members of both stigmatized and
nonstigmatized social groups. Three interrelated questions guide
my research: 1) How can we optimize intergroup contact? 2) How
can the stigmatized and nonstigmatized minimize the consequences
of discrimination? and 3) How do individual differences in
perceptions of prejudice and identification influence intergroup
attitudes and ideologies? In each area I attempt to examine
important theoretical issues while addressing significant
practical problems.
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