Betsy Levy Paluck

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Betsy Levy Paluck
Education Yale University (BS)
Yale University (PhD)
Scientific career
Fields
InstitutionsKahneman-Treisman Center for Behavioral Science & Policy, Princeton University
Website www.betsylevypaluck.com

Elizabeth (Betsy) Levy Paluck is a professor in the department of psychology and the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, where she also serves as deputy director of the Center for Behavioral Science & Policy. She is known for her work on prejudice, social norms and conflict reduction. She is best known for creating large-scale field experiments utilizing theoretical social psychology strategies and tools to formulate effective and practical methods for reducing conflict and discrimination. Due to her extensive work investigating the influences of the Rwandan genocide and her work with high school bullying, [1] [2] Paluck is considered a leading authority on field-tested methods of changing intolerant and aggressive social behavior. [3]

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In 2017, Paluck won the MacArthur Fellow Award, known as the "Genius Grant" for "[u]nraveling how social networks and norms influence our interactions with one another and identifying interventions that can change destructive behavior." [4]

Paluck has published over 50 academic papers [5] and has been profiled, quoted and interviewed in the New Yorker, [6] Slate, [7] NPR, [8] the Cut and various Psychology magazines. [9] [10] [11]

Advisory positions and distinctions

Select awards

Selected articles

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prejudice</span> Attitudes based on preconceived categories

Prejudice can be an affective feeling towards a person based on their perceived group membership. The word is often used to refer to a preconceived evaluation or classification of another person based on that person's perceived political affiliation, sex, gender, gender identity, beliefs, values, social class, age, disability, religion, sexuality, race, ethnicity, language, nationality, culture, complexion, beauty, height, body weight, occupation, wealth, education, criminality, sport-team affiliation, music tastes or other personal characteristics.

Group dynamics is a system of behaviors and psychological processes occurring within a social group, or between social groups. The study of group dynamics can be useful in understanding decision-making behaviour, tracking the spread of diseases in society, creating effective therapy techniques, and following the emergence and popularity of new ideas and technologies. These applications of the field are studied in psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, epidemiology, education, social work, leadership studies, business and managerial studies, as well as communication studies.

In-group favoritism, sometimes known as in-group–out-group bias, in-group bias, intergroup bias, or in-group preference, is a pattern of favoring members of one's in-group over out-group members. This can be expressed in evaluation of others, in allocation of resources, and in many other ways.

In psychology and other social sciences, the contact hypothesis suggests that intergroup contact under appropriate conditions can effectively reduce prejudice between majority and minority group members. Following WWII and the desegregation of the military and other public institutions, policymakers and social scientists had turned an eye towards the policy implications of interracial contact. Of them, social psychologist Gordon Allport united early research in this vein under intergroup contact theory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer Richeson</span> American psychologist

Jennifer A. Richeson is an American social psychologist who studies racial identity and interracial interactions. She is currently the Philip R. Allen Professor of Psychology at Yale University where she heads the Social Perception and Communication Lab. Prior to her appointment to the Yale faculty, Richeson was Professor of Psychology and African-American studies at Northwestern University. In 2015, she was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences. Richeson was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2022. Since 2021, she has been a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).

The minimal group paradigm is a method employed in social psychology. Although it may be used for a variety of purposes, it is best known as a method for investigating the minimal conditions required for discrimination to occur between groups. Experiments using this approach have revealed that even arbitrary distinctions between groups, such as preferences for certain paintings, or the color of their shirts, can trigger a tendency to favor one's own group at the expense of others, even when it means sacrificing in-group gain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henri Tajfel</span> Polish-born British psychologist (1919–1982)

Henri Tajfel was a Polish social psychologist, best known for his pioneering work on the cognitive aspects of prejudice and social identity theory, as well as being one of the founders of the European Association of Experimental Social Psychology.

Susan Tufts Fiske is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs in the Department of Psychology at Princeton University. She is a social psychologist known for her work on social cognition, stereotypes, and prejudice. Fiske leads the Intergroup Relations, Social Cognition, and Social Neuroscience Lab at Princeton University. Her theoretical contributions include the development of the stereotype content model, ambivalent sexism theory, power as control theory, and the continuum model of impression formation.

Realistic conflict theory (RCT), also known as realistic group conflict theory (RGCT), is a social psychological model of intergroup conflict. The theory explains how intergroup hostility can arise as a result of conflicting goals and competition over limited resources, and it also offers an explanation for the feelings of prejudice and discrimination toward the outgroup that accompany the intergroup hostility. Groups may be in competition for a real or perceived scarcity of resources such as money, political power, military protection, or social status.

Aversive racism is a theory proposed by Samuel L. Gaertner & John F. Dovidio (1986), according to which negative evaluations of racial/ethnic minorities are realized by a persistent avoidance of interaction with other racial and ethnic groups. As opposed to traditional, overt racism, which is characterized by overt hatred for and discrimination against racial/ethnic minorities, aversive racism is characterized by more complex, ambivalent expressions and attitudes nonetheless with prejudicial views towards other races. Aversive racism arises from unconscious personal beliefs taught during childhood. Subtle racist behaviors are usually targeted towards African Americans. Workplace discrimination is one of the best examples of aversive racism. Biased beliefs on how minorities act and think affect how individuals interact with minority members.

Self-categorization theory is a theory in social psychology that describes the circumstances under which a person will perceive collections of people as a group, as well as the consequences of perceiving people in group terms. Although the theory is often introduced as an explanation of psychological group formation, it is more accurately thought of as general analysis of the functioning of categorization processes in social perception and interaction that speaks to issues of individual identity as much as group phenomena. It was developed by John Turner and colleagues, and along with social identity theory it is a constituent part of the social identity approach. It was in part developed to address questions that arose in response to social identity theory about the mechanistic underpinnings of social identification.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stereotype</span> Generalized but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing

In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example, an expectation about the group's personality, preferences, appearance or ability. Stereotypes are sometimes overgeneralized, inaccurate, and resistant to new information, but can sometimes be accurate.

Mark Schaller is a psychological scientist who has made many contributions to the study of human psychology, particularly in areas of social cognition, stereotyping, evolutionary psychology, and cultural psychology. He is a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steven Neuberg</span>

Steven L. Neuberg is an experimental social psychologist whose research has contributed to topics pertaining to person perception, impression formation, stereotyping, prejudice, self-fulfilling prophecies, stereotype threat, and prosocial behavior. His research can be broadly characterized as exploring the ways motives and goals shape social thought processes; extending this approach, his later work employs the adaptationist logic of evolutionary psychology to inform the study of social cognition and social behavior. Neuberg has published over sixty scholarly articles and chapters, and has co-authored a multi-edition social psychology textbook with his colleagues Douglas Kenrick and Robert Cialdini.

There is a great deal of research on the factors that lead to the formation of prejudiced attitudes and beliefs. There is also a lot of research on the consequences of holding prejudiced beliefs and being the target of such beliefs. It is true that advances have been made in understanding the nature of prejudice. A consensus on how to end prejudice has yet to be established, but there are a number of scientifically examined strategies that have been developed in attempt to solve this social issue.

J. Nicole Shelton is an American psychologist and Stuart Professor of Psychology at Princeton University. Her research focuses on racial prejudice and interactions between whites and ethnic minorities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Intergroup relations</span>

Intergroup relations refers to interactions between individuals in different social groups, and to interactions taking place between the groups themselves collectively. It has long been a subject of research in social psychology, political psychology, and organizational behavior.

Felicia Pratto is a social psychologist known for her work on intergroup relations, dynamics of power, and social cognition. She is Professor of Psychological Sciences at the University of Connecticut. Pratto is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science.

Diversity ideology refers to individual beliefs regarding the nature of intergroup relations and how to improve them in culturally diverse societies. A large amount of scientific literature in social psychology studies diversity ideologies as prejudice reduction strategies, most commonly in the context of racial groups and interracial interactions. In research studies on the effects of diversity ideology, social psychologists have either examined endorsement of a diversity ideology as individual difference or used situational priming designs to activate the mindset of a particular diversity ideology. It is consistently shown that diversity ideologies influence how individuals perceive, judge and treat cultural outgroup members. Different diversity ideologies are associated with distinct effects on intergroup relations, such as stereotyping and prejudice, intergroup equality, and intergroup interactions from the perspectives of both majority and minority group members. Beyond intergroup consequences, diversity ideology also has implications on individual outcomes, such as whether people are open to cultural fusion and foreign ideas, which in turn predict creativity.

Sherry Jueyu Wu (Park) is an Assistant Professor of Management and Organizational Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Anderson School of Management. in Westwood, California and the 2020 recipient of the Cialdini Prize from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) for her field research in group dynamics and authority. She conducts large-scale field experiments concerning group influence over long-lasting behavioral changes and decision processes under resource disparity and social inequality.

References

  1. Paluck, Elizabeth Levy (2009). "Reducing intergroup prejudice and conflict using the media: A field experiment in Rwanda". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 96 (3): 574–587. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.315.5706 . doi:10.1037/a0011989. ISSN   1939-1315. PMID   19254104.
  2. Paluck, Elizabeth Levy; Shepherd, Hana (2012). "The salience of social referents: A field experiment on collective norms and harassment behavior in a school social network". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 103 (6): 899–915. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.303.3551 . doi:10.1037/a0030015. ISSN   1939-1315. PMID   22984831.
  3. "University of Chicago, Urban Labs".
  4. "MacArthur Fellows Program: Betsy Levy Paluck". MacArthur Foundation. 2017.
  5. "Google Scholar".
  6. Konnikova, Maria (October 11, 2017). "How Norms Change". The New Yorker.
  7. Pesca, Mike (Jan 9, 2018). "Radio Reconciliation Rwanda's radio programming fueled the country's infamous genocide in 1994". Slate.
  8. Singh, Maavi (Oct 11, 2017). "'Genius Grant' Winner Used A Soap Opera To Prove A Point About Prejudice". NPR.
  9. "One potential solution to bullying—social psychology". Phys.org. September 2, 2016.
  10. Brown, Robin Terry (December 2017). "4 questions for Betsy Levy Paluck". American Psychological Association.
  11. Nesterak, Evan (October 12, 2017). "Betsy Levy Paluck Named 2017 MacArthur Fellow". Behavioral Science magazine.
  12. "ideas 42: Advisors". Ideas 42.
  13. "EGAP Members". Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP).
  14. "Crime Lab: New York". University of Chicago.
  15. "2017 MacArthur Fellows". MacArthur Foundation.
  16. "SAGE Scholar Award". Society of Personality and Social Psychology.
  17. "Cialdini Prize for a Single Outstanding Contribution". Society for Personal and Social Psychology.