User:Snufkinjustin/Jennifer Richeson

Jennifer A. Richeson (born September 12, 1972) is an American

Richeson became an assistant professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, in 2000. She was a visiting fellow at Stanford University's Research Institute for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. In 2005, she moved to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where she held appointments in the Department of Psychology and Department of African American Studies (by courtesy) and was a faculty fellow of the Institute for Policy Research and the Center on Social Disparities and Health.^[6][7] She was appointed as the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Endowed Chair between 2013 and 2016.^[6] She joined the faculty at Yale University in 2016, where she is the Philip R. Allen Professor of Psychology and Director of the Social Perception and Communication Lab.^[8][9] She is endeavoring in the translation of empirical research into the practical application of knowledge. For example, she is currently the faculty fellow of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University ^[10] and the affiliated external scholar of the Stone Center on Socioeconomic Inequality in the City University of New York.^[11] She also serves as an executive committee member on the Societal Experts Action Network,^[12] which is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Richeson also writes opinion pieces and commentaries on topics related to race. As a former fellow of the

Richeson is recognized for her work examining the psychological phenomena of cultural diversity, social group memberships, dynamics of race and racism, and the course of interracial interactions.^[2][27] She and her research laboratory at Yale work on three broad themes related to cultural diversity, namely, the perception and reasoning about intergroup inequality, the navigation of diverse environments, and the experiences of discrimination.^[9]

Perception and reasoning about inequality

Richeson and her lab revealed the myth and narratives in society about racial progress as something that can be automatically and inevitably achieved. In examining the factors sustaining such narratives, they found that a belief in a just world and racially diverse social network was associated with the overestimation of economic and racial equality between Black and White individuals. Results from other endeavors of her lab suggested that the exposure to inequalities may motivate the support of policies in redressing inequalities in society.

Regarding how the individual responds to the information about inequalities, Richeson revealed two factors that shape our response, our beliefs about the nature of racism and the consciousness of the consequence of racism. She and her team found that individuals with a more structural understanding of racism were more likely to respond to the information about inequalities and support policies in reducing the inequalities. People engaged in discrimination that brought from implicit or unconscious belief, on the other hand, maybe deemed less accountable for their own actions.^[9]

Navigation of diverse environments 

In the prevailing notion about the states marching towards a “majority-minority” nation, Richeson and the lab have explored the anticipated threat that may bring to the current status of White individuals. Richeson's more recent work on the effects of demographics on political attitudes – in which studies of politically independent white Americans revealed increasingly conservative political attitudes with increasing awareness of declining white population share – has been widely reported in the media as significant for the future of American national politics.^{[28][29][30][31]}

Richeson's research makes use of neuroimaging methodologies in examining the dynamics of interracial interactions. Her work in this area has been described as sophisticated and as moving past descriptive uses of imaging to test real hypotheses.

Richeson and her lab built on this premise that taking a third-person or distanced point of view when encountering stressors can effectively reduce its negative effects on mental and physical health. They suggesting a redemption narrative that can enable individuals to alleviate the negative impact of discrimination.[36]

Richeson also examined the experience of group-based discrimination and its impact on the relations with members of other stigmatized groups. It is found that the salience of discrimination would bring more positive relations with groups within the same dimension of identity (e.g., among racial minorities), yet it would also bring about negative attitudes with groups in a different dimension of identity (e.g., racial versus sexual minorities). Richeson and her lab discovered ways to bridge the cross-identity dimensions by recognizing the similarities of the discrimination encountered by different stigmatized groups. She believed that it could be helpful in promoting the stigma-based solidarity, and in turn, reducing the negative attitudes among stigmatized groups.^[9]

External links

• The OpEd Project – "an initiative to expand public debate and to increase the number of women in thought leadership positions."