Posts tagged review
CU Boulder study: More power leads to more dehumanization (No sh*t, Sherlock)
Mar 6th
“I think a lot of us have the intuition that some powerful people can be pretty dehumanizing,” said Jason Gwinn, a doctoral student in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and lead author of the study. “But our goal was to test if power, when randomly assigned to ordinary students, would have that effect. That would say something about power itself rather than about the sort of people who have the drive to take power.”
The researchers enlisted about 300 CU-Boulder students taking an introductory psychology course to participate in two experiments. In the first experiment, students were assigned to be either a manager or an assistant for a mock hiring task. The assistants were asked to review resumes for an open job and then list the strengths and weaknesses of each applicant. The managers then reviewed the list made by their assistants and made a final decision about whom to hire.
In the second experiment, participants were asked to play a game and were assigned to be either an allocator or a recipient. For the game, one allocator and one recipient were tasked with splitting a pot of money. The allocator, the higher-power role, made the first offer, suggesting how the money be split. If the recipient, the lower-power role, accepted the offer, both people received their share of the money. If the recipient declined the offer, neither person received any of the money.
At the end of each experiment, the participants were asked to rate each other on 40 traits. The result was that students in higher-power roles assigned fewer uniquely human traits to the students in lower-power roles than vice versa. Examples of traits considered to be more uniquely human, as defined and tested in a 2007 Australian study, include being ambitious, imaginative, frivolous and insecure. Examples of traits that are less uniquely human — those that could be used to describe a pet as well as a friend, for example — include being passive, timid, friendly and shy.
The question of whether power leads to dehumanization has part of its roots in the renowned Stanford Prison Experiment conducted in 1971. Twenty-four male students were randomly assigned to play the role of either inmate or guard in a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. During the study, the guards were psychologically abusive to the prisoners, many of whom passively accepted the abuse, despite the fact that the participants knew that they were all students at the same elite university.
Though the guards were described as dehumanizing the prisoners, the term “dehumanization” was well defined at the time and the experiment was not designed to allow the researchers to confidently state that it was the increase in power that lead to the dehumanization. By contrast, Gwinn’s study, now available online, was designed specifically to test the relationship between power and dehumanization.
Gwinn cautions that the researchers cannot yet say whose perspective is being changed by the power differential imposed on participants in the CU study. It’s possible that being in a position of less power makes a person see those in power as more human rather than the other way around, or that both people are affected.
“We haven’t pinned down why this happens,” Gwinn said. “We don’t know whose perception is being affected.”
Charles Judd and Bernadette Park, both professors in CU-Boulder’s Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, co-authored the study.
Boulder Chief of Police: Department supports charges against officers who killed elk; apologizes to community
Jan 18th
As you know, Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett has announced that his office will file charges against the two Boulder Police officers involved in the shooting death of the Mapleton elk on January 1st. The officers face three felony charges in addition to a number of misdemeanor charges.
The Boulder Police Department fully supports the decision of the district attorney to pursue charges in this case. It’s the right decision, and the Department has assisted and cooperated fully with the Colorado Division of Parks & Wildlife and the Boulder County District Attorney’s Office.
Officers Sam Carter and Brent Curnow have been on paid administrative leave since January 3rd, while the case has been investigated, as dictated by department policy and contractual due process.
Effective immediately, I have placed Sam Carter and Brent Curnow on unpaid administrative leave.
We realize that this case has hit a sensitive nerve in the Boulder community, and I want to reassure our community that I understand their concerns and that I intend to hold these officers accountable for their actions.
While the criminal investigation has (mostly) wrapped up, there is still an internal personnel investigation underway at the Boulder Police Department. This investigation is different and separate from the criminal investigation, and has to do with whether these officers may have violated rules, policies or procedures. We needed to proceed cautiously with the internal investigation because we didn’t want to interfere with the criminal investigation. The Boulder Police Department provided some of the evidence for the criminal case and cooperated fully with investigators.
We hope to move quickly now to complete our internal personnel investigation. Once that is finished, there is a review process that includes a combined community and department member review panel which will provide recommendations to me on the final disposition. If the allegations are sustained, the discipline for such allegations – including being untruthful – would typically be termination from employment.
We apologize for this unfortunate incident. We want our community to know that we take their concerns very seriously and that we’re working hard to correct this situation.
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Boulder County Commissioners reject agreement with Denver Water Board on the proposed Gross Reservoir expansion
Jan 8th
After hearing to more than six hours of public testimony over a span of two public hearings – Dec. 20 and Jan. 7 – and receiving more than 200 written communications from Boulder County residents, the Board of County Commissioners unanimously decided not to support the IGA.
The intergovernmental agreement was signed by the Denver Water Board on December 19, 2012, and would have served in lieu of review of the reservoir expansion project under the Boulder County Land Use Code. The IGA had been negotiated by the staffs of Boulder County and Denver Water as a way to address the impacts of the project and to define appropriate mitigation measures, but ultimately didn’t go far enough in protecting the quality of life for residents in the area in the opinion of the County Commissioners.
While they acknowledged some benefits that would result from the proposed agreement, the County Commissioners indicated that the terms of the proposed agreement did not do enough to protect the health, safety and welfare of their constituents or the environment and that they thought it was premature to enter into any agreement before the release of the Final Environmental Impact Statement, which is due later in 2013.
Following the release of the final EIS, the commissioners will work with county staff on a thorough response to the findings, and continue to work with members of the public to address ongoing concerns about the impacts of the proposed project.
Visit www.bouldercounty.org/property/build/pages/moffatgrossiga.aspx for more information. To view the archived video from last night’s hearing, visit the hearings page and select the business meeting for Jan. 7 at www.bouldercounty.org/gov/meetings/pages/hearings.aspx.
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