Implications of research staff demographics for psychological science

Serena Does*, N Ellemers, J. F. Dovidio, Jasmine B. Norman, Avital Mentovich, R. vander Lee, P. Goff

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

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Abstract

Long-standing research traditions in psychology have established the fundamental impact of social categories, such as race and gender, on people’s perceptions of themselves and others, as well as on general human cognition and behavior. However, there is a general tendency to ignore research staff demographics (e.g., researchers’ race and gender) in research development and research reports. Variation in research staff demographics can exert systematic and scientifically informative influences on results from psychological research. Consequently, research staff demographics need to be considered, studied, and/or reported, along with how these demographics were allowed to vary across participants or conditions (e.g., random assignment, matched with participant demographics, or included as a factor in the experimental design). In addition to providing an overview of multidisciplinary evidence of research staff demographics effects, it is discussed how research staff demographics might influence research findings through (a) ingroup versus outgroup effects, (b) stereotype and (implicit) bias effects, and (c) priming and social tuning effects. Finally, an overview of recommended considerations is included (see Appendix) to help illustrate how to systematically incorporate relevant research staff demographics in psychological science. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)639-650
Number of pages12
JournalAmerican Psychologist
Volume73
Issue number5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2018

Keywords

  • Demographics
  • Experimenter effects
  • Generalizability
  • Intergroup processes
  • Validity

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