Scott Lilienfeld is professor of psychology at Emory University. Here, he talks about his 2016 article evaluating the psychological literature on microaggressions and his 2017 article about revoking the Goldwater rule. Scott is an Association for Psychological Science fellow, and he has published numerous studies in personality psychology, social psychology, political psychology, and clinical psychology. He also has an interest in debunking popular myths. His popular books include Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience and 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology.



Timeline:

1:06 The history behind Scott’s micro-aggressions critique

7:01 Two big weaknesses in research studies

15:23 Real-world implications

20:05 Reactions to the article

26:05 The Goldwater Rule, and revoking it in 2017

 

You can learn more Scott Lilienfeld at his website. 

A gated copy of his paper on micro-aggressions, entitled “Microaggressions: Strong claims, inadequate evidence” is here.

And it is summarized in this blog post by Musa Al-Gharbi. 

His paper on the Goldwater is here.

Selected Quote:
“One big criticism concerns the nature of the construct of micro-aggressions itself. Do we understand what it is? And one of the points I raise is that even though there’s something there, it’s so vague and so nebulous, it could, in principle, include almost anything that could offend almost anyone. And I think that’s part of the problem. It lends itself to too much abuse, too much misunderstanding.“
 



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