This is a really disturbing and yet, so intuitively predictable article about what happens when you are a Black, Brown, and/or Female manager in your workplace. While past research has blamed the high achiever for acting as gatekeepers and keeping other minority members out of positions of leadership—today’s research has a more empathic explanation for why that gatekeeping happens. Essentially, these researchers say that successful minority managers “know it could spell disaster for their own careers” if they support diverse candidates for management positions. Regardless of how many male or White managers promote the candidates most similar to themselves, it

Think back to your Psychology 101 class in college or an upper level Social Psychology undergraduate course and you will probably remember the famous case of Kitty Genovese who was murdered in a brutal attack outside her Queens, NY apartment in 1964. According to psychology textbooks, at least 38 onlookers witnessed the attack (mostly through hearing her screams) and yet no one came to her aid or called the police. Psychologists labeled this “seeing but not helping” phenomenon as “the bystander effect”. Essentially, they say, the presence of others observing someone who needs help, diminishes the likelihood that any individual

In voir dire and jury selection, seemingly small differences can help you make decisions that are good for your case facts. Recently, the Pew Research Center put out a survey showing that gun owners who are also NRA members have a “unique set of views and experiences”. Pew says something we love—and that we’ve said for decades—demographics don’t really help to choose a jury. “While the demographic profile of NRA members is similar to that of other gun owners, their political views, the way they use their firearms, and their attitudes about gun policy differ significantly from gun owners who

On July 10, 2017, we published the first part of this post on combatting mistrust in science. As we continued to read, we decided there was more for you to know about this topic so here’s a bit more information. We wanted to share a couple of ways scientists shoot themselves in the foot when it comes to maintaining credibility. First, they think themselves more rational than the rest of us and second, their over-the-top advocacy for science backfires by making them seem like “just another partisan group”. In research speak, this is an example of scientists being only human,

Perhaps we should lower our standards on what sources are good for an entire blog post as these combination posts seem to increasingly inhabit our blog. We simply run across a lot of things that we want you to know about but we don’t want to repeat what you can find elsewhere. So, sit back and click some links and see some of the stuff we thought too interesting to pass up! Cross-examining a psychiatrist or a psychologist (aka shrinks) Much has been written on the intricacies of cross-examining mental health professionals and a quick internet search will give you

I was in graduate school in the early 1980s when Carol Gilligan’s book (In a Different Voice) came out and we thought we were quite amusing when we always voiced the title in a high-pitched tone. Thirty-five years later, we have research telling us we really may pitch our voices differently when speaking to someone we perceive as having higher status. Today’s researchers wondered if how dominant or prestigious the person to whom one was speaking was perceived to be, would influence voice pitch in undergraduates. They planned a simulated interview task and wrote up brief descriptions of the photos

You’ve likely seen a lot about the high level of mistrust of science in the past few years. Not everyone believes there actually is a science mistrust issue (see this post from Dan Kahan at Cultural Cognition blog) but for a non-problem it certainly gets a lot of coverage! First, here’s a bit of review of a small sampling of the recent “nobody trusts science” literature. Pew Research published a report in 2015 on which areas science has increasing difficulty being seen as credible. While Pew is objectively reporting survey data, many of the “science mistrust” stories are written by

Here’s another post on a variety of things too good to bypass completely, that we didn’t want to use for entire posts. You will see, as before, these combination posts are educational and help you become a scintillating conversationalist. At least we think so. We’ve worked at lot in East Texas [and elsewhere] on patent cases so you might think the recent TC Heartland decision would make us mourn the end of an era [see the coverage at SCOTUS blog]. Instead, it’s a chance to return to my home state (Delaware) for IP cases more often than I do them

Just this week I saw the Gallup survey on trust in the US government to protect citizens against terrorism and knew immediately we needed to blog about the survey here. While I’ve seen people say that politicians will go to war for more favorable showings on polls, in focus groups, or in the ballot box—I never really understood how it could be used well until the last two seasons of House of Cards, a [fictional] Netflix show. Here’s just one way fear was manipulated on House of Cards. And now, the proof that this is not just made for TV

Here’s another post combining the things we’ve been collecting to blog about and presented together so we can clear the desk off with newer stuff! “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” At least, this is the best known quotation of the 19th century British politician Lord Acton. But in 2017, we have an article courtesy of The Atlantic that tells us power does more than corrupt, it actually damages your brain’s abilities that helped you rise to power in the first place. It’s called the “power paradox”: once you have power, you lose some of the skills