Two recent opinion pieces provide some interesting perspective on topics we have discussed recently in Social Psychology class: implicit bias and social drift. Implicit bias is the ways we are influenced to judge other people based on baises we are completely unaware of. It has influence in many areas of law and decision making from police shootings to suspect lineups to jury and judge decisions. Adam Benforado is a law professor at Drexel University:
With the aid of psychology, we see there’s a whole host of seemingly extraneous forces influencing behavior and producing systematic distortions. But they remain hidden because they don’t fit into our familiar legal narratives.
via Flawed Humans, Flawed Justice – NYTimes.com.
We also talked about social drift in Abnormal Psychology. Nicholas Christof has an excellent opinion piece summarizing a lot of research on the relationships between poverty and mental health (among other health problems):
If you’re battling mental health problems, or grow up with traumas like domestic violence (or seeing your brother shot dead), you’re more likely to have trouble in school, to self-medicate with drugs or alcohol, to have trouble in relationships.“There’s a strong association between poverty and low mental health,” notes Johannes Haushofer, a psychologist at Princeton University.
A second line of research has shown that economic stress robs us of cognitive bandwidth. Worrying about bills, food or other problems, leaves less capacity to think ahead or to exert self-discipline. So, poverty imposes a mental tax.