In his provocative article, Cesario challenges the role of experiments in understanding group discrepancies. He is on solid footing when discussing the artificiality of experiments and the field's overconfidence in its gold-standard status as a research tool. His observations are particularly poignant concerning “can-versus-does” interpretations – simply showing that X can predict Y does not mean that it does so in the real world. These broader methodological concerns, about experiments generally, merit consideration.
Yet his main thesis seems seriously out of touch with the socio-cultural realities and challenges of the twenty-first century, part of a growing trend. As noted by Hodson (Reference Hodson2021), the contemporary prejudice field currently risks straying off course given three simultaneous trends: (1) vocalized concerns about concept creep and a desire to narrow the operationalization of what constitutes prejudicial attitudes and behavior (e.g., Haslam, Reference Haslam2016); (2) psychological concept expansion to include right-wing conceptualizations of “morality” (i.e., ingroup loyalty) (e.g., Haidt & Graham, Reference Haidt and Graham2007), plus the dismissal of racial/gender microaggressions as merely subjective and determined by the victim; and (3) declarations of prejudice equivalency (Brandt & Crawford, Reference Brandt and Crawford2020), such as anti-Black prejudice being equated with anti-banker prejudice, that fail to recognize inherent power and status differentials between groups. These trends risk rendering psychology irrelevant to understanding and repairing societal problems. Cesario's paper represents a fourth column of concern. His ideas would further prioritize the dominant White majority and negate voices from disadvantaged social groups. His advice, if heeded, would delegitimize decades of careful and methodological research on prejudice and discrimination against disadvantaged groups. To what purpose?
At play is control over the narrative concerning the very nature of prejudice – what prejudice is. Tellingly, Cesario calls for the field to listen more to the police to understand police shootings, with no mention of listening more to victims (or examining societal factors). At the same time, he paints researchers, mostly (left-leaning) professors, as tricksters who wield omnipotent powers to create artificial worlds that enable them to shape the nature of prejudice. Rather than studying the wider culture wars, this discourse risks playing into them, representing a strong pushback that would prioritize the police academy over the scholarly academy regarding epistemic legitimacy. Worryingly, he objects to the very idea of experiments as tools to investigate intergroup inequalities. Here, Cesario misunderstands social psychologists' efforts, who, in unpacking the complexities of prejudice, seek to isolate causes and to discover whether “X” can fuel prejudice (not to dictate that X is the cause of existing inequalities).
Cesario's case would be more compelling if field experiments and non-experimental work (e.g., archival) contradicted experimental findings. In classic laboratory hiring experiments, qualifications are carefully controlled and made equivalent while group-identifying information (e.g., race and gender) is varied systematically. Using this method, bias against a target can be confidently isolated as group-based or prejudicial. Notably, field experiments show that Whites (vs. Blacks) receive 36% more interview callbacks for interviews (Quillian, Pager, Hexel, & Midtøen, Reference Quillian, Pager, Hexel and Midtøen2017) and 145% more job offers (Quillian, Lee, & Oliver, Reference Quillian, Lee and Oliver2020), consistent with laboratory findings. Large-scale analyses of recruitment platforms, using artificial intelligence to analyze virtually all applicant qualities rather than a single dimension, reveal employment recruiters being 4–19% less likely to contact minority/immigrant candidates relative to Whites (Hangartner, Kopp, & Siegentaler, Reference Hangartner, Kopp and Siegentaler2021). In terms of policing, large-scale archival analyses of patrol assignments show White (vs. non-White) officers more likely to stop, arrest, and use force against Black (vs. White) citizens, amplified in non-White neighborhoods (Ba, Knox, Mummolo, & Rivera, Reference Ba, Knox, Mummolo and Rivera2021). And nationally representative datasets reveal that White police officers, relative to the general population, view Black people as violent, express greater racial resentment, and believe that anti-Black discrimination is an historical not contemporary problem (LeCount, Reference LeCount2017). Data from the real-world are thus congruent with those from the experimental paradigm that Cesario criticizes. As such, the bar for disqualifying experiments should be reasonably high, and calls to abolish this methodology should be greeted with healthy skepticism.
His case would also be more compelling if experimentalists failed to consider and contemplate boundary conditions, such as participant type (student vs. police), training/experience effects, cognitive load, and so on. Researchers not only study these nuances but also express clear caution and thoughtfulness. In their review, Payne and Correll (Reference Payne and Correll2020) conclude that “while an officer's performance on a laboratory task may provide valuable information, it cannot tell us whether race actually biases decisions about the use of force when police officers encounter suspects in the real world” (p. 36). Cesario's case that experiments create realities incongruent with the real world, and that central researchers extrapolate wildly from laboratory to the real world, are straw-man arguments. Similarly, his calls to consider the bigger context in police shootings would be compelling if he included the macro-level context, including its political and social structures, rather than his limited call to consider the specific micro-level situation (e.g., a specific shooter incident and its lead-up). He wants more information, but not too much.
Cesario's argument fits with a wider trend in academia to control the what-is-prejudice narrative and who gets to decide. As evidenced in the #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo social movements, disadvantaged and marginalized groups are pleading for more voice at the table, not less. Psychologists express related concerns about the “extreme” and “overwhelming” Whiteness of psychology (see Dupree & Kraus, Reference Dupree and Krausin press; Roberts, Bereket-Shavit, Dollins, Goldie, & Mortenson, Reference Roberts, Bereket-Shavit, Dollins, Goldie and Mortenson2020). In a culturally insensitive move, Cesario asks our discipline to direct more causal blame toward shooting victims and troubled children in classrooms, given their supposedly violent and undisciplined natures, for inviting their fates at the hands of the powerful.
As academics, we should be mindful that our ideas and work can be both used and misused. Defence attorneys for George Floyd's killing or the January 6th, 2021 Capitol Hill insurrection will appreciate the intellectual scaffolding these new academic trends offer to the Alt-Right, white supremacists, and those seeking to undo social change and justice. Our discipline lies at a critical crossroads; we can encourage epistemic inclusivity and incorporate more non-White voices, or we can become irrelevant (or detrimental) to the discipline of social studies.
In his provocative article, Cesario challenges the role of experiments in understanding group discrepancies. He is on solid footing when discussing the artificiality of experiments and the field's overconfidence in its gold-standard status as a research tool. His observations are particularly poignant concerning “can-versus-does” interpretations – simply showing that X can predict Y does not mean that it does so in the real world. These broader methodological concerns, about experiments generally, merit consideration.
Yet his main thesis seems seriously out of touch with the socio-cultural realities and challenges of the twenty-first century, part of a growing trend. As noted by Hodson (Reference Hodson2021), the contemporary prejudice field currently risks straying off course given three simultaneous trends: (1) vocalized concerns about concept creep and a desire to narrow the operationalization of what constitutes prejudicial attitudes and behavior (e.g., Haslam, Reference Haslam2016); (2) psychological concept expansion to include right-wing conceptualizations of “morality” (i.e., ingroup loyalty) (e.g., Haidt & Graham, Reference Haidt and Graham2007), plus the dismissal of racial/gender microaggressions as merely subjective and determined by the victim; and (3) declarations of prejudice equivalency (Brandt & Crawford, Reference Brandt and Crawford2020), such as anti-Black prejudice being equated with anti-banker prejudice, that fail to recognize inherent power and status differentials between groups. These trends risk rendering psychology irrelevant to understanding and repairing societal problems. Cesario's paper represents a fourth column of concern. His ideas would further prioritize the dominant White majority and negate voices from disadvantaged social groups. His advice, if heeded, would delegitimize decades of careful and methodological research on prejudice and discrimination against disadvantaged groups. To what purpose?
At play is control over the narrative concerning the very nature of prejudice – what prejudice is. Tellingly, Cesario calls for the field to listen more to the police to understand police shootings, with no mention of listening more to victims (or examining societal factors). At the same time, he paints researchers, mostly (left-leaning) professors, as tricksters who wield omnipotent powers to create artificial worlds that enable them to shape the nature of prejudice. Rather than studying the wider culture wars, this discourse risks playing into them, representing a strong pushback that would prioritize the police academy over the scholarly academy regarding epistemic legitimacy. Worryingly, he objects to the very idea of experiments as tools to investigate intergroup inequalities. Here, Cesario misunderstands social psychologists' efforts, who, in unpacking the complexities of prejudice, seek to isolate causes and to discover whether “X” can fuel prejudice (not to dictate that X is the cause of existing inequalities).
Cesario's case would be more compelling if field experiments and non-experimental work (e.g., archival) contradicted experimental findings. In classic laboratory hiring experiments, qualifications are carefully controlled and made equivalent while group-identifying information (e.g., race and gender) is varied systematically. Using this method, bias against a target can be confidently isolated as group-based or prejudicial. Notably, field experiments show that Whites (vs. Blacks) receive 36% more interview callbacks for interviews (Quillian, Pager, Hexel, & Midtøen, Reference Quillian, Pager, Hexel and Midtøen2017) and 145% more job offers (Quillian, Lee, & Oliver, Reference Quillian, Lee and Oliver2020), consistent with laboratory findings. Large-scale analyses of recruitment platforms, using artificial intelligence to analyze virtually all applicant qualities rather than a single dimension, reveal employment recruiters being 4–19% less likely to contact minority/immigrant candidates relative to Whites (Hangartner, Kopp, & Siegentaler, Reference Hangartner, Kopp and Siegentaler2021). In terms of policing, large-scale archival analyses of patrol assignments show White (vs. non-White) officers more likely to stop, arrest, and use force against Black (vs. White) citizens, amplified in non-White neighborhoods (Ba, Knox, Mummolo, & Rivera, Reference Ba, Knox, Mummolo and Rivera2021). And nationally representative datasets reveal that White police officers, relative to the general population, view Black people as violent, express greater racial resentment, and believe that anti-Black discrimination is an historical not contemporary problem (LeCount, Reference LeCount2017). Data from the real-world are thus congruent with those from the experimental paradigm that Cesario criticizes. As such, the bar for disqualifying experiments should be reasonably high, and calls to abolish this methodology should be greeted with healthy skepticism.
His case would also be more compelling if experimentalists failed to consider and contemplate boundary conditions, such as participant type (student vs. police), training/experience effects, cognitive load, and so on. Researchers not only study these nuances but also express clear caution and thoughtfulness. In their review, Payne and Correll (Reference Payne and Correll2020) conclude that “while an officer's performance on a laboratory task may provide valuable information, it cannot tell us whether race actually biases decisions about the use of force when police officers encounter suspects in the real world” (p. 36). Cesario's case that experiments create realities incongruent with the real world, and that central researchers extrapolate wildly from laboratory to the real world, are straw-man arguments. Similarly, his calls to consider the bigger context in police shootings would be compelling if he included the macro-level context, including its political and social structures, rather than his limited call to consider the specific micro-level situation (e.g., a specific shooter incident and its lead-up). He wants more information, but not too much.
Cesario's argument fits with a wider trend in academia to control the what-is-prejudice narrative and who gets to decide. As evidenced in the #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo social movements, disadvantaged and marginalized groups are pleading for more voice at the table, not less. Psychologists express related concerns about the “extreme” and “overwhelming” Whiteness of psychology (see Dupree & Kraus, Reference Dupree and Krausin press; Roberts, Bereket-Shavit, Dollins, Goldie, & Mortenson, Reference Roberts, Bereket-Shavit, Dollins, Goldie and Mortenson2020). In a culturally insensitive move, Cesario asks our discipline to direct more causal blame toward shooting victims and troubled children in classrooms, given their supposedly violent and undisciplined natures, for inviting their fates at the hands of the powerful.
As academics, we should be mindful that our ideas and work can be both used and misused. Defence attorneys for George Floyd's killing or the January 6th, 2021 Capitol Hill insurrection will appreciate the intellectual scaffolding these new academic trends offer to the Alt-Right, white supremacists, and those seeking to undo social change and justice. Our discipline lies at a critical crossroads; we can encourage epistemic inclusivity and incorporate more non-White voices, or we can become irrelevant (or detrimental) to the discipline of social studies.
Conflict of interest
No conflicts of interest.