Social class remains a largely unexplored domain of psychological research. While steps have been taken to develop interventions for racism and sexism, no such model exists in regard to class bias. College is one particular context in which it is likely for lower-income students to experience heightened class identity saliency and encounter class-related friction. Prior literature has shown that classism is associated with negative psychosocial and academic outcomes for college students. The proposed intervention is designed to reduce class bias on elite college campuses, where a majority of students come from privileged backgrounds and class tensions are often neglected. Participants will enroll in a for-credit course that will shed light on issues of classism and encourage students to think critically about class-related issues. Effectiveness of the course will be assessed in two ways. Reduction in class bias will be measured using an implicit measure of social class bias. Participants will also complete a self-report measure of awareness of social class issues. Participation in the course is expected to result in decreased class bias and greater awareness of social class issues. Furthermore, it is predicted that awareness of social class issues will mediate the relationship between course participation and reduced class bias. Research findings will have valuable implications for the success and wellbeing of students affected by classism. The proposed study has the potential to bridge class divides within college communities and promote educational equity.

Although empathy has been implicated in both academia and pop culture as nearly analogous to morality, some philosophers and psychologists have taken issue with this assessment. It has been argued that from an ethical perspective, empathy is biasing, myopic, and perhaps more trouble than it is worth. In this paper, I first address whether empathy is a necessary baseline trait for having some degree of ethical motivation. Based on the differing moral experiences of sociopaths and autistic individuals, as well as empathy’s unique ability to motivationally bridge the gap between self and other, I conclude that empathy is a required trait for the moral agent. Assuming empathy is present in the moral experience, I then delineate the negative and positive effects empathy has on the ethical outcome of actions. Empathy does appear to cause prejudiced biasing and derogation of self-respect, but it also acts as a powerful motivator for other-oriented action and provides ethically valuable information about mind-states. Ultimately, I conclude that empathy cannot be a standalone ethical trait, but when filtered through reason, it can be invaluably useful.

Behavioral and academic outcomes differ for students by race, ability, and gender within the K-12 public education system. Moreover, striking gaps exist at the intersection of race, ability, and gender, despite the similarity in severity and frequency of behavior between groups. Few studies, however, have examined the educational mechanisms that contribute to these gaps. Despite this, the scientific literature? shows that when educators have high expectations, students are more likely to be successful academically and behaviorally. Therefore, this study examines the inverse of this relationship by recognizing that biases likely influence behavior and academic student outcomes through expectancy bias for certain groups of students. The present study utilizes an intersectional framework of disability studies and critical race theory (DisCrit) to examine preservice educator expectations of behavior and academic outcomes of a hypothetical student at the intersection of student race, ability, and gender using a factorial vignette experimental design. Analyses consisted of factorial multivariate analyses of main and interaction effects including covariates for social desirability, tolerance, severity, and demographic characteristics. Results indicated significant and meaningful differences in expectations of behavior and academic experiences by race and ability. However, interaction effects were not detected. Implications and limitations of this study are discussed.

Social workers interact with a variety of individuals in the field. In their profession social workers are to adhere to a Code of Ethics that ensure every client is treated equally. There are some under-represented populations that do not receive the same services when they interact with social workers in various systems; heterosexual single fathers are amongst this group. This study was conducted to identify if there was a gender bias amongst social work students working with heterosexual single parents. The researcher hypothesized that the participants in the study would favor single mothers and inadvertently offer more services to them. Social work students at California State University, San Bernardino, were identified as the population for this study. All currently enrolled students in the School of Social Work were invited to participate in the study. The students were sent a quantitative study via their university emails. There was a total of ninety-three respondents. The majority of the respondents felt that the parent with the same sex as the child should be the custodial parent of that child. None of the participants identified the father as an option for custodial guardianship. The participants offered more services to the custodial parent than the noncustodial parent. As a result of this study, the researcher recommended more representation of under-serviced identities in social work curriculum, more research on this population, and more curriculum that integrates social work education with social work practice.

The purpose of this study was to examine the beetles about substance abusing parents from California State University San Bernardino (CSUSB) NEW students. The biases that human device professionals hold toward substance abusers have the potential to negatively impact clients' health, well- being, and access to services. Understanding future social workers ' biases towards substance abusing parents is key as these future professionals are likely to serve families impacted by substance abuse in their future roles. This quantitative study used a self-administered, online survey to assess the beliefs of foundation and advanced-year MSW students from CSUSB. In general, the findings suggested that students believed substance abusing parents had the abilities to effectively address their substance abuse issues and parent their children. Foundation and advanced year students expressed considerable agreement with each other in this regard, with only a few exceptions. These findings are limited by a relatively small sample size and by unknown reliability and validity of the survey instrument. However, the findings suggest that MSW students, at least at this university, hold limited biases towards substance abusing parents. Further research should address whether and to what extent these biases change over time and with professional experience after graduation.

The study aimed at obtaining perspectives of social workers in working with the incarcerated population. Being that the incarcerated population may carry a stigma due to the crimes that they allegedly committed or have been convicted of committing, it comes to question if workers in the helping professions, such as social workers, that may be involved in the inmate’s rehabilitation process have any biases in working with this population. Participants in the study included members from the National Association of Social Workers California chapter (NASW CA). NASW CA was chosen as the most appropriate entity through which to gather perspectives of social workers with varying demographics. The study was comprised of a survey emailed out to NASW CA members from a list generated by NASW CA, and the data was collected on the Qualtrics application. The eight main survey questions consisted of statements that are rated using a 5-point Likert scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The data was analyzed in the IBM SPSS v25 program. Participant demographics, including gender, ethnicity, age, years in field, and area of social work practice were also captured. The data was analyzed using descriptive and bivariate comparisons between specific participant demographics -such as gender (male/female) and ethnicity (white/non-white)- regarding their perspectives toward inmates. The survey was completed anonymously; termination was completed during the debriefing statement. There were 45 participants in the study. Participant demographics include: 1) 82% female and 18% male; 2) 42% identified as non-white and 58% as white; 3) 40% have worked in the social work field for 0-10 years and 60% have been in the field for more than 10 years; 4) 56% were between the ages of 18-45 and 44% were above 45 years old; 5) 40% have experience working in Child Welfare while the other 60% do not; and 6) 47% have direct experience working with inmates while 53% do not. Bivariate analyses revealed four statistically significant differences between specific demographic groups, including: 1) participants who do not have experience working in child welfare are more likely than those who do have experience to feel like they are putting themselves in danger by working with inmates; 2) participants who have 0-10 years’ experience in the field are more likely than those with more than 10 years’ experience to feel like they are putting themselves in danger by working with inmates; 3) participants who indicated an age above 45 years old are more likely than those under 45 years old to think that inmates have rights and should have access to services; and 4) participants who indicated having direct experience working with inmates were more likely to feel comfortable working with inmates than participants who do not have direct experience. There are implications for micro and macro social work practice, which include exposure to this population while in a social work program and further training in cultural competency to reduce bias toward this population and ensure full and equal access to social work services.

I assessed the influence prototypicality has on judgements individuals make about gay men. It has been demonstrated that individuals make inferences regarding a person’s traits and group membership based upon a person’s perceived prototypicality (Ambady, Hallahan, & Conner, 1999; Stephan & Stephan, 1989; Wilkins, Kaiser, and Rieck, 2010). I hypothesized that highly prototypical gay men would be perceived to be more identified with the gay community, possess more negative stereotypes of gay men, engage in more activities associated with the gay community, receive less positive feelings from others, and experience more discrimination. Additionally, perceived group identification and negative stereotyping were expected to mediate serially the relationship between prototypicality, perceived engagement in gay activities, positive attitudes from others, and discrimination from others. Participants (N=360) viewed an image of a gay man either low or high in prototypicality. Participants evaluated the gay man’s perceived group identification, perceived stereotypical traits, engagement in activities associated with the gay community, as well as their own feelings and behavioral intentions toward the gay men. Highly prototypical gay men were perceived to (1) identify more with the gay community, (2) possess more negative stereotypes associated with gay men, and (3) engage in more immoral activities associated with the gay community, than low prototypical gay men. Moreover, perceived group identification and negative stereotyping serially mediated the relationship between prototypicality, and perceived engagement in gay activities, attitudes towards the target, and discrimination from others.

Research on perspective taking generally points to positive outcomes, but a small and growing body of literature highlights conditions where perspective taking can instead lead to undesirable outcomes. The goal of this dissertation study is to test a model of how taking the perspective of someone who struggles to control food consumption may negatively influence prejudice and discrimination toward heavy people. My model predicts that taking the perspective of someone who is effortfully trying not to eat, which requires the use of self-regulatory processes, vicariously depletes the perspective-taker’s own self-regulatory capacity. Whether that depletion leads to greater expressions of prejudice and discrimination toward heavy people depends on whether the person has high or low levels of implicit prejudice toward heavy people, and how internally or externally motivated the person is to control weight prejudice. Study participants were randomly assigned to read one of three first-person diary entries about a person in a social context where food was present. The degree to which the food described in the diary entry was appetizing, and whether the person was hungry and tempted to eat the food was manipulated. Half of the participants were instructed before reading the diary entry to take the perspective of the person in the story, while the other half were instructed to simply read the diary entry. Self-regulatory capacity was measured and tested as a mediator between perspective taking and both prejudice and discrimination. Effort and individual differences in implicit attitudes about weight and motivation to control weight prejudice were measured and tested as moderators in the model. Results did not support the primary study model hypotheses.

Statins are cholesterol-lowering medications with immunologic properties. To assess the role of statins on incident immune-mediated conditions, a modified case-cohort study was performed using administrative databases from the Midwest Veterans Administration (VA) region. A comparison sub-cohort was formed by randomly sampling 10,000 subjects with medical and pharmacy benefits during fiscal year (FY) 2002. Cases were identified by inpatient or outpatient medical claims using International Classification of Disease, Ninth Revision (ICD-9) codes between FY 2003-2004. All subjects needed at least one year of medical claims and at least one pharmacy claim. The incident cases (n=28,642) included non-mutually exclusive groups of immune-mediated (n=2,327), infectious (n=8,221), and non-immunologic (n=10,730) diagnoses. Demographic and medical variables were obtained from FY 2001-2004, and pharmacologic data from FY 2002-2004. Cox proportional hazards regression modeling was used to estimate hazard ratios for the current statin use (within the last 180 days) and former statin use, compared to non-users, including time-dependant variables for demographic factors, comorbidity as measured by Elixhauser and Chronic Disease Score variables, medications, and visit rates after initiating statins. Current statin use was associated with decreased diagnoses rates of psoriasis; rheumatoid arthritis; inflammatory bowel diseases, including ulcerative colitis and Crohn disease; diffuse connective tissue diseases, including systemic lupus erythematosus; ankylosing spondylitis; bacterial pneumonia; urinary tract infection; cellulitis; sepsis; candidiasis; osteomyelitis; and tuberculosis. Former statin use was also associated with increased rates of polymyalgia rheumatica, sepsis, and osteomyelitis. Statin use was not associated with other spondylitis, multiple sclerosis, thyroiditis, sarcoidosis, temporal arteritis, influenza, shingles, histoplasmosis, or pyelonephritis. Although current statin use appeared protective for some study conditions, selection bias, misclassification, healthy user effects, adherence bias, confounding by indication, and surveillance bias were considered as possible explanations of the study findings.

Observational studies are an indispensable complement to randomized clinical trials (RCT) for comparison of treatment effectiveness. Often RCTs cannot be carried out due to the costs of the trial, ethical questions and rarity of the outcome. When noncompliance and missing data are prevalent, RCTs become more like observational studies. The main problem is to adjust for the selection bias in the observational study. One increasingly used method is propensity-score matching. Compared to traditional multi-covariate matching methods, matching on the propensity score alleviates the curse of dimensionality. It allows investigators to balance multiple covariate distributions between treatment groups by matching on a single score. This thesis focuses on the large sample properties of the matching estimators of the treatment effect. The first part of this thesis deals with problems of the analytic supports of the logit propensity score and various matching methods. The second part of this thesis focuses on the matching estimators of additive and multiplicative treatment effects. We derive the asymptotic order of the biases and asymptotic distributions of the matching estimators. We also derive the large sample variance estimators for the treatment effect estimators. The methods and theoretical results are applied and checked in a series of simulation studies. The third part of this thesis is devoted to a comparison between propensity-score matching and multiple linear regression using simulation.