Examining an Organisational Justice Model of Perceived Discrimination in the New Zealand Workforce

<p>The current study proposes a model to examine the impact of organisational justice on perceived discrimination and work attitudes/behaviour. The model also examines the influence of ethnicity and support for diversity on these relationships. Two studies were conducted using separate samples which collected data from 1,554 employees in 2010 and 2012. Study 1 used an overall measure of perceived racial discrimination whilst study 2 used a 4-part general measure of discrimination. Regression analysis from both studies showed that interpersonal justice is active in predicting perceptions of discrimination, and these perceptions are associated with negative outcomes for work attitudes and behaviour. Support for diversity largely mitigated the negative effects of discrimination on work behaviour. A lack of predicted results for work attitudes may indicate that processes resulting from discrimination differ according to work attitudes and behaviour. Conclusions and avenues for future research are discussed</p>

Examining an Organisational Justice Model of Perceived Discrimination in the New Zealand Workforce

<p>The current study proposes a model to examine the impact of organisational justice on perceived discrimination and work attitudes/behaviour. The model also examines the influence of ethnicity and support for diversity on these relationships. Two studies were conducted using separate samples which collected data from 1,554 employees in 2010 and 2012. Study 1 used an overall measure of perceived racial discrimination whilst study 2 used a 4-part general measure of discrimination. Regression analysis from both studies showed that interpersonal justice is active in predicting perceptions of discrimination, and these perceptions are associated with negative outcomes for work attitudes and behaviour. Support for diversity largely mitigated the negative effects of discrimination on work behaviour. A lack of predicted results for work attitudes may indicate that processes resulting from discrimination differ according to work attitudes and behaviour. Conclusions and avenues for future research are discussed</p>

Understanding Mechanisms Behind Discrimination Using Diffusion Decision Modeling

Past research has documented where discrimination occurs or tested interventions that reduce discrimination. Less is known about how discriminatory behavior emerges and the mechanisms through which successful interventions work. Two studies (N &gt; 4500) apply the Diffusion Decision Model (DDM) to the Judgment Bias Task, a measure of discrimination. In control conditions, participants gave preferential treatment (acceptance to a hypothetical honor society) to physically attractive applicants. DDM analyses revealed participants initially favored attractive candidates and attractiveness was accumulated as evidence of being qualified. Two interventions—raising awareness of bias and asking for more deliberative judgments—reduced discrimination through separate mechanisms. Raising awareness reduced biases in drift rates while increasing deliberation raised decision thresholds. This work offers insight into how discrimination emerges and may aid efforts to develop interventions to lessen discrimination.

Experiences of Discrimination Are Associated With Worse Metabolic Syndrome Severity Among African Americans in the Jackson Heart Study

Background Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is a risk factor for the development of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. Although the development of MetS is attributed to known lifestyle factors, perceived discrimination may also contribute to MetS development and severity. Purpose We examined the associations of perceived discrimination with MetS severity among African American adults at baseline and 8-year follow-up. Methods Three thousand eight hundred and seventy participants (mean age 53.8 ± 13.0; 63.1% female) without diabetes and no missing MetS severity scores at baseline were included. Each self-reported measure of discrimination at baseline (everyday, lifetime, and burden of lifetime) was classified into tertiles (low, medium, high). After adjustment for demographics and MetS risk factors, associations of discrimination were examined with a sex- and race/ethnicity-specific MetS severity Z-score. We employed a mixed model approach that allowed for the assessment of an overall association between reported discrimination at baseline and MetS severity, and for the possible change over time. Results Sex and age differences were observed in experiences with discrimination, such that men reported higher levels of all aspects of discrimination relative to women. Everyday discrimination decreased with age, whereas lifetime discrimination increased with age (p &lt; .05). Independent of lifestyle and demographic factors, everyday and lifetime discrimination were significantly associated with MetS severity (p = .003 and p = .017, respectively) and the associations remained constant over the 8 years (i.e., no interaction with time). Conclusions Our results suggest that, in a large community-based sample of African Americans, discrimination is a salient psychosocial risk factor for severity of MetS.

A Dual Measure of Uncertainty: The Deng Extropy

The extropy has recently been introduced as the dual concept of entropy. Moreover, in the context of the Dempster–Shafer evidence theory, Deng studied a new measure of discrimination, named the Deng entropy. In this paper, we define the Deng extropy and study its relation with Deng entropy, and examples are proposed in order to compare them. The behaviour of Deng extropy is studied under changes of focal elements. A characterization result is given for the maximum Deng extropy and, finally, a numerical example in pattern recognition is discussed in order to highlight the relevance of the new measure.

Multiple factors affect discrimination learning performance, but not between-individual variation, in wild mixed-species flocks of birds

Cognition arguably drives most behaviours in animals, but whether and why individuals in the wild vary consistently in their cognitive performance is scarcely known, especially under mixed-species scenarios. One reason for this is that quantifying the relative importance of individual, contextual, ecological and social factors remains a major challenge. We examined how many of these factors, and sources of bias, affected participation and performance, in an initial discrimination learning experiment and two reversal learning experiments during self-administered trials in a population of great tits and blue tits. Individuals were randomly allocated to different rewarding feeders within an array. Participation was high and only weakly affected by age and species. In the initial learning experiment, great tits learned faster than blue tits. Great tits also showed greater consistency in performance across two reversal learning experiments. Individuals assigned to the feeders on the edge of the array learned faster. More errors were made on feeders neighbouring the rewarded feeder and on feeders that had been rewarded in the previous experiment. Our estimates of learning consistency were unaffected by multiple factors, suggesting that, even though there was some influence of these factors on performance, we obtained a robust measure of discrimination learning in the wild.

Using Rasch analysis to investigate the validity of the Everyday Discrimination Scale in a national sample

The Everyday Discrimination Scale (EDS) is a widely used measure of discrimination. Rasch analysis was used to examine the psychometric properties of the EDS based on a national sample ( N = 2666). Items largely fit the Rasch model and yielded excellent separation and item reliability. However, severe floor effects were observed. Implications are discussed for use of the scale in populations that experience low levels of discrimination. An ordinal-to-interval conversion table for the EDS is also provided.