Psychological barriers to conflict resolution stem, in part, from defensive responses to feelings of self-threat. Self-affirmation theory proposes that affirmations of global self-worth-often achieved by writing or reflecting on core values-can broaden individuals' perspectives and potentially reduce biases in their intergroup judgments. In this paper, we review the extant literature on the use of self-affirmation to potentially reduce intergroup biases in order to shed light on the role of self-threat in perpetuating conflict.Self-affirmation has been shown to impact 3 key aspects of intergroup conflict: (a) the strength with which conflict-supporting beliefs are held, (b) the biased processing of conflict-relevant information, and (c) the resistance to seeing common ground in negotiations. Discussion centers on the limits as well as the potential of self-affirmation to promote openness and conflict resolution.
The landscape of graduate science education is changing as efforts to diversify the professoriate have increased because academic faculty jobs at universities have grown scarce and more competitive. With this context as a backdrop, the present research examines the perceptions and career goals of advisors and advisees through surveys of PhD students (Study 1, N = 195) and faculty mentors (Study 2, N = 272) in science, technology, engineering, and math disciplines. Study 1 examined actual preferences and career goals of PhD students among three options: research careers, teaching careers, and non-academic careers in industry, and compared the actual preferences of students with what they perceived as being the normative preferences of faculty. Overall, students had mixed preferences but perceived that their advisors had a strong normative preference for research careers for them. Moreover, students who ranked research positions as most desirable felt the most belonging in their academic departments. Further analyses revealed no differences in career preferences as a function of underrepresented minority (URM) student status or first-generation (FG) status, but URM and FG students felt less belonging in their academic departments. Study 2 examined faculty preferences for different careers for their advisees, both in general and for current students in particular. While faculty advisors preferred students to go into research in general, when focusing on specific students, they saw their preferences as being closely aligned with the career preference of each PhD student. Faculty advisors did not perceive any difference in belonging between their students as a function of their URM status. Discrepancies between student and faculty perceptions may occur, in part, because faculty and students do not engage in sufficient discussions about the wider range of career options beyond academic research. Supporting this possibility, PhD students and faculty advisors reported feeling more comfortable discussing research careers with each other than either non-academic industry positions or teaching positions. Discussion centers on the implications of these findings for interpersonal and institutional efforts to foster diversity in the professoriate and to create open communication about career development.
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