The YSL is actively conducting social science research to clarify how macro-level sociohistorical processes, together with individual psychological processes, lead individuals to perpetuate or disrupt societal inequality. We lend insights to these dynamics using an array of methods, including longitudinal survey studies, qualitative interviews, and geospatial techniques. Theoretically, our work draws most heavily from community, developmental, and social psychology, but also from related disciplines such as education and sociology. Below are a few of our ongoing research projects.
Clarifying Pathways between Ethnic Studies and Student Outcomes: The Mediating Roles of Critical Consciousness and Ethnic-Racial Identity
Ethnic studies enrollment boosts students’ academic achievement; but research has sparsely examined the intermediate processes that explain these boosts (Pinedo et al., 2021). Therefore, we have launched a four-year multisite research project that tests a mediation model, wherein ethnic studies courses promote youth’s critical consciousness, ethnic-racial identity, and sense of purpose, which in turn make way for academic achievement and civic engagement. Furthermore, we investigate whether youth positioned differently in the social hierarchy (e.g., Indigenous versus White students, access to opportunities) respond differently to ethnic studies. We hypothesize that social identity and opportunity structures (e.g., access to youth-serving organizations) will moderate the relationship between ethnic studies and students’ developmental trajectories.
Tracing Profiles of Cross-Racial Solidarity among Youth
In the face of increasing authoritarian racism, it is vital to recover the basis of cross-racial solidarity and collective action that effectively undermined 20th-century racism in the United States. Cross-racial solidarity refers to people engaging in collective action to improve the conditions of racial groups to which they do not identify. While the constellation of psychological factors that motivate cross-racial solidarity remains underexplored, critical consciousness is increasingly theorized as motivating solidarity across group lines. As such, we completed two data collections, one with a national sample, to assess how the three dimensions of critical consciousness, anger at injustice, and egalitarianism pattern within individuals to shape their propensities for cross-racial solidarity. We find that participants in the profile with the highest critical consciousness had the greatest likelihood of expressing cross-racial solidarity.
Uncovering the Psychological Drivers of Opposition to Critical Race Education
In 2020, right-wing politicians began attacking Critical Race Theory (CRT), and critical race education, broadly. CRT postulates that racial inequality is a structural problem, reproduced by institutional processes. Critical race education affirms this postulation and equips students with a critical understanding of the role of racism in society. Seeing that a critical structural understanding of inequality is conceptualized as a dimension of critical consciousness and is linked to support for equity-enhancing policies, we merged American National Election Study data with data tracking CRT bans to examine whether state-level aggregates of residents’ critical consciousness relate to states’ likelihood of banning critical race education. We are finding that states with more critically conscious populations were less likely to ban CRT. These findings shed light on the psychological basis of the debate over critical race education in the United States.