Northwesterner Jennifer Richeson wins MacArthur Foundation Grant
Jennifer Richeson, 34, a social psychologist at Northwestern University and an Evanston resident, has been granted a “genius grant” by the MacArthur Foundation, and is the only Illinois resident to be so honored, according to Megan Reichgott, an Associated Press Writer. I jumped on the web, and found a reprint of an article by her in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, a well known psychology journal. I found that Ms. Richeson has done research in racial stereotyping, and her work suggests that there is an affective category to racial stereotyping. She and her co-author, Sophie Trawalter of Dartmouth College, indicated in the article titled “On the Categorization of Admired and Disliked Exemplars of Admired and Disliked Racial Groups” that whites tended to assimilate thieving more than philanthropic behaviors of black ministers and philanthropic rather than thieving behaviors of white ministers. This processing of such information was thought to have an affective nature and to be more pronounced in whites who were proud of their racial identification.
Ms. Richeson can pursue this line of research with her MacArthur grant.
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By Flo Crew