Psychology Colloquium: Hypocrisy Within a Group, the Black Sheep Effect, Oct. 18

Jamie Barden

The Psychology Department Colloquium series presents Dr. Jamie Barden, Associate Professor of Psychology at Howard University, currently on sabbatical at Ohio State University. His talk is on “Order of Actions Mitigates Hypocrisy Judgments but Differentially for Ingroup and Outgroup Members” on Friday, Oct. 18, at 11:50 a.m. in Porter 102.

“Hypocrisy is a damning moral judgment, which could be why the accusation is frequently fired between opposing political camps,” he says in his abstract. “The archetypal hypocrite is someone who makes a public statement establishing a standard for behavior (safe sex, not driving drunk), but then fails to live up to that standard in their private behavior (not using a condom, driving drunk).

“Interestingly, reversing the order of the identical actions mitigates hypocrisy judgments, because the same inconsistency is now a potential sign of sincere change (driving drunk then telling others not to drive drunk).

“In the archetypal case, group-based biases in hypocrisy judgments are absent; however, reversal of the order mitigates hypocrisy more for ingroup than outgroup targets (political party, gender).

“Finally, preliminary evidence suggests that certain circumstances (e.g., stereotype-consistent behavior committed by a racial ingroup vs. outgroup member) elicit a black sheep effect, where ingroup members are seen as more hypocritical.”

Barden has been on the faculty at Howard University since receiving his Ph.D. from Ohio State University in 2005. His research focuses on the diverse processes underlying evaluative judgments, ranging from the least thoughtful automatic processes to the most thoughtful meta-cognitive processes. A second theme reflects his interest in the implications of placing the self and others into social categories. Much of his research reflects the intersection of these themes, according to his website. Barden has published in JPSP, JESP and PSPB and has received support from the National Science Foundation, Educational Testing Service (ETS), and the American Psychological Foundation. He is an Associate Editor at Basic and Applied Social Psychology and Co-Director of the Howard-NAEP Statistics and Evaluation Institute.