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Diversity Committee of the Psychology Department at Yale University Committee Members Mission Statement The Diversity Committee of the Psychology Department at Yale
University is committed to the establishment and development of an
environment that is conducive to the well being of minority students
and faculty, including women. This necessitates an environment that
respects and accommodates differing and broad viewpoints,
accomplishments, and research interests. The goal is to increase the
number of students and faculty from underrepresented ethnic and sexual
minorities in our department. We will strive to accomplish this goal
and to hold our department and selves accountable for the make-up of
the department's student and faculty members.
A Sample of Faculty Research on Diverse Populations Kelly D. Brownell Our group at the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders studies
etiology, treatment, and prevention of anorexia, bulimia, binge eating,
obesity, and body image problems. We have had a long interest in
matters of race, ethnicity, and gender. Among the issues we have
addressed are racial and ethnic differences in body image and risk for
eating disorders, the association of race and income with access to
healthy foods in the community, gender issues in the link between
stress, eating, and body fat distribution, and the association of race,
acculturation, and body disturbances. These and other issues related to
diversity are fundamentally important to the understanding, remedy, and
ultimately the prevention of eating and weight disorders. We welcome
students and other collaborators with interests in diversity issues. Dorothy Singer and Jerome L. Singer Dorothy Singer, Senior Research Scientist and Jerome L. Singer,
Professor in the Psychology Department have for five years been
directing a research study in collaboration with the Media Group of
Connecticut funded by the U.S. Department of Education on how inner
city parents, daycare teachers and home daycare providers can use
imaginative play with preschoolers to help them develop school
readiness skills. The project has involved preparation of videotapes
and written materials for training adults in the approaches to play
with children. Children have been observed and tested before and after
parent training to evaluate (against control groups) the usefulness of
the procedures. In more recent phases the video materials have been
prepared for direct child viewing under adult supervision and
evaluation of children's reactions obtained from the adult groups. The
studies conducted originally in New Haven have been extended to inner
city or rural settings with largely minority participants in more than
a dozen locations around the country. Particular favorite games for the
children are playing Restaurant, Store, and Nature Island
(Photographing Animals). The games all include opportunities to build
vocabulary, use counting, learn sequences, social scripts and acquire
civility and pro-social attitudes. The HEB Education & Action Study: Using Message Framing to Motivate HIV
Testing The purpose of the study was to see which
videotaped educational messages best persuaded women living in public
housing developments to get tested for HIV. The messages differed in
terms of the consequences of testing or not testing that they
emphasized. Videos focused either on the gains that come with testing
or the costs that come with not testing. Many women in this study were considered to be at some risk for HIV based on their behavior and partners'
risk.
Women's own certainty about their HIV status was not strongly related to their sex behavior or partners'
risk level, however. Six months after watching one of the videos,
36% of women we reached reported that they had gotten an HIV test.
Stressing the benefits (gains) associated with testing resulted in
higher rates of testing among women who said that there was no chance
they would test positive. Women who said there was some chance that
they might test positive were more likely to report getting tested
overall, regardless of which video they saw, though there was some
advantage for the message that emphasized the costs of not being tested
(losses). We concluded that the type of message that best persuades women to get tested may depend on what they think the test result will be. Predicting Later Condom Use Among Low-Income Inner-city Women Using data collected among more than 300 sexually active, low-income
inner-city women, we investigated factors that could predict condom use
as reported immediately (baseline), one month, and three months later. Condom use was best predicted by intentions to use condoms.
Participants intended to use condoms to the extent that they believed
significant others endorsed the behavior (norms), they personally had
positive views about using condoms (attitudes), and thought they could
successfully initiate condom use (self-efficacy). Self-efficacy was the best predictor of intentions to use condoms. Overall, these predictors measured at baseline accounted for condom use as reported immediately (baseline), one month, and three months later. Addressing Social Emotions to Encourage HIV Prevention Behaviors: The Wear it! Project The purpose of this study is to investigate the emotional barriers
to the adoption of STD prevention behaviors and to test a pilot
quasi-intervention intended to overcome such obstacles to safe
behaviors. During the first phase of our project, five focus groups were held
with young adults from the African American, Latino and White
communities to learn: (a) what causes feelings of embarrassment, shame
and guilt in regards to STD prevention behaviors, (b) what are the
consequences of these feelings, and (c) how can we reduce the impact of
the emotions on prevention behaviors. We learned from these focus groups that, among the cultures
represented, emotions such as embarrassment and shame created the
strongest barriers to STD prevention for the Hispanic female
population. The second phase, the Wear it! Pilot Intervention, is still in progress. A Sample of Graduate Student Research on Diverse Populations I am interested in examining the effects of
race on body perception, preference, and the development of eating
disorders. I seek to explore this relationship more fully through
examination of the moderating effects of acculturation and SES. Another
interest is the role of media in the development of body perceptions
and preferences. How is the female body constructed, especially the
bodies of women of color, and what is the experience of being in those
bodies? Finally, I wish to explore ways to implement public policy that
will protect the bodies of both women and people of color. Other Yale Resources The Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity The Afro-American Cultural Center at Yale
Association of Black Psychologists Sources of Funding for Minority Students or for Research on Diverse Populations American Psychological Association Minority Fellowship Program (MFP) Feel free to contact Diversity Committee members for information about diversity in the Psychology Department at Yale or for more general information about Yale. |