Psychological Perspective on Affirmative Action

What does psychology have to do with affirmative action? In the author’s opinion, questioning the relevance of psychology to an issue such as affirmative action is, unfortunately, not an uncommon query, even among many people within the field of psychology. When most people, both within and outside the field, make an association between psychology and affirmative action, it is in terms of the debate over racial differences in performance on intelligence tests. Thus, the decision to write this book was based upon what was seen as a need to demonstrate and highlight the substantive contribution that psychology can make in terms of improving our understanding of why it is that people respond to affirmative action with a variety of reactions and emotions. The primary goal of this book is to discuss empirical research and theoretical work on affirmative action from a psychological perspective. The intended audience is academics, including undergraduate and graduate students, and social science researchers.