Prosocial motives underlie scientific censorship by scientists: A perspective and research agenda.

Science is among humanity's greatest achievements, yet scientific censorship is rarely studied empirically. We explore the social, psychological, and institutional causes and consequences of scientific censorship (defined as actions aimed at obstructing particular scientific ideas from reaching an audience for reasons other than low scientific quality). Popular narratives suggest that scientific censorship is driven by authoritarian officials with dark motives, such as dogmatism and intolerance. Our analysis suggests that scientific censorship is often driven by scientists, who are primarily motivated by self-protection, benevolence toward peer scholars, and prosocial concerns for the well-being of human social groups. This perspective helps explain both recent findings on scientific censorship and recent changes to scientific institutions, such as the use of harm-based criteria to evaluate research. We discuss unknowns surrounding the consequences of censorship and provide recommendations for improving transparency and accountability in scientific decision-making to enable the exploration of these unknowns. The benefits of censorship may sometimes outweigh costs. However, until costs and benefits are examined empirically, scholars on opposing sides of ongoing debates are left to quarrel based on competing values, assumptions, and intuitions.

Exploring Gender Bias in Six Key Domains of Academic Science: An Adversarial Collaboration.

We synthesized the vast, contradictory scholarly literature on gender bias in academic science from 2000 to 2020. In the most prestigious journals and media outlets, which influence many people's opinions about sexism, bias is frequently portrayed as an omnipresent factor limiting women's progress in the tenure-track academy. Claims and counterclaims regarding the presence or absence of sexism span a range of evaluation contexts. Our approach relied on a combination of meta-analysis and analytic dissection. We evaluated the empirical evidence for gender bias in six key contexts in the tenure-track academy: (a) tenure-track hiring, (b) grant funding, (c) teaching ratings, (d) journal acceptances, (e) salaries, and (f) recommendation letters. We also explored the gender gap in a seventh area, journal productivity, because it can moderate bias in other contexts. We focused on these specific domains, in which sexism has most often been alleged to be pervasive, because they represent important types of evaluation, and the extensive research corpus within these domains provides sufficient quantitative data for comprehensive analysis. Contrary to the omnipresent claims of sexism in these domains appearing in top journals and the media, our findings show that tenure-track women are at parity with tenure-track men in three domains (grant funding, journal acceptances, and recommendation letters) and are advantaged over men in a fourth domain (hiring). For teaching ratings and salaries, we found evidence of bias against women; although gender gaps in salary were much smaller than often claimed, they were nevertheless concerning. Even in the four domains in which we failed to find evidence of sexism disadvantaging women, we nevertheless acknowledge that broad societal structural factors may still impede women's advancement in academic science. Given the substantial resources directed toward reducing gender bias in academic science, it is imperative to develop a clear understanding of when and where such efforts are justified and of how resources can best be directed to mitigate sexism when and where it exists.

Who Decides What Is Acceptable Speech on Campus? Why Restricting Free Speech Is Not the Answer.

Recent protests on dozens of campuses have led to the cancellation of controversial talks, and violence has accompanied several of these protests. Psychological science provides an important lens through which to view, understand, and potentially reduce these conflicts. In this article, we frame opposing sides' arguments within a long-standing corpus of psychological research on selective perception, confirmation bias, myside bias, illusion of understanding, blind-spot bias, groupthink/in-group bias, motivated skepticism, and naive realism. These concepts inform dueling claims: (a) the protestors' violence was justified by a higher moral responsibility to prevent marginalized groups from being victimized by hate speech, versus (b) the students' right to hear speakers was infringed upon. Psychological science cannot, however, be the sole arbiter of these campus debates; legal and philosophical considerations are also relevant. Thus, we augment psychological science with insights from these literatures to shed light on complexities associated with positions supporting free speech and those protesting hate speech. We conclude with a set of principles, most supported by empirical research, to inform university policies and help ensure vigorous freedom of expression within the context of an inclusive, diverse community.

Does Gender of Administrator Matter? National Study Explores U.S. University Administrators' Attitudes About Retaining Women Professors in STEM.

Omnipresent calls for more women in university administration presume women will prioritize using resources and power to increase female representation, especially in STEM fields where women are most underrepresented. However, empirical evidence is lacking for systematic differences in female vs. male administratorsÂS attitudes. Do female administrators agree on which strategies are best, and do men see things differently? We explored United States college and university administratorsÂS opinions regarding strategies, policies, and structural changes in their organizations designed to increase women professorsÂS representation and retention in STEM fields. A comprehensive review of past research yielded a database of potentially-effective, recommended policies. A survey based on these policies was sent to provosts, deans, associate deans, and department chairs of STEM fields at 96 public and private research universities across the U.S. These administrators were asked to rate the quality and feasibility of each strategy; 474 provided data, of which 334 contained complete numerical data used in the analyses. Our data revealed that female (vs. male) administrators believed the 44 strategies were higher in quality overall-but not higher in feasibility-with 9 strategies perceived differently by women and men, after imposing conservative statistical controls. There was broad general agreement on the relative-quality rankings of the 44 strategies. Women (vs. men) gave higher quality ratings to increasing the value of teaching, service, and administrative experience in tenure/promotion decisions, increasing flexibility of federal-grant funding to accommodate mothers, conducting gender-equity research, and supporting shared tenure lines enabling work-life balance. Women (vs. men) believed it was more feasible for men to stop the tenure clock for 1 year for childrearing and for universities to support requests for shared tenure lines, but less feasible for women to chair search committees. Our national survey thus supported the belief that placing women into administration creates greater endorsement of strategies to attract and retain women in STEM, although the effectiveness of these strategies was outside the scope of this research. Topics of disagreement between women and men are potentially important focuses of future policy, because female administrators may have insights into how to retain women that male administrators do not share.

How to actualize potential: a bioecological approach to talent development.

Bioecological theory posits three interacting principles to explain developmental outcomes such as fluctuating achievement levels and changing heritability coefficients. Here, we apply the theory to the domain of talent development, by reviewing short-term and long-term cognitive interventions. We argue that macro-level analyses of cultural practices (e.g., matrilineal inheritance and property ownership) and national systems of education are consistent with the bioecological theory; when the findings from these analyses are unpacked, the engines that drive them are so-called proximal processes. This finding has implications for the design and delivery of instruction and the development of talent. We argue that talent is fostered by the same three bioecological mechanisms that explain the actualization of genetic potential. We conclude by discussing several self-descriptions and personal narratives by gifted students in which they spontaneously refer to these bioecological mechanisms in their own talent-development processes. Similar testimonials have been documented by historic talent researchers such as Benjamin Bloom, noting the importance of continual adjustments in feedback.

Women have substantial advantage in STEM faculty hiring, except when competing against more-accomplished men.

Audits of tenure-track hiring reveal faculty prefer to hire female applicants over males. However, audit data do not control for applicant quality, allowing some to argue women are hired at higher rates because they are more qualified. To test this, Williams and Ceci (2015) conducted an experiment demonstrating a preference for hiring women over identically-qualified men. While their findings are consistent with audits, they raise the specter that faculty may prefer women over even more-qualified men, a claim made recently. We evaluated this claim in the present study: 158 faculty ranked two men and one woman for a tenure-track-assistant professorship, and 94 faculty ranked two women and one man. In the former condition, the female applicant was slightly weaker than her two male competitors, although still strong; in the other condition the male applicant was slightly weaker than his two female competitors, although still strong. Faculty of both genders and in all fields preferred the more-qualified men over the slightly-less-qualified women, and they also preferred the stronger women over the slightly-less-qualified man. This suggests that preference for women among identically-qualified applicants found in experimental studies and in audits does not extend to women whose credentials are even slightly weaker than male counterparts. Thus these data give no support to the twin claims that weaker males are chosen over stronger females or weaker females are hired over stronger males.

National hiring experiments reveal 2:1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track.

National randomized experiments and validation studies were conducted on 873 tenure-track faculty (439 male, 434 female) from biology, engineering, economics, and psychology at 371 universities/colleges from 50 US states and the District of Columbia. In the main experiment, 363 faculty members evaluated narrative summaries describing hypothetical female and male applicants for tenure-track assistant professorships who shared the same lifestyle (e.g., single without children, married with children). Applicants' profiles were systematically varied to disguise identically rated scholarship; profiles were counterbalanced by gender across faculty to enable between-faculty comparisons of hiring preferences for identically qualified women versus men. Results revealed a 2:1 preference for women by faculty of both genders across both math-intensive and non-math-intensive fields, with the single exception of male economists, who showed no gender preference. Results were replicated using weighted analyses to control for national sample characteristics. In follow-up experiments, 144 faculty evaluated competing applicants with differing lifestyles (e.g., divorced mother vs. married father), and 204 faculty compared same-gender candidates with children, but differing in whether they took 1-y-parental leaves in graduate school. Women preferred divorced mothers to married fathers; men preferred mothers who took leaves to mothers who did not. In two validation studies, 35 engineering faculty provided rankings using full curricula vitae instead of narratives, and 127 faculty rated one applicant rather than choosing from a mixed-gender group; the same preference for women was shown by faculty of both genders. These results suggest it is a propitious time for women launching careers in academic science. Messages to the contrary may discourage women from applying for STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) tenure-track assistant professorships.

The psychology of psychology: A thought experiment.

In the target article, Duarte et al. allege that the lack of political diversity reduces research efficacy. We pose a thought experiment that could provide an empirical test by examining whether institutional review board (IRB) members, granting agencies, and journal reviewers filter scientific products based on political values, invoking scientific criteria (rigor, etc.) as their justification. When these same products are cast in terms highlighting opposite values, do these people shift their decisions?

Attracting STEM talent: do STEM students prefer traditional or work/life-interaction labs?

The demand for employees trained in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields continues to increase, yet the number of Millennial students pursuing STEM is not keeping pace. We evaluated whether this shortfall is associated with Millennials' preference for flexibility and work/life-interaction in their careers-a preference that may be inconsistent with the traditional idea of a science career endorsed by many lab directors. Two contrasting approaches to running STEM labs and training students were explored, and we created a lab recruitment video depicting each. The work-focused video emphasized the traditional notions of a science lab, characterized by long work hours and a focus on individual achievement and conducting research above all else. In contrast, the work/life-interaction-focused video emphasized a more progressive view - lack of demarcation between work and non-work lives, flexible hours, and group achievement. In Study 1, 40 professors rated the videos, and the results confirmed that the two lab types reflected meaningful real-world differences in training approaches. In Study 2, we recruited 53 current and prospective graduate students in STEM fields who displayed high math-identification and a commitment to science careers. In a between-subjects design, they watched one of the two lab-recruitment videos, and then reported their anticipated sense of belonging to and desire to participate in the lab depicted in the video. Very large effects were observed on both primary measures: Participants who watched the work/life-interaction-focused video reported a greater sense of belonging to (d = 1.49) and desire to participate in (d = 1.33) the lab, relative to participants who watched the work-focused video. These results suggest Millennials possess a strong desire for work/life-interaction, which runs counter to the traditional lab-training model endorsed by many lab directors. We discuss implications of these findings for STEM recruitment.

Women in Academic Science: A Changing Landscape.

Much has been written in the past two decades about women in academic science careers, but this literature is contradictory. Many analyses have revealed a level playing field, with men and women faring equally, whereas other analyses have suggested numerous areas in which the playing field is not level. The only widely-agreed-upon conclusion is that women are underrepresented in college majors, graduate school programs, and the professoriate in those fields that are the most mathematically intensive, such as geoscience, engineering, economics, mathematics/computer science, and the physical sciences. In other scientific fields (psychology, life science, social science), women are found in much higher percentages. In this monograph, we undertake extensive life-course analyses comparing the trajectories of women and men in math-intensive fields with those of their counterparts in non-math-intensive fields in which women are close to parity with or even exceed the number of men. We begin by examining early-childhood differences in spatial processing and follow this through quantitative performance in middle childhood and adolescence, including high school coursework. We then focus on the transition of the sexes from high school to college major, then to graduate school, and, finally, to careers in academic science. The results of our myriad analyses reveal that early sex differences in spatial and mathematical reasoning need not stem from biological bases, that the gap between average female and male math ability is narrowing (suggesting strong environmental influences), and that sex differences in math ability at the right tail show variation over time and across nationalities, ethnicities, and other factors, indicating that the ratio of males to females at the right tail can and does change. We find that gender differences in attitudes toward and expectations about math careers and ability (controlling for actual ability) are evident by kindergarten and increase thereafter, leading to lower female propensities to major in math-intensive subjects in college but higher female propensities to major in non-math-intensive sciences, with overall science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors at 50% female for more than a decade. Post-college, although men with majors in math-intensive subjects have historically chosen and completed PhDs in these fields more often than women, the gap has recently narrowed by two thirds; among non-math-intensive STEM majors, women are more likely than men to go into health and other people-related occupations instead of pursuing PhDs. Importantly, of those who obtain doctorates in math-intensive fields, men and women entering the professoriate have equivalent access to tenure-track academic jobs in science, and they persist and are remunerated at comparable rates-with some caveats that we discuss. The transition from graduate programs to assistant professorships shows more pipeline leakage in the fields in which women are already very prevalent (psychology, life science, social science) than in the math-intensive fields in which they are underrepresented but in which the number of females holding assistant professorships is at least commensurate with (if not greater than) that of males. That is, invitations to interview for tenure-track positions in math-intensive fields-as well as actual employment offers-reveal that female PhD applicants fare at least as well as their male counterparts in math-intensive fields. Along these same lines, our analyses reveal that manuscript reviewing and grant funding are gender neutral: Male and female authors and principal investigators are equally likely to have their manuscripts accepted by journal editors and their grants funded, with only very occasional exceptions. There are no compelling sex differences in hours worked or average citations per publication, but there is an overall male advantage in productivity. We attempt to reconcile these results amid the disparate claims made regarding their causes, examining sex differences in citations, hours worked, and interests. We conclude by suggesting that although in the past, gender discrimination was an important cause of women's underrepresentation in scientific academic careers, this claim has continued to be invoked after it has ceased being a valid cause of women's underrepresentation in math-intensive fields. Consequently, current barriers to women's full participation in mathematically intensive academic science fields are rooted in pre-college factors and the subsequent likelihood of majoring in these fields, and future research should focus on these barriers rather than misdirecting attention toward historical barriers that no longer account for women's underrepresentation in academic science.

INCREASING ACHIEVEMENT AND HIGHER-EDUCATION REPRESENTATION OF UNDER-REPRESENTED GROUPS IN SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, ENGINEERING, AND MATHEMATICS FIELDS: A REVIEW OF CURRENT K-12 INTERVENTION PROGRAMS.

The under-representation of women and ethnic minorities in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education and professions has resulted in a loss of human capital for the US scientific workforce and spurred the development of myriad STEM educational intervention programs. Increased allocation of resources to such programs begs for a critical, prescriptive, evidence-based review that will enable researchers to develop optimal interventions and administrators to maximize investments. We begin by providing a theoretical backdrop for K-12 STEM programs by reviewing current data on under-representation and developmental research describing individual-level social factors undergirding these data. Next, we review prototypical designs of these programs, highlighting specific programs in the literature as examples of program structures and components currently in use. We then evaluate these interventions in terms of overall effectiveness, as a function of how well they address age-, ethnicity-, or gender-specific factors, suggesting improvements in program design based on these critiques. Finally, program evaluation methods are briefly reviewed and discussed in terms of how their empirical soundness can either enable or limit our ability to delineate effective program components. "Now more than ever, the nation's changing demographics demand that we include all of our citizens in science and engineering education and careers. For the U.S. to benefit from the diverse talents of all its citizens, we must grow the pipeline of qualified, underrepresented minority engineers and scientists to fill positions in industry and academia."-Irving P. McPhail..

Understanding current causes of women's underrepresentation in science.

Explanations for women's underrepresentation in math-intensive fields of science often focus on sex discrimination in grant and manuscript reviewing, interviewing, and hiring. Claims that women scientists suffer discrimination in these arenas rest on a set of studies undergirding policies and programs aimed at remediation. More recent and robust empiricism, however, fails to support assertions of discrimination in these domains. To better understand women's underrepresentation in math-intensive fields and its causes, we reprise claims of discrimination and their evidentiary bases. Based on a review of the past 20 y of data, we suggest that some of these claims are no longer valid and, if uncritically accepted as current causes of women's lack of progress, can delay or prevent understanding of contemporary determinants of women's underrepresentation. We conclude that differential gendered outcomes in the real world result from differences in resources attributable to choices, whether free or constrained, and that such choices could be influenced and better informed through education if resources were so directed. Thus, the ongoing focus on sex discrimination in reviewing, interviewing, and hiring represents costly, misplaced effort: Society is engaged in the present in solving problems of the past, rather than in addressing meaningful limitations deterring women's participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers today. Addressing today's causes of underrepresentation requires focusing on education and policy changes that will make institutions responsive to differing biological realities of the sexes. Finally, we suggest potential avenues of intervention to increase gender fairness that accord with current, as opposed to historical, findings.

Do Subtle Cues About Belongingness Constrain Women's Career Choices?

Nilanjana Dasgupta's (this issue) stereotype inoculation model (SIM) helps explain why what feels like a free choice to pursue one life path over another "is often constrained by subtle cues in achievement environments that signal who naturally belongs there and is most likely to succeed and who else is a dubious fit" (p. 231). She posits that seeing others like themselves in successful roles inoculates women against negative stereotypes that impede their success and persistence in specific achievement contexts.As is true of classic theoretical positions (see Nagel, 1961), Dasgupta presents postulates from which she deduces a specific set of hypotheses, and she reviews the relevant empirical/observational data in support of them. It is precisely what this area of research has long needed-moving beyond demonstrations of identity threats to a theory about their underlying causes, conditions, and interventions. This proposal leads her to four broad predictions, the first of which is the primary focus of our comment.

Sex Differences in Math-Intensive Fields.

Despite impressive employment gains in many fields of science, women remain underrepresented in fields requiring intensive use of mathematics. Here we discuss three potential explanations for women's underrepresentation: (a) male-female mathematical and spatial ability gaps, (b) sex discrimination, and (c) sex differences in career preferences and lifestyle choices. Synthesizing findings from psychology, endocrinology, sociology, economics, and education leads to the conclusion that, among a combination of interrelated factors, preferences and choices-both freely made and constrained-are the most significant cause of women's underrepresentation.

Representational constraints on the development of memory and metamemory: a developmental-representational theory.

Traditional accounts of memory development suggest that maturation of prefrontal cortex (PFC) enables efficient metamemory, which enhances memory. An alternative theory is described, in which changes in early memory and metamemory are mediated by representational changes, independent of PFC maturation. In a pilot study and Experiment 1, younger children failed to recognize previously presented pictures, yet the children could identify the context in which they occurred, suggesting these failures resulted from inefficient metamemory. Older children seldom exhibited such failure. Experiment 2 established that this was not due to retrieval-time recoding. Experiment 3 suggested that young children's representation of a picture's attributes explained their metamemory failure. Experiment 4 demonstrated that metamemory is age-invariant when representational quality is controlled: When stimuli were equivalently represented, age differences in memory and metamemory declined. These findings do not support the traditional view that as children develop, neural maturation permits more efficient monitoring, which leads to improved memory. These findings support a theory based on developmental-representational synthesis, in which constraints on metamemory are independent of neurological development; representational features drive early memory to a greater extent than previously acknowledged, suggesting that neural maturation has been overimputed as a source of early metamemory and memory failure.

Women's underrepresentation in science: sociocultural and biological considerations.

The underrepresentation of women at the top of math-intensive fields is controversial, with competing claims of biological and sociocultural causation. The authors develop a framework to delineate possible causal pathways and evaluate evidence for each. Biological evidence is contradictory and inconclusive. Although cross-cultural and cross-cohort differences suggest a powerful effect of sociocultural context, evidence for specific factors is inconsistent and contradictory. Factors unique to underrepresentation in math-intensive fields include the following: (a) Math-proficient women disproportionately prefer careers in non-math-intensive fields and are more likely to leave math-intensive careers as they advance; (b) more men than women score in the extreme math-proficient range on gatekeeper tests, such as the SAT Mathematics and the Graduate Record Examinations Quantitative Reasoning sections; (c) women with high math competence are disproportionately more likely to have high verbal competence, allowing greater choice of professions; and (d) in some math-intensive fields, women with children are penalized in promotion rates. The evidence indicates that women's preferences, potentially representing both free and constrained choices, constitute the most powerful explanatory factor; a secondary factor is performance on gatekeeper tests, most likely resulting from sociocultural rather than biological causes.