ABSTRACT
Research in social psychology focuses on the psychological mechanisms involved in and underpinning discrimination. The research program is vast (for accessible overviews, see Ramiah et al. 2010; for research on gender discrimination in particular see Valian 1999; on racial discrimination see Blank et al. 2004). In this chapter I focus on three areas of research from social psychology that have been taken up by philosophers: in-group/out-group favoritism, implicit bias, and stereotype threat. Whilst each has garnered some philosophical attention, little attempt has been made to tease out the implications of this research for philosophical analyses of discrimination. In this chapter I explore some of the ways in which insights from research in social psychology may require revision or fine-tuning to philosophical analyses of discrimination. Philosophers have good reason to attend to the findings of social psychology: not only to gain an understanding of the mechanisms that may underpin discrimination, but also to inform philosophical analyses of discrimination and ensure that they are suitably formulated to capture the full range of the phenomenon.
