Page 146 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 23

gues, for example, found evidence that members of collec�vis�c cultures
are more likely to fall for pseudoscience and misinforma�on. Collec�vism
can also incline people toward more ethnocentrism, and greater vulnerabi-
lity to social influence. So Devers’ claim that collec�vism equals accuracy is
contradicted by research.
One final area of weakness in this project that I will discuss involves Devers’
a�empt to bring together psychological and Chris�an ideas on the topic of
bias. While she quotes scripture on occasion, there is no substan�ve enga-
gement with either the theological or biblical-studies scholarly literature on
the topics covered in the book. This results in a lopsided presenta�on that
is heavy on social psychology but not strongly Chris�an. I got the impression
that it would be possible to copy and paste about 80% of the manuscript
into a general-readership psychology book for secular audiences, with no
need for more than cosme�c altera�ons. Chris�ans have a rich and deep
tradi�on of intellectual inquiry into almost all of the issues that Devers dis-
cusses, and had she mined those resources the result would have been
much more impressive.

The Amiable Professional Disagreements
Here comes the “inside baseball,” so those with only a passing interest in
social psychology might want to skip to the end. On the other hand, no�ng
these professional differences might clear up a few things for readers, so it
might be worth your �me to s�ck with us. Devers and I are both social psy-
chologists. I did my disserta�on on terror management theory, so Devers
men�oning her enthusiasm for this theory brought a big smile to my face,
and a big part of my enjoyment of her presenta�on of social-cogni�on re-
search came from my own familiarity with these lines of inquiry.
What follows are ways in which I respec�ully diverge from the author’s
perspec�ve. I will focus on two such divergences.
First, Devers does not seem to be a fan of personality psychology. Given that
my doctorate is actually a combined Social and Personality Psychology PhD,
it is not surprising that I am a fan of it. Devers badmouths personality expla-
na�ons for behavior as “fatalis�c” and �ed to a belief that traits are gene�-
cally locked-in absolutes (p. 113). She denies the validity of over a quarter-
century of research on willpower as something that just “doesn’t exist” (p.
115). Instead of individual differences being important, Devers presents ins-
tead a strong situa�onist argument: “behavior is determined by the envi-
ronment” (p. 118). The idea that behaviors are driven by situa�on, and that
personality traits are irrelevant, can be found among some social psycholo-
gists (Philip Zimbardo being one example), but this posi�on is a throwback
to a debate that we had in the 1970s and got over in the 1980s with the rise
of empirically-rigorous and robust approaches such as the Five-Factor Mo-
del of Personality. The idea that traits are important for social func�oning
has also been given a substan�al boost by work done in the posi�ve psycho-
logy movement on character strengths and virtues. So while Devers is right

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