Danny Osborne

Phone: +64 9 373 7599 ext 82287
Email: d.osborne@auckland.ac.nz
Room: HSB 515
Office Hours: By Appointment
 

Before joining the Department of Psychology as a lecturer in July of 2011, I was a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). While at UCLA, I studied social psychology and completed a double minor in political psychology and quantitative methods. Now that I am on the other side of the desk, I teach social psychology and am developing an advanced topic paper on intergroup relations/political psychology for 2012. Needless to say, I am very happy to be a part of this wonderful Department and am looking forward to starting my life in New Zealand.

My research is broadly situated in the overlap between political psychology and intergroup relations. Specifically, I have two separate lines of research that jointly examine the ways in which inequality and social injustices are reproduced in society. The first of these lines of research investigates the influence that different belief systems have on legitimizing social injustices. Within this overarching theme, I am interested in the following questions:

(a) How do beliefs about gender roles shape people’s support for women’s rights?
(b) What types of attributions do people make to justify their beliefs about economic inequality?
(c) Why do people accept concessions that ultimately reinforce the status quo?
(d) When (and how) do people respond to unfair treatment?

My second line of research takes my focus on intergroup relations and applies it to the criminal justice system. Specifically, I am interested in the different types of stereotypes that people have of criminals. Moreover, I examine the impact that these stereotypes have on people’s memory of a suspect’s physical appearance. In doing so, I draw upon the literatures on stereotype-consistent memory biases, perceived stereotypicality, and mistaken identifications.

In addressing these two themes, I use a multi-method approach that combines the precision of experimentation with the generalizability of surveys. I believe that this is an effective way of balancing the benefits and drawbacks of any one particular method.

Ultimately, both of my lines of research focus on understanding how inequality is manufactured and reproduced in society. I believe that we must first understand how social injustices operate before we can effectively eliminate them.

• Osborne, D., & Davies, P. G. (in press). When benevolence backfires: Benevolent sexists’ opposition to elective and traumatic abortion. Journal of Applied Social Psychology.
• Osborne, D., Sears, D. O., & Valentino, N. A. (2011). The end of the solidly Democratic South: The impressionable-years hypothesis. Political Psychology, 32(1), 81-108. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9221.2010.00796.x
• Weiner, B., Osborne, D., & Rudolph, U. (2011). An attributional analysis of reactions to poverty: The political ideology of the giver and the perceived morality of the receiver. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 15(2), 199-213. doi: 10.1177/1088868310387615
• Osborne, D., & Davies, P. G. (2009). Social dominance orientation, ambivalent sexism, and abortion: Explaining pro-choice and pro-life attitudes. In L. B. Palcroft & M. V. Lopez (Eds.), Personality Assessment: New Research (pp. 309-320). Hauppauge, NY: Nova.
• Osborne, D., Duran, A., Davies, P. G., Wagner, W., & Rienzi, B. (2007). Does sexual orientation matter? An experimental assessment of student evaluations of a ‘gay’ professor. In E. M. Vargios (Ed), Educational Psychology Research Focus (pp. 49-63). Hauppauge, NY: Nova.
• Osborne, D., & Wagner, W. (2007). Exploring the relationship between homophobia and participation in core sports for high school students. Sociological Perspectives, 50, 597-613.