Moral disengagement is a process whereby the self-regulatory mechanisms that would otherwise sanction unethical conduct can be selectively disabled. The present research proposed that moral disengagement might be adopted in the endorsement of asylum seeker policies in Australia, and in order to test this, developed and validated a scale in two studies. Factor analysis demonstrated that a two-factor, 16-item structure had the best fit, and the construct validity of the scale was supported. Results provide evidence for the use of moral disengagement in the context of asylum seekers as a means of rationalizing conduct that may otherwise be sanctioned.

Drawing on attitude theories from social psychology, we conducted a survey of Australian pre-service (n = 327) and in-service (n = 127) teachers' attitudes about teaching children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This paper reports a content analysis of beliefs, affect and behaviours towards teaching children with ADHD and quantitative analyses pertaining to attitudinal ambivalence - that is, where a teacher may simultaneously report negative and positive evaluations of teaching children with ADHD. While on average, overall or global attitudes were mildly positive for both cohorts, considerable ambivalence about teaching children with ADHD was commonly experienced. Participants reported ambivalent beliefs, affect and behaviours, as well as ambivalence between these attitude components. Paradoxically, participants who knew more about ADHD and held stronger positive global attitudes about teaching children with ADHD reported less ambivalent behaviours towards these children, but reported more ambivalent beliefs. The implications for teachers' professional development and training are discussed.

Within psychology, the term "individuation" is used in several different ways. In person perception, it refers to perceiving a person as a unique constellation of features rather than as a category representative. In psychoanalytic and developmental psychology, it refers to one's sense of identity as an individual, autonomous, and separate person, and in family systems psychology, it concerns the degree to which a person maintains age-appropriate separateness and connectedness with their family. Finally, in perception and cognition, the individuation of objects refers to the ability to discern coherent objects from their surrounds, such that they can be counted.

Historically, ‘race’ has been a common source of information upon which we categorise others and it is often linked to a person’s ethnicity. However, in a world of immigration and globalisation this is problematic, as in modern pluralistic societies ancestry and identity may be increasingly divergent. The present research investigated how host societies form impressions of racial minority immigrant groups and how they categorise new immigrants, as well as generations-deep immigrants. Six separate studies were conducted, drawing on established theories of acculturation, nonverbal accent and stereotyping. Results supported predictions that enculturation can be an immediately salient cue for categorisation, even at zero acquaintance.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a childhood condition whose characteristic behaviours of hyperactivity, inattention and impulsivity are salient in school settings. Teachers' actions and decisions when working with children who demonstrate behaviours consistent with ADHD can be expected to be impacted by their knowledge of ADHD, and their attitude toward teaching such children. Teachers are exposed to numerous sources of inconsistent information about ADHD during their training and classroom experience. The formation of attitudes in response to such complexity is poorly understood. The present research used models of attitude content, structure and strength to investigate the formation of teachers' knowledge of ADHD and attitudes toward teaching children who display its characteristics. The results are reported in journal article form comprising studies reported in Chapters 2 to 4. ... The findings from this project carry practical implications for teacher training on ADHD, and for school psychologists. Strong attitudes were shown to develop via combinations of direct, indirect and personal experiences with ADHD, and via amount and structural consistency of information and thought about ADHD. The results highlight the need to investigate such complex attitudes in ecologically valid ways. The development of models of attitude strength is important for understanding attitudes toward other social issues that polarise opinions and have enduring consequences, such as global warming or genetic modification of crops. Like ADHD, these topics are based on large amounts of structurally inconsistent information. Thus, the research reported in this thesis pertains to the formation of complex, real-life attitudes and may generalise to other multifaceted, personally relevant attitude objects.

Previous psychological research into immigration has tended to focus either on immigrants' adjustive behaviours, such as their acculturation preference, or on community attitudes towards immigrants. Recent models bring these lines of research together. This study examined effects of immigrants' perceptions of acceptance or rejection by the broader community (inclusionary status) on their psychological adaptation and satisfaction, and how this operates together with acculturation preference and first friendships. One hundred thirty-seven immigrants to Australia from 46 countries completed an English-language questionnaire. Results showed good psychological adaptation to life in Australia and strong satisfaction. Contrary to previous findings, preference for assimilation predicted greater satisfaction. The one variable that consistently predicted psychological adaptation and satisfaction when all other variables were controlled was inclusionary status. This related with preference for contact with Australians. First friendships were also important. To the extent that first friendships were among Australians, participants reported greater social inclusion, and this mediated a relation with better psychological adaptation. The results speak to the importance of providing opportunities for immigrants to make new friends in the receiving community. Future research should address acculturation preferences among Australians, and examine a possible disjunct between government policy and mainstream attitudes.

This thesis is about decolonisation and empowerment. It is specifically about First Nations people claiming or reclaiming their autonomy. This thesis explores concepts, in this case a focus on the term 'resilience', to address miscommunications and to perhaps minimise mistakes that can be made due to assumed knowledge; assumed congruence of terms and concepts. The history of psychology as a discipline is discussed, along with its role in the oppression of First Nations people worldwide, and in Australia. The importance of worldviews, and how miscommunications can affect healthcare, is critical for health professionals to understand. The discipline of psychology needs to ensure that it is not limiting its worldview by being too insular; it needs to be reflexive enough to both recognise its part in the history of oppression, and to become an agent of change for those who have been oppressed. Indigenous voices need to be heard as part of this reflexive psychology.

Labeling is a deceptively simple act that has pervasive consequences. In a well-known study, Rosenthal and Fode (1963) found that randomly labeling rats as “maze-bright” or “maze-dull” resulted in “maze-bright” rats moving through a maze faster than “maze-dull” rats. Of course, the rats were not responding to the labels. Rather, their human handlers were; their expectations led them to train “maze-bright rats” better than “maze-dull” rats. Double-blind methods are now used to control such experimenter effects. In another study, Rosenthal and Jacobsen (1968) led school teachers to believe that some children would “bloom” intellectually over the following year. These children did indeed “bloom” relative to their classmates, again as a function of expectations (held by their teachers) that were prompted by the label. These two studies illustrate the selffulfilling prophecy, whereby applying a label can produce behavior that is consistent with that label. Labeling theory has addressed how this might work and has been especially prominent in the study of deviance and stigma.

This chapter offers a new conceptualisation of popular nationalism in Australia, termed right-wing protective popular nationalism (RWPPN). Taken from theoretical underpinnings which suggest that the rise of popular nationalism in Australia links with the Hanson phenomenon, RWPPN concerns a desire to protect and preserve the national culture and way of life. It associates strongly with a sense of national identity which is defined, at least in part, by opposition to multiculturalism and prejudice to non-white/Anglo ethnic groups. To understand the interplay between RWPPN and twelve other psychological profiling variables (which we argue are related to Hansonism and a broader discourse of ethnic inclusion and exclusion), we present a cluster analysis. Cluster analysis is commonly used in audience segmentation studies to show how the population divides naturally into different groups. The analysis revealed three clear segments in participants’ level of RWPPN sentiment and responses to ethnic groups in Australia, which we labelled “inclusive” (low RWPPN), “guarded” (med RWPPN), and “exclusive” (high RWPPN). The “exclusive” group is strongly emotive and quite large, but is nonetheless outnumbered by the “inclusive” group. Based on these results, we conclude that RWPPN relates to monocultural tendencies and that it does so at the expense of social cohesion.