Monday, September 01, 2008

Irish Skeptics Society Talk

See below from the Irish Skeptics Society Site. Thanks to Daragh (one of our undergrad interns!) for pointing this out

http://www.irishskeptics.net/
"Our next lecture will take place on Wednesday September 10th at 8.00 pm in the Science Gallery, Trinity College Dublin (www.sciencegallery.org). The gallery is located just inside the Pearse Street gate close to the junction with Westland Row. We are very pleased to be associated with the science gallery and hope you enjoy this new venue.

The speaker on the night will be social psychologist Dr. Mick O’Connell, Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology, UCD. The title of the presentation is “Is Ireland an intolerant society? And can education change intolerant attitudes?” Dr. O’Connell has sent the following abstract:

“ireland’s recent substantial demographic changes have coincided with - or more likely produced - a rise in anti-minority/immigrant attitudes. One of the key predictors of overt measures of prejudice is education, i.e. where people are more educated they appear less likely to agree with hostile statements towards ethnic minorities or immigrants. Does this mean that one can ’solve’ problems of intergroup hostility via large doses of liberal education? One must be sceptical since education may simply lead people to redirect their intolerance, or to hide it with greater conviction as they fear being labelled as politically incorrect. While the views of the well-educated in Ireland and across Europe remain consistently more tolerant than those of the less well-educated even in the face of more highly skilled immigration, the better-educated or more skilled nationals have greater inbuilt protection against economic rivalry with immigrants”.

Admission on the night (to defray costs) will be 3 euro for members and 6 euro for non-members"

1 comment:

Kevin Denny said...

I can't see what this has to do with skepticism in the sense that this society is concerned with but an interesting idea nonetheless. I suppose we (economists) would interpret the claim about education as another "external return".One needs an instrumental variable for education in the prejudice equation here.