Social psychology and the affirmative action debate

For a number of reasons, the discipline of psychology has not contributed substantially to the affirmative action debate. One of the major reasons is that psychologists have taken a ''trapped'' orientation to analysis of the psychology of affirmative action. That trapped orientation has caused psychologists to engage in miraculous theorizing, whereby there are significant policy-relevant gaps in the models used in policy analysis. These problems are identified and analyzed, and a more productive alternative approach to the analysis of the psychology of affirmative action is outlined and reviewed.