The Psychoepistemological Profile of African-American College Students

Abstract

The epistemic hierarchies of a sample of 360 African-American college students were assessed using the Psycho-Epistemological Profile and compared with norms for white college students ( N = 1342). A much lower proportion of the black students had Metaphorism as the dominant mode than their white peers. Large differences were also found in the proportions of black ( n = 229) and white ( n = 417) women with the preference for Empiricism as their primary epistemic tool. The results do seem to support the notion of black/white differences in “cognitive style.”