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Recent research suggests that inducing fixed (rather than malleable) beliefs about groups leads to more negative attitudes toward out-groups. The present paper identifies the underlying mechanism of this effect. We show that individuals with a fixed belief about groups tend to construe intergroup settings as threatening situations that might reveal shortcomings of their in-group (perceived threat). In the present research, we measured (Study 1) and manipulated (Study 2) participants' lay theories about group malleability. We found that the extent to which individuals had an entity (versus an incremental) group theory influenced the level of threat they felt when interacting with out-group members, and that perceived threat in turn affected their level of ethnocentrism and prejudice. These findings shed new light on the role of lay theories in intergroup attitudes and suggest new ways to reduce prejudice. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dozens of studies have shown that authoritarian people are ethnocentric. They are described as nationalistic, prejudiced, and hostile toward ethnic/national out-groups. However, it can be argued that this critical claim remains unproven, as researchers do not take into consideration the very conservative right-wing views typical of authoritarian people. To address this problem, two theoretical approaches were contrasted: the most commonly used right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) approach and the group authoritarianism approach. Both approaches define authoritarianism as the covariance of submission, aggression, and conventionalism, but they differ in that the former is inextricably related to right-wing ideology while the latter is not. This paper presents the results of two survey studies conducted on samples of 600 and 400 respondents. In Study 1, it was found that RWA and group authoritarianism had different patterns of relationships with in-group and out-group national attitudes, providing strong evidence in support of the hypothesis that the right-wing ideology generated ethnocentric national attitudes. Study 2 showed a strong direct effect of right-wing ideology on ethnocentric national attitudes, while the impact of 'pure' authoritarian covariance is marginal and sometimes even seems to be negative (e.g., ethnic prejudices). These findings suggest that authoritarianism has little to do with ethnocentric national attitudes. It is not the covariance of authoritarian attitudes that results in growing ethnocentrism. The true perpetrator can be found in the large component of right-wing ideology contained in such measurement instruments as the RWA scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Societal changes involving power reversal may pose challenges to system justification by a subordinate minority group that had previously held a more privileged position. Derived from originally exploratory qualitative investigation, this paper presents an account of endorsement of justifying the status quo versus the voicing relative deprivation in the context of post-Soviet Estonia. Experiences of alternative societal arrangements in history were actively deployed by (minority ethnic) Estonian Russians to generate temporal comparisons with the past as a cognitive alternative to the present status quo and give voice to experiences of relative deprivation. A struggle for positive social identity was interpreted to motivate Estonian Russians to mobilize the past as a cognitive alternative to delegitimize the status quo. By contrast, Russians were portrayed as invaders, and the Soviet past was represented as unjust by (the majority ethnic) Estonians, whereas the present system was depicted as fair and equitable. Mutually, polemical representations of history and narratives of identity provide the lenses through which the legitimacy of new societal arrangements following the major social change is interpreted. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are ongoing debates both in personality psychology and social psychology on the causes and consequences of personality stability and change. Recent work on social roles suggests that as people change roles (e.g. employee to manager), different experiences and demands are internalised into one's self-concept shaping identity and personality. In this paper, the emphasis moves beyond 'roles' to other group memberships (e.g. ethnicity) in shaping one's self-view and self-rated personality (e.g. Neuroticism). The results of two experiments demonstrated that the salience of a particular group membership (as a Non-Aboriginal Australian) did significantly impact on Neuroticism. Such findings suggest that social identity processes may offer a hitherto neglected avenue for helping to explain personality (dis)continuity. Implications of these findings for both fields are discussed. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals consider abstract values and principles important aspects of their identities. Nonetheless, they often make judgments and decisions that contradict these values and principles for the sake of pragmatic benefits. Assuming that the process of weighting idealistic and pragmatic concerns is context sensitive, the present research argues that affect influences the relative weight of idealistic versus pragmatic concerns in decision situations owing to its influence on the level of abstraction at which individuals represent situations mentally. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrate that more positive affect increases the prominent weighting of idealistic over pragmatic concerns while less positive affect leads to less differentiation between the relevance of idealistic and pragmatic concerns. Studies 3 and 4 test the assumption that affective influences on mental abstraction are crucial for affect-dependent shifts in the weighting of idealistic and pragmatic concerns. By bringing together theorizing on affect and cognition with recent theorizing on the role of mental abstraction for decision processes, this article highlights a mechanism through which decisions can be influenced by feelings that goes beyond the mechanisms that have typically been discussed in the affect and cognition literature so far. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Survivors of disasters commonly provide each other with social support, but the social-psychological processes behind such solidarity behaviours have not been fully explicated. We describe a survey of 1240 adults affected by the 2010 Chile earthquake to examine the importance of two factors: observing others providing social support and social identification with other survivors. As expected, emotional social support was associated with social identification, which in turn was predicted by disaster exposure through common fate. Observing others' supportive behaviour predicted both providing emotional social support and providing coordinated instrumental social support. Expected support was a key mediator of these relationships and also predicted collective efficacy. There was also an interaction: social identification moderated the relationship between observing and providing social support. These findings serve to develop the social identity account of mass emergency behaviour and add value to disaster research by showing the relevance of concepts from collective action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is considerable evidence that psychological membership of crowds can protect people in dangerous events, although the underlying social-psychological processes have not been fully investigated. There is also evidence that those responsible for managing crowd safety view crowds as a source of psychological danger, views that may themselves impact upon crowd safety; yet, there has been little examination of how such 'disaster myths' operate in practice. In a study of an outdoor music event characterized as a near disaster, analysis of questionnaire survey data ( N = 48) showed that social identification with the crowd predicted feeling safe directly as well as indirectly through expectations of help and trust in others in the crowd to deal with an emergency. In a second study of the same event, qualitative analysis of interviews ( N = 20) and of contemporaneous archive materials showed that, in contrast to previous findings, crowd safety professionals' references to 'mass panic' were highly nuanced. Despite an emphasis by some safety professionals on crowd 'disorder', crowd participants and some of the professionals also claimed that self-organization in the crowd prevented disaster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kony2012 was a viral Internet video that attracted unprecedented online interest in promoting a campaign to arrest the leader of an African militant group. The current research considers the social psychological bases of social media-based collective action. In three cross-sectional surveys ( N = 304) collected before, on, and after the key action date of 20 April 2012, we consider the nature (opinion based or global) and function (emergent or transforming) of social identity in modern forms of social action. Multigroup structural equation modelling showed that Kony2012 action was best captured by an emergent opinion-based social identity. Moreover, the same factors that predicted Kony2012 action generally also predicted engagement in new repertoires of protest (involving the use of social media) and an observable traditional socio-political action (signing a letter to a government minister). The results suggest that there is no sharp dividing line between traditional and new forms of collective action and that both may be understood as valid expressions of collective selfhood. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In three studies, we examined the effect of intergroup status on group members' tendencies to characterize the ingroup's relationship with an outgroup as conflictual following outgroup action. Findings from all three studies supported the prediction that the intergroup relationship would be characterized as less conflictual when the ingroup had relatively high rather than low status. Consistent with the hypothesis that the effect of status reflects strategic concerns, it was moderated by the perceived relevance of the outgroup's action to intergroup status relations (study 1), it was sensitive to audience (study 2), and it was partially mediated by status management concerns (study 3). The role of strategic, status-related factors in intergroup relations is discussed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bringing together self-determination theory, intergroup theories based on the social identity approach, and normative approaches, three studies conducted among hockey fans tested if social norms and social identity predict greater self-determined motivation to engage in derogatory behaviours against an outgroup team and higher frequency of these behaviours. Higher self-determination was conceptualised as an indicator of internalisation. In Study 1, hockey fans who identified more strongly as fans of the Montreal Canadiens (N = 181) displayed a stronger positive association between the perceived norm in favour of outgroup derogation and self-determined motivation to engage in derogatory behaviours against fans of an outgroup team. This interaction also emerged on the frequency with which the derogatory behaviours were enacted. In Studies 2 and 3 (Ns = 105 and 116), this norm by social identity interaction was replicated on both the self-determination and the frequency outcomes for fans of a diversity of teams in the National Hockey League. In Study 3, these findings were observed over and above a manipulation that framed derogatory behaviours as being either harmful or beneficial. Results are discussed in light of motivational theories, normative approaches, and intergroup theories based on the social identity approach. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social identities enhance members' well-being through the provision of social support and feelings of collective efficacy as well as by acting as a basis for collective action. However, the precise mechanisms through which identification acts to enhance well-being can be complicated by stigmatisation, which potentially undermines solidarity and collective action. The present research examines a real-world stigmatised community group in order to investigate the following: (1) the community identity processes that act to enhance well-being and collective action and (2) the consequences of stigmatisation for these processes. Study 1 consisted of a household survey conducted in disadvantaged areas of Limerick city in Ireland. Participants (n = 322) completed measures of community identification, social support, collective efficacy, community action and psychological well-being. Mediation analysis indicated that perceptions of collective efficacy are an important mediator of the effect of identification upon well-being. However, levels of self-reported community action were low and unrelated to community identification. In Study 2, 14 follow-up multiple-participant interviews with residents and community group workers were thematically analysed, revealing high levels of stigmatisation, which was reported to lead to disengagement from identity-related collective action. These findings indicate the potential for stigma to reduce collective action through undermining solidarity and social support. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution addresses the issue of reduction of dehumanisation towards Blacks, an outgroup that has been historically targeted by heinous prejudice. The study tested, for the first time, whether the combination of multiple categorisation and human identity represents the most optimal condition for reducing dehumanisation towards Blacks. The main dependent variables were attribution of secondary emotions and inalienability of human rights. Results highlighted the combination of multiple categorisation and human identity as the most effective strategy in reducing dehumanisation towards Blacks. Evidence of this study sheds light on the possible ways through which conceiving others in terms of complex categorical criteria, that is, as members of the human group in conjunction with other communal or different social categories, can lead to more harmonious intergroup relations. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose that the perceived continuity between a group's past and present can be a psychological resource that provides confidence in the group's future vitality, thereby reducing the need to preserve identity. In two studies, English participants were told that there was continuity or discontinuity between England's past and present. Both studies showed that higher identifiers (but not lower identifiers) experienced more collective angst (i.e., concern for the group's future) and were more opposed to immigration when English history was presented as discontinuous compared with continuous. Importantly, collective angst mediated the effect of the historical continuity manipulation on opposition to immigration. We conclude that, particularly among those higher in group identification, perceived discontinuity of the group's past can undermine the perceived vitality of the future, thereby increasing the need to preserve current collective identity. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated the assumption that independent versus interdependent self-construals yield different manifestations of psychological reactance in different group contexts. We expected collectivists (interdependent) to value the collective freedom of an ingroup more in face of an outgroup threat than individualists (independent) who should be protective of their individual freedom especially within an ingroup. In Study 1, we showed that collectivists (Taiwanese students) did not show reactance when a threat to their freedom of choice originated in the ingroup, but they did show reactance when it originated in an outgroup. In Study 2, Austrian students showed more reactance the more interdependent their self-construal was when confronted with an outgroup restriction. However, the more independent Austrian students' self-construal was, the more reactance they showed when the threat came from the ingroup. Priming an independent (versus interdependent) self-construal in Study 3, we again observed more reactance when freedom was restricted by the ingroup. The findings underline the importance of understanding psychological reactance as a socially situated phenomenon. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A three-phase longitudinal study (spread over a month's time) was carried out to investigate attitude's persistence and linkage to behavior as it may be affected by the processing of information about the communication source. The following three independent variables were manipulated: (i) contents of the source of information (implying the communicator to be expert or inexpert on the topic of the communication); (ii) length of the source information (brief versus lengthy); and (iii) message recipients' involvement in the issue at hand (high versus low). Replicating prior research when the source information was brief, it exerted greater persuasive impact under low versus high involvement, and when it was lengthy, it exerted greater persuasive impact under high versus low involvement. Of greater importance, the newly acquired attitudes were more persistent and were linked more strongly to actual behavior when the source information was lengthy (versus brief) provided the recipients had high (versus low) involvement in the issue. These findings were interpreted to mean that just like with the message/issue information in prior research, when processed extensively, source information, too, may contribute to the formation of persistent and behavior-driving attitudes. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose morality shifting as a mechanism through which individuals can maintain a moral image of the ingroup. We argue that a shift from the moral principles of harm and fairness to those of loyalty and authority occurs when assessing a potentially threatening event, particularly among high ingroup glorifiers. Three studies confirmed this hypothesis using three different methodologies. Study 1 compared the use of language related to four moral foundations formulated in moral psychology in response to ingroup- and outgroup-committed wrongdoings. Results showed that loyalty- and authority-related words were used more, whereas harm- and fairness-related words were used less in response to ingroup- compared with outgroup-committed wrongdoings. Study 2 replicated this effect with regards to the cognitive accessibility of these moral principles. Study 3 confirmed that morality shifting is a motivated response to social identity threat, rather than a response to mere activation of social identity. Finally, as predicted, Study 3 demonstrated the effect of morality shifting to be moderated by ingroup glorification but not ingroup attachment. Implications and consequences for intergroup and individual wrongdoings, as well as for intergroup relations, are discussed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social identity approach assumes that group members are internally motivated to adhere to group norms. Even though there is plenty of evidence for this assumption, research on how group norms translate into behavior is scarce. If ingroup norms are internalized, they should elicit the same effect as individual standards. Derived from research on internally motivated individual standards, it was predicted that discrepancies from group norms result in more negative affect, lower levels of well-being, and-based on self-completion theory-in compensatory effort in case of an opportunity to reduce the discrepancy. One correlational study and four experiments support these predictions. The results are discussed in relation to self-regulation approaches and the social identity approach. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In six studies ( N = 1045) conducted in three European countries, we demonstrate distinctions between causal responsibility, group-based guilt, and moral responsibility. We propose that causal responsibility is an antecedent of group-based guilt linking the ingroup to previous transgressions against the victim group. In contrast, moral responsibility is a consequence of group-based guilt and is conceptualized as a sociomoral norm to respond to the consequences of the ingroup's transgressions and the current needs of the victim group. As such, moral responsibility can be stimulated by group-based guilt and directly predicts individual action intentions. Studies 1 and 2 focus on the conceptual distinctions among the three constructs. Study 3 tests the indirect effect of causal responsibility on moral responsibility via group-based guilt. The remaining studies explore the mediating role of moral responsibility in associations between group-based guilt and compensatory action tendencies, that is, financial compensation (study 4), approach and avoidance tendencies (study 5) and public apology (study 6). Together these studies show that causal and moral responsibility are psychologically distinct concepts from group-based guilt and that moral responsibility plays an important role in shaping the effects of group-based guilt on behavioral intentions. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An abundance of evidence suggests that the consequences of collective ingroup victimization can traverse generations, even among group members who are not direct descendants of victims. It nevertheless remains unclear why only some group members experience vicarious victimization. To examine the role of collective identification in the transmission of trauma across generations, we surveyed members of a Jewish community-including descendants of holocaust survivors and others who were not descendants of the holocaust survivors. Among non-descendants, Jewish identification was negatively associated with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In contrast, among descendants, Jewish identification was positively associated with PTSD symptoms. Further, familial willingness to discuss the holocaust mediated the relationship between identification and PTSD symptoms. Additional analyses confirmed that these effects were specific to holocaust-related PTSD symptoms and not general anxiety or depression. These findings suggest that collective identity may both buffer and enhance the effects of collective victimization on mental health. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]