Search

In intractable intergroup conflicts, groups often try to frame intergroup violence as legitimate through the use of emotional appeals. Two experiments demonstrate that outsiders’ perception of which emotion conflict parties communicate influences the extent to which they legitimize their violence. Results show that although outsiders typically give more leeway to powerless groups because of their “underdog” status, communicating power-congruent emotions qualifies this effect; observers legitimize intergroup violence most when powerless groups communicate fear and when powerful groups communicate anger. This is because fear communicates that the group is a victim that cannot be blamed for their violence, whereas anger communicates that the group is wronged and thus their violence seems righteous and moral. Results further show that sympathy for the powerless appears to be a more fragile basis for legitimization of violence than the moral high ground for the powerful. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examines the process by which perceptions of conversational flow foster an emergent sense of group entitativity. We propose that conversational flow influences more than just the quality of interpersonal relations: it signals entitativity - social unity at the group level. We predicted that when conversations are intermitted by brief silences after a target has spoken, this is perceived as disruptive for targets of low social status within the group: For low-status group members, such pauses raise concerns over respect and inclusion. However, for high-status group members, a similar intermission may be interpreted as an acknowledgement of their distinctive position in the group, and may therefore bolster the hierarchy and unity of the group. Two experiments support these hypotheses. Study 1 ( N = 77) manipulated status in conversations of a target participant with confederates. Study 2 ( N = 138) replicates the effect among participants who watch a videotaped conversation. Both studies show the predicted pattern, and suggest that belonging (Study 1) and perceived respect (Study 2) may mediate effects of condition on perceptions of group entitativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose that in intergroup conflict threat content is important in understanding the reactions of those who experience threats the most: the powerless. Studies 1 and 2 show that powerless groups experience more threat than powerful groups, resulting in the experience of both more anger and fear. Threat content determines which emotions elicit behavior that adequately deals with the situation. When confronted with a physically threatening outgroup, fear elicits an avoidance reaction in powerless groups (Study 1). When valuable resources are threatened, anger makes powerless group members want to confront the outgroup, at least when they strongly identify with their group (Study 2). Study 3 replicates the finding that threat content determines which emotions are functional in directing behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can imitation lead to less liking? Previous research on mimicry and imitation suggests that imitation should lead to more liking, at least when it concerns neutral behaviours. In the present studies, we looked at behaviour with a clear message: Facial expressions. As predicted, we found in two studies that an affiliative facial expression (happiness) leads to more liking when imitated, whereas a non-affiliative facial expression (anger) leads to less liking when imitated. Thus, imitating someone does not always lead to more liking: Imitating behaviour that communicates an unfriendly message can have negative consequences. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women remain a minority in politics. In nearly all countries, including parliamentary democracies, women are still underrepresented in national parliament and other representative institutions. Research has argued that there is a bias against women in elections. Here we study the process behind this phenomenon by investigating the effect of a candidate's gender and gender prototypicality on judgment of the suitability of this candidate in elections. The first experiment shows that when voters think topics that stereotypically demand male characteristics (e.g., competitiveness) are important, they prefer male candidates, while they prefer female candidates when topics that stereotypically demand female characteristics (e.g., pro-sociability) are important. Experiment 2 replicates this and shows that this effect is fully reversed for counterprototypical (i.e., in physical appearance) candidates. This supports a stereotyping as prediction account, and has important theoretical and practical implications. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated the idea that a charismatic leader with a controversial message is most likely to persuade people in times of terror, because in those times people have a high need for vision, and vision is what a charismatic leader provides. In addition, we argued that the leader's message should contain a pro-attitudinal position as well, as this makes the counter-attitudinal message more palatable. In line with our hypotheses, we found in Experiment 1 that thinking about terrorism increases people's need for vision. Experiment 2 revealed that only when people have a high need for vision they will be influenced by a controversial charismatic leader. Experiment 3 showed that existential threats also directly increase the influence of a controversial charismatic leader. Further, this was especially so when the charismatic leader was both attractive and communicated his message in a charismatic way. Finally, Experiment 4 revealed that after thinking about their own death or about terrorist attacks, people were most likely to be persuaded by a controversial charismatic leader whose counter-attitudinal message also contained pro-attitudinal statements. Together, this research suggests that in times of terror people's need for vision increases, which opens them up to a counter-attitudinal message of a charismatic leader as long as this message also includes some pro-attitudinal statements. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-status group members typically respond defensively when their ingroup members transgress against low-status groups. However, when they identify highly with transgressor groups, they sometimes also engage in solidarity with victimized low-status groups due to ingroup-focused motives. Yet, the response of low-identified transgressor group members, who can prioritize victims' plight over ingroup interests, remains underexplored. To address this gap, we conducted three preregistered studies ( N total = 886) concerning education-based transgressions in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, employing cross-sectional (Study 1) and experimental designs (Studies 2-3). Supporting previous research, we found that high-identifiers engage in nonradical solidarity driven by ingroup image concerns and image-related emotions. Low-identifiers, however, engage in both nonradical and radical solidarity through perceived injustice and justice-related emotions. Our findings provide insights into the roots of high-status group collective action on behalf of low-status groups against intergroup transgressions. Theoretical and societal implications were discussed., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

We investigated women's anger expression in response to sexism. In three studies (N s = 103, 317, and 241), we tested the predictions that women express less anger about sexism than they experience -the anger gap-and that the anger expressed by women is associated with instrumental concerns, specifically perceived costs and benefits of confronting sexism. To estimate the specificity of the proposed gap, we compared women's anger reactions to men's anger reactions as well as anger reactions to sadness reactions. Across studies, we found support for the anger gap, that is, lower anger expression than experience, and the gap was more pronounced for women than for men (Study 3). Surprisingly, a gap also occurred in sadness reactions. Regarding instrumental concerns, there was converging evidence that expressed anger was negatively associated with individual costs. We also investigated whether anger expression can be encouraged through women's identification with feminists (Studies 1 and 2) and support by other women (Study 2); yet, we found no evidence. We conclude that, to understand women's-and men's-reactions to sexism, it is critical not to mistake their emotion expression for how they really feel, but instead to also consider strategic concerns., Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-021-00081-7., Competing Interests: Conflicts of InterestThe authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose., (© The Author(s) 2021.)

People may be sympathetic to violent extremism when it serves their own interests. Such support may manifest itself via biased recognition of hate crimes. Psychological surveys were conducted in the wakes of mass shootings in the United States, New Zealand, and the Netherlands (total n = 2,332), to test whether factors that typically predict endorsement of violent extremism also predict biased hate crime perceptions. Path analyses indicated a consistent pattern of motivated judgment: hate crime perceptions were directly biased by prejudicial attitudes and indirectly biased by an aggrieved sense of disempowerment and White/Christian nationalism. After the shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, disempowerment-fueled anti-Semitism predicted lower perceptions that the gunman was motivated by hatred and prejudice (study 1). After the shootings that occurred at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, disempowerment-fueled Islamoprejudice similarly predicted lower hate crime perceptions (study 2a). Conversely, after the tram shooting in Utrecht, Netherlands (which was perpetrated by a Turkish-born immigrant), disempowerment-fueled Islamoprejudice predicted higher hate crime perceptions (study 2b). Finally, after the Walmart shooting in El Paso, Texas, hate crime perceptions were specifically biased by an ethnonationalist view of Hispanic immigrants as a symbolic (rather than realistic) threat to America; that is, disempowered individuals deemphasized likely hate crimes due to symbolic concerns about cultural supremacy rather than material concerns about jobs or crime (study 3). Altogether, biased hate crime perceptions can be purposive and reveal supremacist sympathies., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interest.

This study examines the process by which perceptions of conversational flow foster an emergent sense of group entitativity. We propose that conversational flow influences more than just the quality of interpersonal relations: it signals entitativity - social unity at the group level. We predicted that when conversations are intermitted by brief silences after a target has spoken, this is perceived as disruptive for targets of low social status within the group: For low-status group members, such pauses raise concerns over respect and inclusion. However, for high-status group members, a similar intermission may be interpreted as an acknowledgement of their distinctive position in the group, and may therefore bolster the hierarchy and unity of the group. Two experiments support these hypotheses. Study 1 (N = 77) manipulated status in conversations of a target participant with confederates. Study 2 (N = 138) replicates the effect among participants who watch a videotaped conversation. Both studies show the predicted pattern, and suggest that belonging (Study 1) and perceived respect (Study 2) may mediate effects of condition on perceptions of group entitativity., (© 2013 The British Psychological Society.)

In two field studies, we examined whether voters overestimate support for their political party among nonvoters. In Study 1, voters estimated the percentage of votes their party would receive in an upcoming election, and this percentage increased when voters estimated the percentage of votes their party would receive if nonvoters also were to vote. In Study 2, participants overestimated support for their party even when we made them explicitly aware of current levels of this support by presenting them with poll-based forecasts of election results. Furthermore, Study 2 demonstrated that commitment to vote for a specific party predicted the degree of overestimation. Our results imply that highly committed voters are particularly likely to project support for their party onto nonvoters. Implications for the literature on social projection and social identity are discussed.

A wealth of research has found that power leads to behavioral approach and action. Four experiments demonstrate that this link between power and approach is broken when the power relationship is illegitimate. When power was primed to be legitimate or when power positions were assigned legitimately, the powerful demonstrated more approach than the powerless. However, when power was experienced as illegitimate, the powerless displayed as much approach as, or even more approach than, the powerful. This moderating effect of legitimacy occurred regardless of whether power and legitimacy were manipulated through experiential primes, semantic primes, or role manipulations. It held true for behavioral approach (Experiment 1) and two effects associated with it: the propensity to negotiate (Experiment 2) and risk preferences (Experiments 3 and 4). These findings demonstrate that how power is conceptualized, acquired, and wielded determines its psychological consequences and add insight into not only when but also why power leads to approach.

The aim of the present research was to investigate whether unconsciously presented affective information may cause opposite evaluative responses depending on what social category the information originates from. We argue that automatic comparison processes between the self and the unconscious affective information produce this evaluative contrast effect. Consistent with research on automatic behaviour, we propose that when an intergroup context is activated, an automatic comparison to the social self may determine the automatic evaluative responses, at least for highly visible categories (e.g. sex, ethnicity). Contrary to previous research on evaluative priming, we predict automatic contrastive responses to affective information originating from an outgroup category such that the evaluative response to neutral targets is opposite to the valence of the suboptimal primes. Two studies using different intergroup contexts provide support for our hypotheses.

Whereas previous research has shown automatic behavior conforming to outgroup stereotypes, the authors demonstrate automatic behavioral contrast away from a stereotype/trait associated with an outgroup (Study 1 and 2) and point to the importance of an "us-them" intergroup comparison in this process. In Study 1, participants colored pictures more messily when neatness was associated with an outgroup rather than the ingroup. In Study 2, using a different behavior, participants primed with busy business people reacted faster than controls (assimilation) but became slower when their student ingroup identity was activated (contrast). Subliminally priming an "us-them" intergroup comparison set undermined the accessibility of outgroup stereotypic words (Study 3), especially for those higher in prejudice (Study 4). This suggests that people automatically distance themselves from outgroup attributes when intergroup antagonism is cued or chronic. Implications for the role of self and comparison processes in automatic behavior are discussed.

The present research studied the effects of suppression of stereotypes on subsequent stereotyping. Moreover, the moderating influence of motivation to suppress stereotypes was examined. The first three experiments showed that suppression of stereotypes leads to the experience of engaging in self-control (Study 1), to depleted regulatory resources as indicated by worse performance on an unrelated subsequent task that involves self-regulation (Study 2), and to hyperaccessibility of the suppressed thoughts (Study 3). However, these effects were moderated by internal suppression motivation: Increased self-control, depleted regulatory resources, and hyperaccessibility of suppressed thoughts only occur for people with low internal suppression motivation. Furthermore, in line with the argument that depletion of regulatory resources after suppression also should result in increased stereotyping in general, it was found that suppression of a specific stereotype leads to an increased use of stereotypes in general, but only for people with low internal suppression motivation (Study 4).

Two experiments were run in The Netherlands and Belgium 1 week after the terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001. The aim was to investigate whether social categorization affected emotional reactions, behavioral tendencies, and actual behaviors. Results showed that focusing participants' attention on an identity that included American victims into a common ingroup led them to report more fear and stronger fear-related behavioral tendencies and to engage more often in fear-related behaviors than when victims were categorized as outgroup members. Results are discussed with respect to appraisal theories of emotion and E. R. Smith's model of group-based emotions.