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Increased immigration and demographic changes have not only resulted in political pushback, but also in violent attacks against immigrants. Several recent terrorist attacks committed by White supremacists invoke rhetoric around a deliberate attempt to make Whites extinct and replace them with non-Western immigrants. Yet, while it is widely acknowledged among extremism researchers that this perception of orchestrated extinction or replacement has tremendous potential to lead to violent extremism, its consequences have not yet been directly examined. Using the Scandinavian context (e.g., Denmark and Norway), in two correlational studies and one experiment, we provide evidence that this perception is associated with the persecution of Muslims, violent intentions, and Islamophobia. Further, we demonstrate that these associations are mediated by symbolic threats. Conspiracy beliefs that one’s group is being replaced seem to drive hostile intergroup attitudes. We discuss the societal implications of this finding (i.e., generating fear, polarization, and hostile public opinion towards immigrants).

Background Staff supporting individuals with intellectual disabilities are at risk of burnout symptoms. Evidence suggests an association between exposure to challenging behaviours of individuals with intellectual disabilities and burnout symptoms of staff, but the protective role of staff psychological resources in this relation has been understudied.Method We investigated the association between exposure to challenging behaviours and burnout symptoms of staff and the direct and moderating effects of several psychological resources. Staff (N = 1271) completed an online survey concerning burnout symptoms (subscale Emotional Exhaustion of the Maslach Burnout Inventory), exposure to challenging behaviours and a range of potential psychological resources. We examined main and moderating effects with multilevel analyses. In order to control for the multiple comparisons, P values corrected for false discovery rate (P-FDR) were reported.Results We found a direct relation between exposure to challenging behaviours and increased levels of burnout symptoms in staff (b = .15, t(670) = 4.466, P-FDR Conclusions Of the psychological resources found to be associated with reduced risk of burnout symptoms, staff self-efficacy and access of staff to supervisor social support seem to be the factors that can be influenced best. These factors thus may be of importance in reducing the risk of developing burnout symptoms and improving staff well-being, even though the current study was not designed to demonstrate causal relations between psychological resources and burnout symptoms.

Contains fulltext : 217705.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) Background: Attributions are cognitive variables that influence a person's behaviour. Although a large volume of research has been conducted on the attributions of support staff with regard to challenging behaviour (CB) exhibited by people with intellectual disabilities (ID), studies on patterns of attributional dimensions (i.e. attributional styles) are scarce. Method: Using semi-structured interviews, 19 support staff members were asked to describe incidents of aggressive, self-injurious and sexualized challenging behaviour. Data on attributions were analysed using the Leeds Attributional Coding System. Results: Four attributional styles differed significantly for aggressive, self-injurious and sexualized challenging behaviour. In addition, support staff members largely attributed these three types of CB to characteristics and behaviour of clients with ID. Conclusions: The results indicate that it is important to train support staff to recognize and understand the ways in which their attributions and behaviour influence the existence and maintenance of CB. 10 p.

Regret and guilt are self-conscious emotions. They stem from negative events for which people feel responsible. Both emotions reflect discrepancies between how people are (their “actual” self) and how they would like to be (their “ideal” or “ought” self). We examined whether regret and guilt were related to different self-discrepancies (i.e., “ideal” and “ought” self-discrepancies). Two studies (total N = 1998) with Chinese and US participants found that people feel more regret over ideal self-discrepancies than over ought self-discrepancies, whereas for guilt this is more complex. We also found a main effect for culture such that ideal self-discrepancies were associated more with both emotions in the USA compared to China. Implications for the differences between regret and guilt are discussed.

In light of the recent steps Belgium has made towards reconciling with its colonial history in Congo (e.g., the King’s letter of regret, and the removal of some colonial statues), we examined how Belgians differ in their attitudes towards an official apology, towards (symbolic) reparations (e.g., renaming streets), and towards raising more awareness about the colonial past (e.g., more detailed information in educational books) as a function of their ideological worldviews. We hypothesized that authoritarianism and group dominance would negatively predict these outcome variables, while particularly universal-diverse orientation and egalitarianism would predict them positively. We further hypothesized that these relations would be mediated by relevant intergroup emotions (i.e., group-based guilt, shame, and anger, and especially outgroup empathy). Path model analyses on a sample of 258 Flemish-speaking students provided support for our predictions: (1) universal-diverse orientation was the strongest predictor of all intergroup emotions, (2) empathy – and to a lesser extent group-based anger – were the strongest direct predictors of attitudes towards apologizing, reparation, and awareness, and (3) empathy was the most important mediator explaining the associations of universaldiverse and egalitarian orientations with the outcomes. We discuss the implications of our findings for the current debate regarding reconciliation between groups with a history of colonialism.

Increasing outgroup empathy is an important first step toward reducing intergroup conflict. The communication of group-based anger has been found to increase outgroup empathy due to its presumed relational function (as it signals to the outgroup that they unfairly treat the ingroup, but also that the ingroup wants to maintain a positive intergroup relationship). Yet, little is known about when communicating group-based anger increases outgroup empathy. We therefore examine two antecedent conditions, namely perceived procedural unfairness (which makes the communication of anger more appropriate) and outgroup consensus (which makes the communication of anger more group-based). Three experiments suggest that the communication of group-based anger increases outgroup empathy only when the outgroup was treated unfairly (Experiment 1) and when there was high outgroup consensus (Experiment 2). Results from Experiment 3 revealed that either antecedent seems sufficient to facilitate the positive, empathy-inducing effects of the communication of group-based anger. We discuss the implications of these findings for the theory and practice of communicating anger in intergroup conflicts to increase outgroup empathy.

An image of drowned Syrian toddler, Aylan Kurdi, was popularly shared through social media and this promoted a surge of solidarity with Syrian refugees in September 2015. However, this response was not sustained. We explore the role of social media engagement in the emergence of solidarity and its decline (compassion fade). We collected data when sympathy for refugees was peaking (September 2015), and 1 year later. Latent change score modeling ( N = 237) showed that engagement with the image through social media allowed people to form a pro-refugee group consciousness that acted as the proximal predictor of solidarity. However, reductions in the same factors explain the reduced commitment 1 year later. Distress predicted the reductions in social media engagement. The results support the power of social media to ignite world-changing action, but caution that online engagement may dissipate in the face of ongoing challenges.

The occurrence of helping behavior is thought to be automatically triggered by reflexive reactions and promoted by intuitive decisions. Here, we studied whether reflexive reactions to an emergency situation are associated with later helping behavior in a different situation, a violent conflict. First, 29 male supporters of F.C. Barcelona performed a cued-reaction time task with a low and high cognitive load manipulation, to tap into reflexive and reflective processes respectively, during the observation of an emergency. Next, participants entered a bar in Virtual Reality and had a conversation with a virtual fellow supporter. During this conversation, a virtual Real Madrid supporter entered and started an aggressive argument with the fellow supporter that escalated into a physical fight. Verbal and physical interventions of the participant served as measures of helping behavior. Results showed that faster responses to an emergency situation during low, but not during high cognitive load, were associated with more interventions during the violent conflict. However, a tendency to describe the decision to act during the violent conflict as intuitive and reflex-like was related to more interventions. Further analyses revealed that a disposition to experience sympathy, other-oriented feelings during distressful situations, was related to self-reported intuitive decision-making, a reduced distance to the perpetrator, and higher in the intervening participants. Taken together, these results shed new light on helping behavior and are consistent with the notion of a motivational system in which the act of helping is dependent on a complex interplay between intuitive, reflexive and deliberate, reflective processes.

We examined the effects of the emotional facial expressions of a virtual character (VC) on human frontal electroencephalographic (EEG) asymmetry (putatively indexing approach/withdrawal motivation), facial electromyographic (EMG) activity (emotional expressions), and social decision making (cooperation/defection). In a within-subjects design, the participants played the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma game with VCs with different dynamic facial expressions (predefined or dependent on the participant's electrodermal and facial EMG activity). In general, VC facial expressions elicited congruent facial muscle activity. However, both frontal EEG asymmetry and facial EMG activity elicited by an angry VC facial expression varied as a function of preceding interactional events (human collaboration/defection). Pre-decision inner emotional-motivational processes and emotional facial expressions were dissociated, suggesting that human goals influence pre-decision frontal asymmetry, whereas display rules may affect (pre-decision) emotional expressions in human-VC interaction. An angry VC facial expression, high pre-decision corrugator EMG activity, and relatively greater left frontal activation predicted the participant's decision to defect. Both post-decision frontal asymmetry and facial EMG activity were related to reciprocal cooperation. The results suggest that the justifiability of VC emotional expressions and the perceived fairness of VC actions influence human emotional responses.

BackgroundResults of discontinuation of antipsychotics in people with intellectual disability are variable and may depend on staff factors. Method We attempted to taper off antipsychotics in 14 weeks after which participants were free to restart. We investigated the influence of support professionals' feelings towards challenging behaviour, their knowledge of psychotropic drugs and clinicians' judgements of participants' behavioural functioning on whether or not antipsychotics were completely discontinued after 16, 28 and 40 weeks. Results Of the 129 participants, 61% achieved discontinuation at 16 weeks; at 28 and 40 weeks, 46% and 40% were completely discontinued. Staff's feelings of Depression/Anger towards their client's behaviour, less knowledge about psychotropic medication and clinicians' judgements of behavioural worsening were negatively associated with achievement of discontinuation. Conclusions To enhance discontinuation off-label drug use, staff's feelings should be explored, their knowledge of psychotropic drugs improved and reasons for clinicians' judgements of participants' behavioural worsening investigated.

The impact of the history of one's own group's treatment of another group on feelings of collective guilt and behavioral reactions to this guilt were examined in 2 studies. In a laboratory experiment, it was shown that it is possible to elicit feelings of group-based guilt and that those are distinct from feelings of personal guilt. In a 2nd study, a field experiment, low-identified group members acknowledged the negative aspects of their own nation's history and felt more guilt compared with high identifiers when both negative and positive aspects of their nation's history were made salient. Perceptions of intragroup variability and out-group compensation closely paralleled the interactive pattern on guilt. Links between social identity theory and the experience of specific emotions are discussed.

Many studies yield multivariate multiblock data, that is, multiple data blocks that all involve the same set of variables (e.g., the scores of different groups of subjects on the same set of variables). The question then rises whether the same processes underlie the different data blocks. To explore the structure of such multivariate multiblock data, component analysis can be very useful. Specifically, 2 approaches are often applied: principal component analysis (PCA) on each data block separately and different variants of simultaneous component analysis (SCA) on all data blocks simultaneously. The PCA approach yields a different loading matrix for each data block and is thus not useful for discovering structural similarities. The SCA approach may fail to yield insight into structural differences, since the obtained loading matrix is identical for all data blocks. We introduce a new generic modeling strategy, called clusterwise SCA, that comprises the separate PCA approach and SCA as special cases. The key idea behind clusterwise SCA is that the data blocks form a few clusters, where data blocks that belong to the same cluster are modeled with SCA and thus have the same structure, and different clusters have different underlying structures. In this article, we use the SCA variant that imposes equal average cross-products constraints (ECP). An algorithm for fitting clusterwise SCA ECP solutions is proposed and evaluated in a simulation study. Finally, the usefulness of clusterwise SCA is illustrated by empirical examples from eating disorder research and social psychology.

The impact of the history of one's own group's treatment of another group on feelings of collective guilt and behavioral reactions to this guilt were examined in 2 studies. In a laboratory experiment, it was shown that it is possible to elicit feelings of group-based guilt and that those are distinct from feelings of personal guilt. In a 2nd study, a field experiment, low-identified group members acknowledged the negative aspects of their own nation's history and felt more guilt compared with high identifiers when both negative and positive aspects of their nation's history were made salient. Perceptions of intragroup variability and out-group compensation closely paralleled the interactive pattern on guilt. Links between social identity theory and the experience of specific emotions are discussed.