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Intergroup crimes are a ubiquitous element of our political reality, as are attempts to redress these crimes through apologies. Six experiments ( N = 2,432) demonstrate that the victim group's response to an offered apology has the power to shape uninvolved third parties' impressions of the conflicting groups and influence their willingness to support the victim group. Across a variety of intergroup contexts, a victim group's apology rejection attenuated perceived differences between the victim and perpetrator groups by diminishing the morality but increasing the power of the victim group while simultaneously reducing the power of the perpetrator group in the eyes of third parties (Experiments 1-4). These judgments, particularly the less favorable morality judgments of the victim group, suppressed the allocation of valued goods (Experiment 3a), political support (Experiments 3b-4), and actual donations (Experiment 4) granted to the victim group. Regarding the social costs imposed on the perpetrator group, we found mixed evidence. Taken together, these findings highlight the relevance of victim group responses in navigating posttransgression reactions and offer implications for understanding apologetic interactions from the perspective of uninvolved observers. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

White people confuse Black faces more than their own-race faces. This is an example of the other-race effect, commonly measured by the other-race face recognition task. Like this task, the "Who said what?" paradigm uses within-race confusions in memory, but to measure social categorization strength. The former finds a strongly asymmetrical pattern of interrace perception, the other-race effect, yet the latter usually finds symmetrical patterns (equally strong categorization of own-race and other-race faces). In a "Who said what?" meta-analysis, racial categorization and individuation across races were only weakly asymmetrical (Study 1, n = 2,669). We aimed to resolve this empirical misalignment. As tested in other-race face recognition tasks, the weak asymmetry was not due to the limited number of portrait stimuli (Study 2, N = 99) nor to the longer duration of stimulus presentation in the "Who said what?" task (Study 4, n = 358). Pairing portraits with statements reduced the other-race effect (Study 3, n = 126). Showing each portrait repeatedly also reduced the other-race effect (Study 4, n = 358; Study 5, n = 470) but did not decrease infrahumanization of Black portraits (Study 6, n = 487). Consequently, presenting portraits only once in the "Who said what?" paradigm (Study 7, N = 112) resulted in strong interrace categorization and individuation asymmetries. This finding bridges a central conceptual gap between the other-race effect and social categorization strength. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Ethnic out-group members are disproportionately more often the victim of misidentifications. The so-called other-race effect (ORE), the tendency to better remember faces of individuals belonging to one's own ethnic in-group than faces belonging to an ethnic out-group, has been identified as one causal ingredient in such tragic incidents. Investigating an important aspect for the ORE-that is, emotional expression-the seminal study by Ackerman and colleagues (2006) found that White participants remembered neutral White faces better than neutral Black faces, but crucially, Black angry faces were better remembered than White angry faces (i.e., a reversed ORE). In the current study, we sought to replicate this study and directly tackle the potential causes for different results with later work. Three hundred ninety-six adult White U.S. citizens completed our study in which we manipulated the kind of employed stimuli (as in the original study vs. more standardized ones) whether participants knew of the recognition task already at the encoding phase. Additionally, participants were asked about the unusualness of the presented faces. We were able to replicate results from the Ackerman et al. (2006) study with the original stimuli but not with more standardized stimuli.

Historical perpetrator groups seek to shield themselves from image threat by advocating for closing the discussion of their crimes. However, from a broader theoretical perspective, such demand for historical closure (HC) may also reflect willingness to reconcile with the victim group or to focus on the future rather than the past. In nine studies across four different contexts (Germany, United States, Italy, and Australia; N = 3405), we analyzed whether these three facets of HC (defensive, reconciliatory, and future-oriented) indeed substantially differ. Contrary to expectations, nomological network analyses suggested that all three facets reflect the same defensive desire (Studies 1a-2c) and are perceived as overall similar from a third-party perspective (Study 3). Finally, all three HC facets showed a positive trend toward costly avoidance of confrontation with the ingroup's perpetrator past (Studies 4a-c). We discuss implications for (and against) a more nuanced understanding of the demand for HC., 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.

One of the essential insights from psychological research is that people's information processing is often biased. By now, a number of different biases have been identified and empirically demonstrated. Unfortunately, however, these biases have often been examined in separate lines of research, thereby precluding the recognition of shared principles. Here we argue that several-so far mostly unrelated-biases (e.g., bias blind spot, hostile media bias, egocentric/ethnocentric bias, outcome bias) can be traced back to the combination of a fundamental prior belief and humans' tendency toward belief-consistent information processing. What varies between different biases is essentially the specific belief that guides information processing. More importantly, we propose that different biases even share the same underlying belief and differ only in the specific outcome of information processing that is assessed (i.e., the dependent variable), thus tapping into different manifestations of the same latent information processing. In other words, we propose for discussion a model that suffices to explain several different biases. We thereby suggest a more parsimonious approach compared with current theoretical explanations of these biases. We also generate novel hypotheses that follow directly from the integrative nature of our perspective.

People assign attributes to a different degree to other persons depending on whether these are male or female (sex role stereotypes). Such stereotypes continue to exist even in countries with lower gender inequality. The present research tested the idea that parents develop sex role consistent expectations of their babies' attributes based on fetal sex (by ultrasound diagnostic), as well as gendered perceptions of their recently newborn babies. A total of 304 dyads of predominantly White expecting parents from Germany were followed over the course of pregnancy until after the birth and completed a sex role inventory on their babies' expected (before birth) as well as perceived traits (after birth). Specifically, they rated to what extent they expected their babies to have normatively feminine traits (e.g., soft-spoken and warm) and normatively masculine traits (e.g., independent and assertive) twice before birth (first half of pregnancy, six weeks before due date) and to what extent they perceived their baby to have these traits eight weeks after birth. The results suggested that fathers held gendered expectations and perceptions, whereas mothers did not. These results suggest that male and female babies are likely to encounter sex role stereotypes about their alleged attributes as soon as their birth., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

We address an apparent discrepancy in the literature on how context stimuli influence evaluations of target stimuli. While a rich literature suggests that target evaluations are often contrasted away from the valence of context stimuli, reported effects of evaluative conditioning (EC) are almost exclusively assimilative. Specifically, when a neutral conditioned stimulus (CS) repeatedly co-occurs with a positive unconditioned stimulus (US), the CS is later evaluated more positively. Contrast effects from mere co-occurrences are absent in the EC literature. We hypothesized that this can be explained by the stimulus composition in EC tasks, which usually depict different objects as target (CS) and context (US). In 10 experiments, we confirmed that when target and context stimuli depict different objects, assimilation clearly dominates. Yet, when target and context depict stimuli from the same object class, contrast effects become dominant. These contrast effects are invisible in standard EC tasks because CSs are contrasted with all positive and negative USs of a given stimulus set. The present work thereby identifies a central determinant of the direction that evaluative context and conditioning effects take. While different-object contexts evoke assimilation, same-object contexts increase the likelihood of contrastive evaluations. We discuss the various theoretical and practical implications of our findings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The current work aimed to uncover the pattern of attention given to external comparison standards when engaged in social judgments. In a series of 5 experiments (N = 463), a Modified Spatial Cueing Task provided evidence for a general Comparison Induced Delay (CID), but found no signs of visuospatial attention (Pilot, Study 1 & 2). However, the CID did not occur if cues did not remain visually available throughout the trials (Study 3 & 4). Heterogeneity in results prompted the use of a single-paper meta-analysis including all secondary studies. A consistent CID effect was found across studies when standards remained visually available (K = 5), but not when they were masked (K = 2). No direct signs of visuospatial attentional bias were found. These results suggest that the attentional cost of engaging with external comparisons is mainly cognitive in nature, although a minor reoccurring visual component could not be excluded., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Although sometimes used interchangeably, the present review highlights the important differences between generalized worldviews suspecting conspiracy at play (conspiracy mentality) and specific beliefs about the existence of a certain conspiracy (conspiracy theory). In contrast to measures of beliefs in specific conspiracy theories, those of conspiracy mentality are more stable, less malleable, less skewed in their distribution and less contaminated by other ideological content. These differences have important implications for empirical research and the theorizing of conspiracy beliefs. Building on an analogy of personality traits, we argue that conspiracy mentality is a relatively stable readiness to interpret world events as being caused by plots hatched in secret, whereas specific conspiracy beliefs are then manifest indicators (partially contaminated by other dispositions)., Competing Interests: Conflict of interest statement Nothing declared., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

People gather information about others along a few fundamental dimensions; their current goals determine which dimensions they most need to know. As proponents of competing social-evaluation models, we sought to study the dimensions that perceivers spontaneously prioritize when gathering information about unknown social groups. Because priorities depend on functions, having relational goals (e.g., deciding whether and how to interact with a group) versus structural goals (e.g., getting an overview of society) should moderate dimensional priorities. Various candidate dimensions could differentiate perceivers' impressions of social groups. For example, the Stereotype Content model argues that people evaluate others in terms of their Warmth (i.e., their Sociability and Morality) and Competence (i.e., their Ability and Assertiveness). Alternatively, the Agency-Beliefs-Communion (ABC) model proposes conservative-progressive Beliefs. Five studies (N = 2,268) found that participants consistently prioritized learning about targets' Warmth. However, goal moderated priority: When participants had a relational goal, such as an unknown group increasing in their neighborhood, they showed more interest in targets' Sociability, a facet of Warmth. When participants had a structural goal, such as an unknown group increasing in their nation, they showed more interest in the groups' Beliefs, as well as increased interest in Competence-related facets. Diverse methods reveal interest in all dimensions, reconciling discrepancies among social-evaluation models by identifying how relational versus structural goals differentiate priorities of the fundamental dimensions proposed by current models. Results have implications for fundamental dimensions of social cognition, more generally. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

People differ in their general tendency to endorse conspiracy theories (that is, conspiracy mentality). Previous research yielded inconsistent findings on the relationship between conspiracy mentality and political orientation, showing a greater conspiracy mentality either among the political right (a linear relation) or amongst both the left and right extremes (a curvilinear relation). We revisited this relationship across two studies spanning 26 countries (combined N = 104,253) and found overall evidence for both linear and quadratic relations, albeit small and heterogeneous across countries. We also observed stronger support for conspiracy mentality among voters of opposition parties (that is, those deprived of political control). Nonetheless, the quadratic effect of political orientation remained significant when adjusting for political control deprivation. We conclude that conspiracy mentality is associated with extreme left- and especially extreme right-wing beliefs, and that this non-linear relation may be strengthened by, but is not reducible to, deprivation of political control., (© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.)

Although resilience is a multi-level process, research largely focuses on the individual and little is known about how resilience may distinctly present at the group level. Even less is known about subjective conceptualizations of resilience at either level. Therefore, two studies sought to better understand how individuals conceptualize resilience both as an individual and as a group. Study 1 (N = 123) experimentally manipulated whether participants reported on either individual or group-based responses to real stressors and analysed their qualitative responses. For individual responses, subjective resilience featured active coping most prominently, whereas social support was the focus for group-based responses. As these differences might be attributable to the different stressors people remembered in either condition, Study 2 (N = 171) held a hypothetical stressor (i.e., natural disaster) constant. As expected, resilience at the group level emphasized maintaining group cohesion. Surprisingly, the group condition also reported increased likelihood to engage in blame, denial, and behavioural disengagement. Contrary to expectations, participants in the individual condition reported stronger desire to seek out new groups. The combined findings are discussed within the framework of resilience and social identity and highlight the necessity of accounting for multiple levels and subjective conceptualizations of resilience., (© 2021 The Authors. British Journal of Social Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Psychological Society.)

False memories of autobiographical events can create enormous problems in forensic settings (e.g., false accusations). While multiple studies succeeded in inducing false memories in interview settings, we present research trying to reverse this effect (and thereby reduce the potential damage) by means of two ecologically valid strategies. We first successfully implanted false memories for two plausible autobiographical events (suggested by the students' parents, alongside two true events). Over three repeated interviews, participants developed false memories (measured by state-of-the-art coding) of the suggested events under minimally suggestive conditions (27%) and even more so using massive suggestion (56%). We then used two techniques to reduce false memory endorsement, source sensitization (alerting interviewees to possible external sources of the memories, e.g., family narratives) and false memory sensitization (raising the possibility of false memories being inadvertently created in memory interviews, delivered by a new interviewer). This reversed the false memory build-up over the first three interviews, returning false memory rates in both suggestion conditions to the baseline levels of the first interview (i.e., to ∼15% and ∼25%, respectively). By comparison, true event memories were endorsed at a higher level overall and less affected by either the repeated interviews or the sensitization techniques. In a 1-y follow-up (after the original interviews and debriefing), false memory rates further dropped to 5%, and participants overwhelmingly rejected the false events. One strong practical implication is that false memories can be substantially reduced by easy-to-implement techniques without causing collateral damage to true memories., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interest.