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Individuals often hold ambivalent attitudes (i.e., positive and negative attitudes at the same time) toward groups and social categories. The aim of the present research was to examine the differential effects of affective and cognitive dimensions of ambivalence on the (amplification of) responses towards a minority group. We asked 188 students from the University of Perugia to read a short description of a fictitious group of immigrants. After expressing their affective and cognitive attitudes toward the target group, participants received positive, negative, or no supplementary information about this group. Discrimination was assessed by asking participants to allocate to the target group a percentage of a financial support fund for poor people (both Italian and immigrant) living in their regional area. As expected, we found that only affective ambivalence amplified either negative or positive responses toward the group.

We examined how members of a low status group react to a social identity threat. We propose that expressing an ambivalent evaluation toward the ingroup may represent a way to manage such a threatening situation. For this study, 131 undergraduates’ identification with Italians was assessed. Participants were divided into groups, according to a situational identity threat (high vs. low). In line with hypotheses, low identifiers expressed more ambivalence toward the ingroup in the high (vs. low) threat condition. The reversed pattern emerged for high identifiers. This effect was mediated by the perception of intragroup variability, a well-known social creativity strategy. Results confirmed our interpretation of ambivalence as a form of social creativity, and are discussed in terms of social identity concerns.

From Moscovici (Social influence and social change. London, Academic Press; 1976) on, a growing body of research on minority influence has been conducted within the social psychology mainstream. A general guideline of most of the research on this topic associates minority influence with social change and innovation. Minorities have been considered as challengers to social stability, and their dynamics have been considered in relation to the mechanisms through which social changes occur and established norms are modified and evolve in human society. In the present paper, we try to extend this viewpoint by suggesting that it represents only one side of a much more complex story. We consider the conditions under which minorities produce social change as well as the conditions under which they are, instead, inclined to defend the status quo. We then suggest that an integrative account of different approaches – namely, social identity, social dominance, and system justification – might contribute to expanding the theoretical frame of minority influence.

According to literature on social influence, a minority source may indirectly influence group members by fostering ambivalent reactions. Two studies were carried out in order to provide empirical support for this theoretical assumption. In Study 1 participants (n = 133), were exposed to a counter-attitudinal minority message and ambivalence was manipulated by facilitating the accessibility of either ambivalent (positive and negative) or univalent (positive or negative) thoughts toward the source. We predicted and found more indirect influence in ambivalent condition than in univalent conditions. No effect of ambivalence on direct influence was found. In Study 2 (n = 127), ambivalence was measured and two possible antecedents of ambivalence, consistency of the minority and personal relevance of the topic for participants, were taken into account. Findings suggest that ambivalence mediates the effects of the two factors on indirect influence. In sum, these studies provide evidence of the importance of ambivalence in minority influence context, an early assumption that was still lacking in strong empirical support. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The present studies were carried out in 2002, as a part of a cross-cultural project (Glick et al. 2006) and, successively, in 2003 and 2005. The Stereotype Content Model and the Image Theory are the theoretical frameworks. The questionnaire administered measured stereotypical traits, emotions, perceptions of the status, and judgments concerning aims and motivations of the target group. Results emerging from the studies showed that the USA were perceived as arrogant, competent, lacking of warmth, and as willing to dominate other countries. In expressing their evaluations, participants differentiated between USA population and USA governement. Differences were significant though modest. Effects related to participants’ political orientation were also discussed, as the differences related to their geographical origin, and the attitude changes due to the military intervention in Iraq

Confirmatory bias in argumentation—i.e., the tendency to generate arguments that support one's own claims, rather than rebuttals that challenge alternative standpoints—is a widespread tendency that can be harmful to the quality of argumentation. In the present study we hypothesized that, depending on issue relevance to the targets, majority and minority sources of influence may differentially reduce this bias. Results provided partial support to the contention, showing that when the issue was of low relevance, participants exposed to the minority developed more rebuttals than participants exposed to the majority, whereas no difference between the impacts of the two sources emerged when the issue was of high relevance. Findings suggest that, in low‐relevance circumstances, minority influence may exert beneficial effects on argumentation.

L’existence d’un biais confirmatoire, bien connu dans les domaines du raisonnement formel, a été également documenté dans les processus d’argumentation ; en détail, les gens préfèrent soutenir leurs points de voue par la production d’arguments qui renforcent leur position, plutôt que par la réfutation des positions alternatives. L’hypothèse de notre étude est que ce biais ne soit pas universel, et que la prise en compte des positions alternatives (en vue de leur réfutation) soit favorisée par les mêmes conditions d’influence sociale qui favorisent la décentration dans le raisonnement formel, en particulier par l’exposition à une source d’influence minoritaire. En plus, nous faisons l’hypothèse que cet effet de la source minoritaire ne se produit que lors que la relevance de l’objet est faible ; en revanche, le taux de réfutations devrait être haut en tous cas lors que l’objet de discussion est relevant en soi, les gens étant motivés à élaborer les enjeux en profondeur, et la source d’influence devenant un indice périphérique peu pertinent. Dans un plan expérimental 2 (relevance de l’enjeu : forte vs. faible) x 2 (source d’influence : majorité vs. minorité), nous avons demandé aux participants (114 étudiants) de développer trois arguments pour illustrer leur point de vue à l’égard de l’introduction d’un examen supplémentaire dans leur cours d’études. La variable dépendante principal consistait dans le rapport entre arguments de renforcement de la position initiale des étudiants, et arguments de réfutations de la position alternative. Les résultats confirment les hypothèses. La décomposition des effets montre que aucune différence se produit dans la choix du premier argument (environ 80% de confirmations en toutes conditions), et que et que l’effet la réduction du biais confirmatoire liée à l’influence minoritaire et à la relevance de l’enjeux devient significative à partir du 2ème argument choisi.

Poiché le donne sono fortemente sottorappresentate nella politica italiana, si propone di introdurre un “antitrust della politica”. Questa scarsa rappresentanza è incostituzionale e distorce al maschile l’agenda politica. Sosteniamo che la scarsa presenza delle donne non può essere attribuita a una mancanza di competenza o motivazione ma è una conseguenza del metodo di cooptazione. Analizziamo le differenti strategie che sono state usate con successo in altri paesi per ottenere l’equilibrio di genere in politica, sia per via legislativa sia sulla base di quote introdotte volontariamente dai partiti. Nel nostro Paese, tenendo conto dell’attuale debole rappresentanza di donne in parlamento, appare più percorribile la seconda strada rispetto alla prima. Affermiamo infine che la più promettente strategia per il sistema italiano è lo “zip” per il quale, in ogni lista elettorale, donne e uomini sono presenti in modo alternato., La camera blu. Rivista di studi di genere, N° 7 (2011): Le politiche del presente (A CURA DI CATERINA ARCIDIACONO)

Two experiments are reported comparing majority and minority influence on attitudinal (opinion) vs. objective (knowledge) tasks. The hypothesis that minority influence would decline on objective items was tested by exposing subjects either to a minority or majority influence source; the question under discussion was eirher objective ('from which country does Italy import most of its raw oil?') or attitudinal ('from which country should Italy import most of its raw oil?'). Experiment 1 showed that, compared to a no-influence conrrol group, majoriries exerted a reliable influence on both objective and attitudinal issues whereas minorities were persuasive only on attitudinal issues. Experiment 2 indicated that this was true only for subjects who were uncertain of their own position, while minorities were unable to convince highly certain subjects regardless of type of task. Implications of these findings for the comparison of conformity and minority influence research are discussed.

An experiment investigated the effects of source status (high versus low) and source's attitude towards the target (Inclusive versus exclusive) on minority influence. It was predicted that an inclusive minority in the high-status source condition would primarily have a direct impact (compliance), while in the low-status source condition it would have little direct or indirect influence but would stimulate autonomous cognitive work (divergence) Moreover, exclusive minorities, irrespective of status, would have a mainly indirect impact (conversion) Results appear to confirm the hypotheses with two significant qualifications: First, minority status interacts with subjects' initial attitude, furthering or hindering indirect influence; second, an exclusive minority encourages the production of externally-generated thoughts, albeit only in low-status source condition. The study also provided some information on the relationship between indirect influence and divergence, and between the quantity and the quality of cognitive production.

Majority and minority sources usually exert different kinds of influence, which has been ascribed to the fact that the former are socially appreciated while the latter are derogated. In the present research we aimed to determine whether the differing evaluations of minority and majority represent automatic reactions. In two studies participants completed a lexical decision task in which the words “majority” and “minority” were introduced as primes. “Majority” as prime activated a slower recognition of negative than positive words, supporting the idea that the reaction to the term “majority” is primarily positive. The term “minority,” without any supplementary qualification, instead appeared unable to trigger a clear automatic reaction. Implications for social influence research are discussed. This research was supported by a grant from The Italian Ministry of Education and University (PRIN n. 2007PJYAKF_002). The authors contributed equally to this article: their names are listed in alphabetical order.

In the present research, we developed a familism scale comprised of two dimensions, namely support obligations and traditional norms, in order to examine cross-cultural and gender differences in a group of Indian (n = 107) and of Italian students (n = 106). We hypothesised and found that support obligations were judged more important than traditional norms in both groups. Moreover, the Indian participants considered both dimensions of familism more important than did their Italian counterparts. Indian women gave greater importance to traditional norms than Indian men did, while Italian women gave greater importance to support obligations than Italian men did. The social implications of cross-cultural and gender differences in familism are discussed.

We conducted two studies to examine the role of the social norm of fairness on cognitive (beliefs and judgments) and affective (emotions and feelings) ambivalence in an intergroup context of evaluation. As predicted, we found that ambivalence toward the ingroup is constantly higher in the cognitive dimension than in the affective dimension. Instead, cognitive and affective ambivalence toward the outgroup are generally similar but when the outgroup is highly protected by the fairness norm (i.e., the elderly), cognitive ambivalence is considerably lower than affective ambivalence. These findings provide evidence that (1) cognitive ambivalence is more controlled by the fairness norm than affective ambivalence, and that (2) it holds an adaptive function, changing in accordance with the demands of the normative context.

Research has shown that people perceive others as more vulnerable than themselves to media communication, and their political out-group as more vulnerable than their political in-group. In the present study, the authors predicted that the same two biases would appear with respect to another kind of influence--conformity--but that participants' judgments would display a different pattern according to their political orientations. Right-wing and left-wing university students were asked to evaluate conformity and to estimate how conformist they, their political in-group, their political out-group, and other groups are. As hypothesized, right-wingers expressed more ambivalence toward conformity and viewed it less negatively than did left-wingers. Political orientation had no impact on the discrepancy between self and others, but it did moderate the in-group-out-group discrepancy.

An experiment tested the hypothesis that minority influence is enhanced when the source of a persuasive communication employs abstract, as opposed to concrete, language. This hypothesis and the research testing it links ideas from two heretofore separate areas of inquiry: minority influence and linguistic abstraction. It is well known that minority influence increases when the minority is perceived to be consistent. Work on linguistic abstraction has established that when abstract language is used to describe an act, it implies that the act reflects stable, trans-situational characteristics of the actor, whereas concrete language implies that the act reflects isolated, situationally bounded events. We suggest that abstract language therefore conveys greater conviction and thereby increases perceived consistency and, in turn, minority influence. Source (majority, minority) and language abstractness (abstract, concrete) of a persuasive communication were manipulated. Results revealed that a minority (but not a majority) source was seen as more consistent when using abstract (vs. concrete) language. Although there were no differences among conditions on direct influence, a statistically significant interaction was observed for indirect influence: the abstract-minority source had significantly more indirect influence than did the concrete-minority source, whereas the indirect influence of the majority communicator was not affected by language abstractness.

According to the literature on social influence, a minority source can induce two main cognitive processes: validation and divergence. The aim of the present study was to determine if the two processes are jointly or alternatively activated. We hypothesized that the process stimulated by the minority source would be different according to the personal relevance of the issue for the participants. Specifically, we predicted that a minority would induce more validation (i.e. ambivalent thoughts about the issue) in the low relevance condition rather than in the high relevance condition. On the other hand, the minority would produce more divergence (i.e. alternative proposals) in the high relevance condition rather than in the low relevance condition. Two experiments in which the participants were exposed to a counter-attitudinal message of a minority or a majority supported these predictions. Moreover, in Study 1 evidence has also been found that a minority source fosters more pertinent (but not more original) proposals in the high relevance condition rather than in the low relevance condition, whereas in Study 2 ambivalence (other than divergence) appeared to be correlated with, but not a significant mediator of, indirect influence. The implications of these findings for minority influence theory are discussed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

EnglishThere is much controversy regarding the use and the effects of politically correct (PC) language and language reforms. This article is focussed on gender-related PC language, that is, non-sexist language. After a short account of the debate on the issue, it is shown that, with regard to gender, language reforms can be based on two main strategies: inclusion and visibility. The preference for one or the other strategy depends not only on the characteristics of the specific language but also on the aim considered as a priority in the context. After an overview of language changes introduced in different (mainly European) countries, studies on the effects of sexist language and language reforms are reviewed. Finally the practical implications of the scientific findings on the issue are discussed.FrenchL'emploi et les effets du langage politiquement correct (PC), ainsi que les réformes de la langue, sont actuellement très controversés. Cet article se concentre sur le langage PC à l'égard du genre, à savoir le langage non-sexiste. Après un bref résumé du débat, l'auteure montre que, par rapport au genre, les réformes de la langue peuvent être fondées sur deux stratégies principales: l'inclusion et la visibilité. La préférence pour l'une ou l'autre de ces stratégies ne dépend pas seulement des particularités de la langue en question, mais aussi du but qui est considéré prioritaire dans un contexte donné. Après un compte rendu des changements de la langue introduits dans différents pays (surtout en Europe), une revue des études sur les effets du langage sexiste et des réformes de la langue est présentée. Enfin, les implications pratiques des résultats scientifiques sur le thème sont discutées.