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The present study aims to examine and compare the feelings of national and Jewish identity as well as social trust in two distinct Jewish populations in the UK and Germany. We aim to investigate how these variables are influenced by experienced and feared discrimination as well as migration and pogrom/holocaust history within family members of participants. Jews are and have always been an ethnic and religious minority in both the UK as well as Germany. The history of the Jewish people has been characterised by a plethora of displacements and pogroms, culminating in the Holocaust. From a social psychological point of view, there are several factors that make the concept of the study unique and particularly interesting: While both populations in the UK and Germany have been exposed to a growth in antisemitism, and are a minority in their respective country, German Jews live in a country that has been responsible for the extermination of the majority of the Jewish world population, are in close contact with the descendants of perpetrators during the 2nd WW, and are exposed with Holocaust education (and commemoration) from a different angle than people growing up in “ally”-countries. Additionally, the migration course (if there is any) of Jewish individuals to the UK and to Germany is different. These factors would constitute a benefit primarily to the academic community in the field of social psychology. Furthermore, as antisemitism continues to rise in Europe, it is very important to take this seriously, and to investigate how this affects concepts like social trust and identity. We aim to test by using a questionnaire: (1) if variations in social trust and national/Jewish identity exist between Jews living in Germany and the UK; (2) how these (potential) variations are influenced by migration, discrimination and pogrom/Holocaust family experience.

Evolutionary Psychology predicts men will be more distressed by rival's characteristics related to resources (e.g. financial prospects, job prospects, intelligence) whereas women are more distressed by rival's characteristics related to reproductivity (e.g. attractive face, attractive body). Most previous studies have used only ranking-order measurement. This study attempts to use rating scales measurement to test the prediction. This study also attempts to look into potential cultural differences in this sex difference between China and UK. Another thing this study wants to explore is whether, and to what extent, men and women's jealousy responses to different rival characteristics are influenced by their beliefs about how much their partners, or the opposite sex in general, care about certain characteristics in a partner. In addition, this study aims to explore the extent to which the perceived preferences of the other gender correspond men’s and women’s self-reported preferences.

The effects of exposure to surveillance and negative representations of the ingroup on affect and cooperation with authorities (online study 2)

The effects of exposure to surveillance and negative representations of the ingroup on affect and cooperation with authorities (online study 3)

A sex difference found in romantic jealousy, that men are more upset by sexual infidelity and women more so by emotional infidelity, has been attributed to an evolved sexually dimorphic jealousy module. A competing theory —the ‘double-shot/ two-in-one’ hypothesis has been challenged by evidence that sex differences still appear for imagined, mutually exclusive sexual/emotional infidelity scenarios. However, such evidence does not refute the possibility of double-shot beliefs having a role when sexual and emotional infidelity are NOT made obviously mutually exclusive. This study attempts to: 1) explore the effects of gender and culture on beliefs about, and reactions to, sexual /emotional infidelity scenarios; 2) explore whether cultural differences between the UK and China influence the magnitude of sex difference in romantic jealousy across different cultures.

The effects of exposure to surveillance and negative representations of the ingroup on affect and cooperation with authorities (online study)

This research was supported by doctoral funding from the Department for Employment and Learning, Northern Ireland and carried out while the first author was at Queen’s University Belfast. The third study was supported by the university research funds of the third author. Authorities such as the police and the government play a vital function in maintaining order in the social systems that groups exist in. Relational models of procedural justice (PJ) state that fair treatment from authority affirms the social standing of those identifying with the authority, communicating inclusion and respect. Previous research suggests that social identity may also inform expectations of authority fairness. Focusing on intergroup context of authority decision-making, the present research tests a novel hypothesis whether intergroup social status may also inform expectations of authority fairness in terms of fair treatment and favourable outcomes. Operationalising PJ as the extent to which people are provided voice by authorities, three experimental studies showed no effect of intergroup status on expected PJ from authority. A sample weighed internal meta-analysis (N = 704) provided no support for the hypothesis that relative outgroup status shapes expectations of voice from authority (d = -.02). Intergroup status did, however, influence the extent to which people expected authorities to distribute resources favourably towards the outgroups. Lower status outgroups were expected to receive less favourable outcomes from authorities than equal status outgroups (d = -.23). Thus, outgroup status affects people’s judgements of the resources that outgroups deserve from authority. The present research is among the first to consider how intergroup relations may drive expectations of how authorities are to act towards other social groups. Implications for wielding authority and the role of perceived intergroup threat in intergroup settings are discussed. Publisher PDF