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Research shows that under manipulated conditions of intergroup threat, individuals experience greater negative affect to the extent that low in-group identifiers make an in-group-internal attribution rather than an out-group-internal attribution, and high in-group identifiers make an out-group-internal attribution rather than an in-group-internal attribution for outcomes of intergroup comparison that threaten their social identity. The author predicted and found that under conditions of making an out-group-internal attribution, such an effect of in-group identification is mediated by the general proneness to perceiving in-group--out-group differences, or intergroup distinctiveness, at high, but not low, levels of in-group identification. Combining the findings of 2 different literatures, the author provides new insights into the distinct roles played by intergroup attributions as a predictor, in-group identification as a moderator, and intergroup distinctiveness as a mediator of the affective responses produced under conditions of social identity threat instantiated by individuals' making out-group-internal attribution for the in-group unfavorable outcomes of intergroup comparison. Keywords: in-group identification, intergroup attributions, intergroup distinctiveness, intergroup emotions, social identity threat, ********** FROM A SOCIAL IDENTITY PERSPECTIVE (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), researchers could argue that people for whom a group is important (i.e., high[er in-group] identifiers) experience emotions deriving from their [...]

Guided by their own amoebic self theory (C. T. Burris & J. K. Rempel, 2004), in 6 studies the authors explore the impact that involvement in an intimate relationship has on how a person appraises and responds to threat. They first show that people in relationship feel less constrained by their physical bodies compared with single people. In 3 subsequent studies involving physical size, blood/body donation, sexual activities, and responses to evil, they show that generalized sensitivity to bodily threat predicts self-protective reactions to specific physical threats among singles, but not among people in relationship, suggesting that intimate relationship involvement decreases the salience of the physical body. In the final pair of studies, they show that the salience of the physical body rebounds when people in relationship are primed, either subliminally or supraliminally, to think of themselves as distinct and separate from their partners. Thus, the present research shows how conceptualizing the self as 'us' rather than 'me' can transform an individual's response to the outside world, and highlights how physical cues in particular are affected by this process. Keywords: self, boundaries, threat, relationship status, amoebic self theory

The threat orientation model proposes three dispositional responses to threats: control, heightened sensitivity, and denial. Two studies explored the psychometric properties of the previously developed threat orientation scales and the relationship between the orientations and the responses to a variety of threats. Study 1 found that the control-based and heightened sensitivity--based scales are reliable and were related to perceptions of health, financial, and terrorist threats with a nationally representative sample. Findings held across gender, age, and ethnic groups. Furthermore, Study 1 suggested two types of denial processes: optimistic denial and avoidance denial. Study 2 used a diverse sample to gain additional evidence for two processes of denial and developed measures of each type. Keywords: dispositions; denial; perceived control; threat; perceived vulnerability; measures

In an earlier paper I discussed the major findings of a recent research study into participants' experiences of rivers through outdoor education programs that utilised paddling activities as a means of participation and travel (Wattchow, 2007). I concluded that recollections of their river experiences were dominated by the technical requirements of the activity and the cultural expectations for encountering a universalised wild river, and that such responses were problematic for the development of place-responsiveness. This paper presents and discusses additional findings of the research that suggest greater possibilities for a place-based approach to the encounter of rivers through outdoor education paddling programs. Most participants in the research responded favourably, in terms of place, to calm sections of rivers where they felt little threat to their physical well-being. Participants' responses to these encounters continued to suggest a complex mix of cultural ideas from the Romantic wild river (as discussed in the earlier paper) to include the ideal of nature as a refuge from civilisation. However, there were also participant statements that were interpreted as indicative of an intimate, sensory and an embodied response to the river place itself. I conclude the paper by presenting a series of suggestions for a river-place responsive pedagogy in outdoor education., Introduction This paper presents findings from a phenomenological study into the lived experiences of river-places of undergraduate outdoor education students (Wattchow, 2006). As outlined in an earlier paper in the [...]

Personality processes relating to social perception have been shown to play a significant role in the experience of stress. In 5 studies, the authors demonstrate that early stage attentional processes influence the perception of social threat and modify the human stress response. The authors first show that cortisol release in response to a stressful situation correlates with selective attention toward social threat. Second, the authors show in 2 laboratory studies that this attentional pattern, most evident among individuals with low self-esteem, can be modified with a repetitive training task. Next, in a field study, students trained to modify their attentional pattern to reduce vigilance for social threat showed lower self-reported stress related to their final exam. In a final field study with telemarketers, the attentional training task led to increased self-esteem, decreased cortisol and perceived stress responses, higher confidence, and greater work performance. Taken together, these results demonstrate the impact of antecedent-focused strategies on the late-stage consequences of social stress. Keywords: selective attention, rejection, social stress, self-esteem, cortisol

Two experiments examined the hypothesis that quantitative depictions of improvement in threatening trends that were subsequently discounted would engender greater apprehension than undiscounted depictions of improving trends among men but not among women. Support for this interaction hypothesis was obtained in Experiment 1. When improvement in the threatening trends was depicted verbally, the interaction between discounting cues and gender was hypothesized to reverse. Experiment 2 found evidence supporting the predicted reversal of the interaction found in Experiment 1. These interaction effects are explained in terms of differential vigilance potentiated by quantitative and verbal depictions of threatening trends among women and men and gender differences in quantitative and verbal skills. Keywords: discounting cues; gender; apprehension

In this paper, we examined the impact of the numerical representation and the intrusiveness of immigrants on feelings of group threat voiced by the majority. The present evaluation of group threat differs from previous studies in its inclusion of temporal comparisons. The relationship between feelings of threat and attitudes toward immigration was also evaluated. In all, 221 college students completed a questionnaire. As predicted, results obtained show that numerical representation was positively associated with feelings of group threat resulting from invidious social comparisons. Intrusiveness was positively related to feelings of group threat resulting from temporal comparisons. Contrary to hypotheses, the final model confirms that only feelings of temporal group threat were associated with negative attitudes toward immigration. Practical implications and the important role of temporal comparisons are discussed.

This study employed the integrated threat theory of intergroup attitudes to examine the attitudes of Black and White students toward the other racial group. This theory synthesizes previous research on the relationships of threats to intergroup attitudes. Structural equation modeling revealed that for both racial groups, realistic threats, symbolic threats, and intergroup anxiety predicted attitudes toward the other group. To varying degrees, the effects of negative contact, strength of ingroup identity, perceptions of intergroup conflict, perceived status inequality, and negative stereotyping on negative racial attitudes were mediated by the three threat variables. The model accounted for more variance in the negative attitudes of Whites toward Blacks than in the negative attitudes of Blacks toward Whites. The implications of these findings are discussed.

This research examined the extent to which minority or 'devalued' group members engendered threat reactions from interaction partners. Participants' cardiovascular responses marking challenge and threat were obtained during social interactions with White or Black confederates who described their background as either socioeconomically advantaged or disadvantaged. Main effects for race and status were found. When interacting with Black or disadvantaged confederates, participants exhibited cardiovascular threat responses, whereas participants interacting with White or advantaged confederates primarily exhibited cardiovascular challenge responses. Consistent with cardiovascular responses, participants paired with White partners performed better during a cooperative task than participants paired with Black partners. In contrast to the physiological and behavioral indicators, self-reports indicated greater liking and more agreement with positive statements for Black partners than White partners. These findings demonstrate the value of multiple and less consciously controlled measures for the study of intergroup relations.

This research extended stereotype-threat effects outside of the academic domain and to a nonstigmatized group. Female and male students performed three decision tasks: lexical, valence, and affective processing. Half of the participants were told that, in general, men are poorer performers than are women in affective processing tasks. No differences between conditions were observed for the lexical and valence tasks. By contrast, for the affective task, threatened men made significantly more errors than did participants in the other three conditions. More precisely, threatened men tended to accept as affective words that were not affective. This latter result suggests that threatened men decreased their threshold for affectivity 'to prove' the inapplicability of the stereotype to themselves. Moreover stereotype endorsement did not mediate the results. Identification with the affective domain, on the other hand, moderated the effect of stereotype threat. Discussion considers the consequences of these findings for everyday interactions.

This article analyzes computer security rhetoric, particularly in the United States, arguing that dominant cultural understandings of immunology, sexuality, legality, citizenship, and capitalism powerfully shape the way computer viruses are construed and combated. Drawing on popular and technical handbooks, articles, and Web sites, as well as on e-mail interviews with security professionals, the author explores how discussions of computer viruses lean on analogies from immunology and in the process often encode popular anxieties about AIDS. Computer security rhetoric about compromised networks also uses language reminiscent of that used to describe the 'bodies' of nation-states under military threat from without and within. Such language portrays viruses using images of foreignness, illegality, and otherness. The security response to viruses advocates the virtues of the flexible and adaptive response--a rhetoric that depends on evolutionary language but also on the ideological idiom of advanced capitalism.

Three studies were conducted to measure the antecedents of women's attitudes toward men using the integrated threat model. Four types of threats were hypothesized to produce negative attitudes toward men: (1) realistic threat based on threats to women's political and economic power, (2) symbolic threat based on value differences, (3) intergroup anxiety experienced during social interaction with outgroup members, and (4) negative stereotypes of men. Negative contact was hypothesized to increase the perception of all four threats as well as to affect attitudes directly. The findings suggest that symbolic threat, intergroup anxiety, and negative contact are the strongest predictors of negative attitudes toward men. Contrary to expectation, realistic threat may not be important to women's attitudes toward men.

A general index of social, economic, and political threat in Europe and Belgium was developed for the years 1920 to 1993. We asked 91 Belgian historians, experts in contemporary history, to rate, on 7-point intensity scales, the extent to which each year, between 1920 to 1993, the security and existence of either Europe or Belgium was threatened. In making their judgments, the historians must integrate most of the information contained in objective data known to them as causes of fear (crime, unemployment, apprehension at starting a family, buying a car, or starting a new business, etc.). The present threat index rests on a synthetic judgment because many official objective data available to historians either are incomplete or lack conceptual coherence. The index obtained has then been compared to known objective indicators of social, economic, or political threat. We obtained Cronbach's [Alpha] coefficients of 0.99 for Belgian historians. Corrected for serial dependency, the threat index for Belgium is found to depend on a 5-variable subset composed of: suicide, unemployment, and balance of trade, for the positive associations; and GNP and car registrations, for the negative associations. The Pearson correlation between the threat index for Europe and Belgium is 0.95 (N = 74, p < 0.001). Just as McCann and Stewin (1990) had developed a similar tool for North America, the aim of this multi-purpose tool was to monitor the mood of Europe and Belgium over time based on evaluations made by professional historians. McCann and Stewin's (1990) threat index for the US has a Pearson correlation of 0.65 (N = 67, p < 0.001) with the European threat index. The article concludes with a discussion first on the question of the role of threat producing discourses in the perception of threat, and second, on the question of Europe as a concept.

Early theories of stress obscured differences in how men and women respond to threat. The tend-and-befriend model attempted to partially redress that oversight by identifying biological and behavioral patterns of stress responses distinctive to females, responses that are markedly social. Although men's behavior under stress may also be social, at least under certain circumstances, extending the tend-and-befriend model to men is premature and potentially flawed, from the vantage points of the underlying biology and the behavioral stress responses it may help to foster.

A theory of trust is developed and tested. The theory posits that mistrust develops in neighborhoods where resources are scarce and threat is common, and among individuals with few resources and who feel powerless to avoid or manage the threat. Perceived neighborhood disorder, common in disadvantaged neighborhoods where disadvantaged individuals live, influences mistrust directly and indirectly by increasing residents' perceptions of powerlessness which in turn amplify disorder's effect on mistrust. The hypotheses are examined using the Community, Crime, and Health data, a 1995 survey of a representative sample of 2,482 Illinois residents with linked data on neighborhoods. Net of individual disadvantage, residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods have low levels of trust as a result of high levels of disorder in their neighborhoods: People who report living in neighborhoods with high levels of crime, vandalism, graffiti, danger, noise, and drugs are more mistrusting. The sense of powerlessness, which is common in such neighborhoods, amplifies the effect of neighborhood disorder on mistrust.

Five studies examined the effects of priming the secure base schema on intergroup bias. In addition, Studies 1-2 examined the effects of dispositional attachment style, Studies 2-5 examined a mood interpretation, Study 3 examined the mediating role of threat appraisal, and Studies 4-5 examined the effects of secure base priming while inducing a threat to self-esteem or cultural worldview. Secure base priming led to less negative evaluative reactions toward out-groups than positive affect and neutral control conditions. In addition, whereas the effects of secure base priming did not depend on attachment style and were not explained by mood induction, they were mediated by threat appraisal and occurred even when self-esteem or cultural worldview was threatened. The discussion emphasizes the relevance of attachment theory for understanding intergroup attitudes.

In two studies, the authors investigated the impact of threat on the perception of extremity and homogeneity among the members of a group. They relied on the Group Attribution Error paradigm and asked participants to estimate the attitudes in a group of voters. Depending on the condition, the decision rules were such that the proposition allegedly passed or failed. The degree of threat of the group was varied by informing participants that the group represented a small (4%) or substantial (40%) proportion of the population living in the area. Consistent with the Group Attribution Error literature, the outcome of the vote influenced participants' inferences about the extremity of the voters' attitude. More positive (negative) attitudes were inferred in the case of a positive (negative) outcome of the vote. This effect was qualified by the level of threat. Participants inferred relatively more extreme and more homogeneous attitudes among the members of a threatening group.

When threatened with some type of disaster, how do people respond? What are the social factors that constrain their responses? Receiver characteristics, message characteristics, and social contexts are explained and [...]

Although there is ample evidence that alcohol usage is associated with greater frequency, incidence and severity of spouse battering, there is also considerable evidence which does not support a direct linkage. This research investigates a heretofore neglected area, the role of substance use in inducing fear in victims. As part of a larger study of the police response to battering, 419 female victims of male offenders participated in intensive interviews; the sample consisted of 69.9% Black and 28.9% White women. All the women had been victims of at least one occurrence of misdemeanor-level abuse, and many were in chronically abusive relationships. The women participating in this study were moderately educated and relatively young, with a mean age of 30 years old. Relationship status was bimodal with roughly equal numbers of married and cohabiting couples; there were relatively few who were divorced or separated from their assailants, or were ex-cohabitants. The male partners of women represented in this sample were extremely heavy drinkers compared to a national sample. The quantity and frequency of alcohol use was less predictive of threatening or physically battering behavior than was male drunkenness. Frequent drunkenness was highly correlated with both threats and with battering. Similarly, victims' fear of their partners was much more strongly associated with how frequently they were drunk than with drinking itself.

This study investigated the relationship of distance to eye contact and perception of possible physical threat by interrelating Argyle and Dean's (1965) compensatory hypothesis with Dosey and Meisels' (1969) perception of personal space as a ' body buffer zone.' Forty male and 40 female Canadians between 18 and 59 years of age served as subjects. Settings were classified as either potentially threatening or nonthreatening. The degree of eye contact was varied by having experimenters wear or not wear sunglasses. As expected, there was support for Dosey and Meisels' theory that in situations perceived to be potentially threatening, people react by standing farther back and using personal space as a buffer zone. Argyle and Dean's hypothesis was not fully supported because in the potentially threatening situation, the lower the degree of eye contact, the farther the distance of interaction between respondents and experimenters. The findings reemphasize the importance of respondents' perceptions for creating meaning within a particular social context.

The authors conducted an experiment to test a theoretical explanation of social facilitation based on the biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat. Participants mastered 1 of 2 tasks and subsequently performed either the mastered (i.e., well-learned) or the unlearned task either alone or with an audience while cardiovascular responses were recorded. Cardiovascular responses of participants performing a well-learned task in the presence of others fit the challenge pattern (i.e., increased cardiac response and decreased vascular resistance), whereas cardiovascular responses of participants performing an unlearned task in the presence of others fit the threat pattern (i.e., increased cardiac response and increased vascular resistance), confirming the authors' hypotheses and the applicability of the biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat to explain these results.

Some decisions must be made repeatedly and have consequences that change depending on how often each alternative is chosen. Such temporally extended decisions are pervasive and important, and often involve short-term/long-term tradeoffs. Can unrelated emotion and stress influence such decisions? In negative emotional states involving threats, people should favor what is better at the time regardless of possible long-term consequences. Supporting this hypothesis, in Experiment 1, college students randomly assigned to see aversive images repeatedly made choices that had better short-term but poorer long-term effects, and so earned less money than students shown neutral images, effect size r = .71. In Experiment 2, students reporting stress about impending exams showed a similar bias, r = .53. The hypothesis and results are relevant to decision making, delay of gratification, distributed choice, and self-control.