Journal of Social and Political Psychology最新文献

Liberals and conservatives in the United States exhibit intergroup bias toward those on the other side. In three preregistered experiments (N = 1,389), we examined the bias-reducing benefits of individuating members of the political outgroup by providing people with individuating information—information that provides knowledge about them beyond their group membership, such as their social roles, emotions, and personality. Studies 1 and 2 extended work on individuating information into this domain by testing its impact on a novel political outgroup member. Study 3 broke new ground by testing whether the benefits of learning individuating information can extend to additional members of the outgroup. Each methodology revealed that, compared to those who read non-individuating controls, participants who learned individuating information about a political outgroup member were less hostile and more empathic toward that outgroup member. The current studies thus identify a promising avenue for reducing interparty hostility.

The present research examines the relationships between political influence perception and political participation. Classic studies have linked participation to political interest. However, they did not consider that people may become interested in politics especially when they feel it impacts their lives. In this research, we assumed that political participation would be based on the belief that politics affects one's life. This hypothesis was tested among Polish (Study 1, n = 1000 and Study 3, n = 627) and British participants (Study 2, n = 476). We found positive links between political influence perception and various forms of participation (Study 1, Study 2). In Study 3, we experimentally manipulated thoughts about highly effective politics, which increased political influence perception and was further linked to an increased interest in politics and political participation. We discuss the role of the way people perceive politics in political participation.

Twenty-four percent of Black and minority ethnic students in the UK report facing racial harassment at university, and one in twenty leave their studies due to this. But how do those who remain negotiate a hostile climate and what can we learn from their strategies? In our focus groups conducted with 16 Black students at a predominantly white institution, we found a sophisticated awareness of multiple strategies, and awareness of the social and psychological consequences of each. Our reflective thematic analysis focuses on three of these strategies: First, the experience and expression of two versions of the self, depending on context and audience; second, performing a strategic whiteness both for personal and collective motives; and third, accentuating and embracing Blackness. Our analysis highlights how these strategies were adopted, encouraged, and discarded over time as well as the tensions between strategies; for instance, when the performance of whiteness is received as ‘inauthentic’ by other Black students. Importantly, our research troubles the notion that there are positive and negative strategies and instead emphasises the complex relational processes at play. Thus, rather than emphasising ‘fitting in’, institutions should endeavour to support the range of strategies used by marginalised students who remind us that it is not that straightforward.

In a series of studies in the U.S. (total N participants = 4,828) using both news articles (Studies 1-2) and constructed scenarios (Studies 3-4), we investigated how judgments of responsibility, blame, causal contribution, and punishment for alleged perpetrators and victims of sexual misconduct are influenced by (1) the political orientation of media outlets, (2) participants’ political orientation, and (3) the alleged perpetrators’ political orientation. Results indicated that participants’ political orientation, and the interaction between participants’ and alleged perpetrators’ political orientation, predicted moral judgments. Conservative participants were generally more likely inculpate and punish alleged victims in all four studies. Both conservative and liberal participants judged politically-aligned alleged perpetrators more leniently than politically-opposed alleged perpetrators. This political ingroup effect was ubiquitous across all tests of the dependent measures for conservative participants; whereas it was muted and unreliable for liberal participants. The findings collectively demonstrate that moral judgments about sexual misconduct are politicized at multiple psychological levels, and in ways that asymmetrically affect victims.