Asian Journal of Social Psychology最新文献

Research on the backlash effect predominantly investigated penalties men and women incurred when they violate gender norms in the domain of achievement-oriented aggressiveness. We investigated backlash reactions towards female versus male leaders' attempts to manage follower emotions using one of two gender-stereotypic interpersonal emotion management strategies, cognitive change or expression suppression, in a 2×2 vignette experiment in which undergraduate students as participants acted as followers (N = 206). We hypothesized that followers high in explicit or implicit prejudice towards female leadership would be motivated to show backlash in the form of negative attitudes and anger when female leaders use an expression suppression strategy and when male leaders use a cognitive change strategy, violating gender norms. We also explored the role of followers' gender as a boundary condition of backlash reactions towards leaders of the same versus opposite sex. Male participants with negative explicit attitudes towards women leaders in general expressed higher levels of anger towards a female leader who utilized a suppression strategy. Female participants holding implicit stereotypes reported negative attitudes for both female and male leaders who utilized a gender-incongruent emotion management strategy. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory and research on the backlash effect.

Prior research recognizes intergroup emotions as crucial for intergroup attitudes and interactions, but the psychological mechanisms linking prior intergroup interactions to contact intentions remain incompletely understood. This study investigated the joint effects and interplay of Chinese students' positive and negative contact on behavioural intentions to interact with international students in the future. Six affective variables (fear, anger, anxiety, empathy, happiness, and trust) were tested as mediators. Results revealed that positive contact directly predicted stronger contact willingness and indirectly affected this variable through lower levels of fear, anger, and anxiety and higher levels of empathy, happiness, and trust. Negative contact, however, was negatively associated with positive emotions and contact willingness and predicted more negative emotions. All intergroup emotions played significant mediating roles in the relationship between intergroup contact and willingness for future contact, and anxiety, fear, and trust emerged as robust mediators. Notably, positive contact had larger effects as compared to negative contact. Moreover, no association was observed between negative contact and intergroup emotions when positive contact was frequent. However, when both positive and negative contact were at higher levels, positive contact emerged as a more influential predictor of all intergroup emotions. This research emphasizes examining both positive and negative contact and affective variables as contact mediators, shedding light on enhancing contact intentions.

Breaking infection chains requires not just behaviours that allow individuals to stay healthy and uninfected (i.e. health protective behaviours) but also for those who are possibly infected to protect others from their harboured infection risk (i.e. socially responsible behaviours). However, socially responsible behaviours entail costs without clear, immediate benefits to the individual, such that public health-risking lapses occur from time to time. In this important yet understudied area, the current exploratory study sought to identify possible psychological factors that may affect people's likelihood of engaging in socially responsible behaviours. Assuming that self-perceived infection should provide an impetus to engage in socially responsible behaviours, we contend that lapses could occur in two scenarios: discounting of possible infection or prioritizing self-interest over collective good. Through a vignette portraying COVID-19 relevant symptoms presented to culturally diverse participants (Singapore and United States; N = 645), we found dispositional denialism (an ego defence mechanism) to exert a negative indirect effect on likelihood of engaging in socially responsible behaviours through its negative association with perceived infection status. Further, social value orientation and cultural orientation appeared to significantly moderate the positive association between perceived infection status and the likelihood of engaging in socially responsible behaviours, such that the positive association held only when individuals espouse both a prosocial value orientation and a collectivistic cultural orientation. Further analyses also point toward a possible attenuation of this positive association when individuals espouse a vertical cultural orientation. Future directions and implications for public health management are discussed.

This study examines the relationship between relationship conflict and cross-functional team innovative behaviour with transactive memory system (TMS) as a mediator and team-oriented leadership as a moderator. Adopting a two-wave data collection procedure, 584 team members and 113 team leaders from 20 organizations participated in this study. The PROCESS macro for SPSS was used to test the hypothesized relationships. The results indicate that the TMS mediates the relationship between relationship conflict and cross-functional team innovative behaviour. Moreover, team-oriented leadership moderates the relationship between relationship conflict and cross-functional team innovative behaviour as well as between relationship conflict and the transactive memory system. Additionally, it moderates the indirect effect of relationship conflict and cross-functional team innovative behaviour via the TMS. In particular, all three relationships become weaker when team-oriented leadership is high. Based on social information processing theory, this study makes an additional contribution to the current conflict management literature by providing empirical evidence on the mediating role of the TMS and the moderating role of team-oriented leadership in how relationship conflict affects cross-functional team innovative behaviour.

When predicting someone's performance, people expect that short runs of consistent successful outcomes will continue—the hot-hand. This tendency has been shown in contexts where athletes show a local performance streak, but no other information about their performance is provided. In real-life settings, performance predictions often use global-performance records like success-rate probabilities, although judgements often neglect such statistical information. Aimed at understanding psychological momentums, in a classical sports domain the present work explores how global-performance information (success rates) about an athlete impacts intentionality judgements and moderate predictions of success after a streak. Four studies show that (1) although participants tend to predict the continuation of streaks of success, they are less likely to predict that successful streaks will continue when success rates are low (vs. high or unknown); (2) sensitiveness to local performance's consistency affects perceived ability for high-success rate athletes and perceived effort for low success-rate athletes; (3) the mediation model describing that intentionality attributions mediate the effect of global success-rate information on performance predictions fits the data. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Accents are an important differentiator between groups which influence social perception and interaction, especially in a diverse country like Singapore. Social identity theory suggests that individuals would exhibit favoritism towards their own accents. However, the accent prestige theory demonstrates instances whereby foreign accents are perceived as more prestigious than one's own accent and are associated with more positive characteristics. This paper sought to explore which of these two theories is more prevalent in Singapore by comparing the perceptions of American English accents and local Singaporean English accents along the competence-warmth paradigm of the Stereotype Content Model. Further, the current research also sought to examine the mediating effect of competence/warmth on the relationship between accents and social influence. Study 1 showed that Singaporeans perceived American-accented speakers as significantly more competent (but not warmer) than local accented speakers. Furthermore, increased perceived competence significantly mediated the relationship between American accents and social influence. Study 2 further investigated perceived threat as a potential moderator in this mediating relationship. The findings replicated the accent-competence-social influence relations in Study 1 but found no effect of perceived threat. Taken together, the findings supported accent prestige towards American accents within Singapore. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

Implicit (i.e. unconscious) racial biases held by health professionals negatively affect patient–practitioner communication and health outcomes. Implicit biases are typically assessed through implicit association tests (IATs). We extracted cross-sectional IAT data originating in Australia from two large publicly available data sets hosted by Project Implicit. In total, IATs were available from 1956 healthcare workers (1249 of European ethnicity; 829 professionals/technicians as opposed to support workers). All had participated between 2006 and 2022. Levels of implicit skin tone bias were found to be moderate according to Project Implicit guidelines and substantially greater than zero (d = 0.87). Participants of European ethnicity and older age scored higher, but there were no differences across occupation types (professional vs. support worker) or over years. Consistent with findings around the world, the findings highlight a need for interventions that could reduce implicit bias and thereby improve the healthcare experiences of people from minority groups.

In this paper, we argue that one of the variables that may influence perceived inequality in everyday life is cultural differences in relational mobility. We examined this research question across two cross-cultural studies in Japan (Study 1, N = 196; Study 2, N = 214) and Spain (Study 1, N = 199; Study 2, 199), two countries that differ in their relational mobility levels. In Study 1, we contrasted two competing hypotheses: On the one hand, it could be predicted that individuals in countries with high relational mobility perceive greater inequality due to increased exposure to diverse social networks. On the other hand, it is also plausible that in contexts of high relational mobility, people perceive less inequality as they selectively choose to interact with individuals who share similar social backgrounds. Results supported the former hypotheses and showed that people in a country high in relational mobility (i.e. Spain) tend to perceive more economic inequality (vs. Japan, a country low in relational mobility). Moreover, we found an indirect effect of this cross-cultural difference through the cultural affordances for meeting new people (i.e. one of the dimensions of relational mobility). In Study 2, we preregistered and replicated these results.

Collective actions (e.g., protest marches, social movements) that begin peacefully sometimes turn into violent clashes between demonstrators and police, with alarming consequences. Research on the violent turn, informed by intergroup social psychology and micro-sociology, has made significant but separate advances. We review them jointly to form an integrated, fuller understanding of the violent turn and promote interdisciplinary dialogue by discussing their respective strengths and identifying areas where they complement each other. For these purposes we first extract from the psychology of interpersonal aggression literature a three-phase temporal pattern of aggression escalation to provide a common reference for reviewing representative studies and theories in intergroup social psychology (e.g., elaborated social identity model of crowd rioting, intergroup emotions theory) and micro-sociology (e.g., micro-sociological theory of violence, emotional dynamics and behavioural dynamics). The results of our analysis show a sequence of events beginning from instigators and their impellance in the early phase of the violent turn, psychological transformations forming a proclivity to aggress in the middle phase, and collective empowerment that disinhibits violence in the late phase. Group power and, to a less extent, group emotions permeate all phases. The sequence of events reveals transitional points where intervention may be applied to avert or abort violence.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused governments and individuals to face important but difficult trade-offs between health and the economy. How do individuals choose between health and economic outcomes during the pandemic? Based on the behavioural immune system (BIS) theory and the life history (LH) theory, the present study examined the effects of individual differences in pathogen disgust sensitivity and life history strategy on people's health-economic trade-offs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results of an online study (N = 300) showed that people with higher pathogen disgust sensitivity felt less sense of control during the pandemic, and therefore chose health-related options over economic-related options. In addition, the association between pathogen disgust sensitivity and health outcome preference only existed in people with relatively faster life history strategies. Further, people's health-economic trade-offs were not influenced by their current economic status. Findings have important implications for policymakers and the public to understand people's health-economic choices during the pandemic.