British Journal of Social Psychology最新文献

The way we use animals for human consumption, medicines, and entertainment causes problems for the environment, our health, and animal welfare. This research investigated an intervention aimed at reducing harmful attitudes and behaviours towards animals. As the underlying mechanism of prejudice towards animals is similar to human outgroup prejudice, we designed an intervention based on synthesized insights from the prejudice literature. In two studies, participants (N_Study1 = 603 and N_Study2 = 600) either received an intervention or no intervention. Then, harmful attitudes and behaviours towards animals (Studies 1 and 2) and possible mediators (Study 2) were measured. The prejudice-based intervention led participants to more strongly intend to reduce their hurtful behaviours towards animals (Studies 1 and 2). Moreover, the intervention diminished participants' animal product consumption as measured after a week (Study 2). Whereas the intervention did not affect speciesist attitudes in Study 1, it did in the more strongly powered Study 2. Finally, the path model of Study 2 showed that perspective-taking and feelings associated with injustice played a role in reducing speciesism, whereas awareness of animal treatment did not. Together, our intervention provides an important step to sustainability by reducing speciesism.

Previous research has relied on characteristics of relationship behaviours (e.g., choosing/avoiding intimacy) as evidence of prioritising potential rewards over the perceived risks (i.e., interpersonal risk tolerance). Across four studies (N_total = 1422), we drew from psychological risk–reward models of decision-making to test whether perceived risks, benefits, and/or risk tolerance were associated with relationship goals and behaviours. Self-esteem was positively associated with expecting greater benefits and perceiving less risk in relationship behaviours but not with differences in risk tolerance (i.e., tolerance of risks perceived; Studies 1 & 2). Furthermore, greater expected benefits were associated with connection goals and engaging in those behaviours, whereas greater perceived risk was associated with self-protection goals and less engagement (Studies 3 & 4). Our findings suggest that people with high self-esteem are not necessarily tolerant of interpersonal risk but instead differ in their perceptions of interpersonal risks and benefits, and consequently engage in behaviours they expect to confer benefits and avoid ones they anticipate will be costly.

When people think of a utopian future, what do they imagine? We examined (a) whether people's self-generated utopias differ by how much they criticize, seek to change or escape from an undesirable present; and (b) whether these distinct types of utopian thinking predict system-critical attitudes and intentions to change the status quo. Participants (N = 509) wrote about a future where a social issue they supported was resolved (e.g. economic inequality and climate change). Latent profile analysis revealed a subgroup of change-oriented utopian thinkers with lower system satisfaction and higher action intentions than the other two subgroups. Unexpectedly, the remaining profiles imagined ominous (dystopian thinkers) or ‘neutral’ (ambivalent future thinkers) futures and expressed mixed social change support. Computerized linguistic analyses further revealed that dystopian thinkers used more hopelessness-related language than change-oriented utopian thinkers. Ambivalent future thinkers were as ‘hopeless’ as dystopian thinkers but, like change-oriented utopian thinkers, used more fairness-related language. Thus, change-oriented utopian thinkers distinctly imagined a fairer—and possible—future. These results illustrate heterogeneity in how people imagine the future of their societies on specific issues. Critically, the features of these visions predict system-critical attitudes and a willingness to agitate for change.

In two cross-sectional and two experimental studies across both advantaged and disadvantaged group members (N_total = 1980 from two national contexts, UK and Italy), we explored if perceptions of group relative prototypicality may explain the association of positive and negative contact with collective action. Specifically, across studies, we investigated subgroup relative prototypicality with respect to four different common identities (national, supranational, based on humanity, humanity values). In Studies 1–2, among advantaged group members, positive contact was positively associated with collective action intentions via greater relative prototypicality of disadvantaged groups; in Study 2, we also found that negative contact was negatively associated with collective action intentions via decreased relative prototypicality of disadvantaged groups. By contrast, among disadvantaged group members, relative prototypicality did not exert any mediation effects. Experimental Studies 3–4 using advantaged group member participants generally provided causal evidence that positive (imagined) contact increases relative prototypicality of the disadvantaged group (Study 3), and that relative prototypicality increases collective action (Study 4).

In the European context, North African immigrants are often perceived as a threat to societal values and resources. Studies suggest that intersected identities (e.g., gay North African immigrant) may dilute the threat associated with one of those social categories (e.g., North African immigrant). However, the mechanisms underlying this dilution effect remain largely misunderstood. Three studies (N_Total = 1118) examine when and how immigration threat perception can be lessened, considering immigrants' intersecting identities. Using a mediated-moderation model, we tested the hypothesis that, when perceived value incongruence between North African and gay identities (the moderator) is high, gay North African men will be perceived as ‘less North African’ than presumptively straight North African men (i.e., low group typicality: the mediator), which in turn would be associated with lower threat perception and less prejudice. Studies 1–2 revealed that participants evaluate North African immigrant men as less threatening when described as gay (vs. not). This threat dilution effect emerges especially when participants believe that North African immigrant and gay identities are highly incongruent. Studies 2–3 show that gay North African immigrants are perceived as less associated with typical attributes of the category ‘North African immigrant’, which may account for the diminished threat.

From the playground to the boardroom, social power profoundly shapes the way people think and behave. Social psychological research has offered a nuanced understanding of the diverse psychological and behavioural tendencies of powerholders. We add to this literature by proposing that powerholders also differ in how they construe the origin of their power. Specifically, we differentiate between perceiving one's power as being based on personal merit and achievement (i.e. achieved power construal) and perceiving one's power as being granted by others (i.e. entrusted power construal). We hypothesised that entrusted power construal, more than achieved power construal, would increase powerholders' psychological other-orientation—the tendency to take another's perspective and to feel what they feel—and their altruistic behavioural tendencies. Using a multi-method approach, we tested this prediction across three studies (N = 926). Our findings revealed that powerholders who adopted an entrusted power construal, compared to those who adopted an achieved power construal, exhibited greater psychological other-orientation and more altruistic behavioural tendencies. We discuss the practical implications of these findings, including how they inform the training of future powerholders to educate them about the reciprocal nature of power.

The impacts of extreme events can intersect with pre-disaster systemic inequalities and deficiencies, exacerbating distress. This paper contributes to the existing literature by exploring the psychosocial processes through which stressors become traumatic during an extreme event. It does so by focusing on how mothers of children and/or adolescents in the United Kingdom experienced the COVID-19 pandemic. First, qualitative interviews (N = 15) showed that participants experienced a cluster of stressors stemming from their workplaces, partners, children's behaviours and homeschooling, which caused a sense of overload and captivity, reducing their quality of life. However, individual, interpersonal and collective forms of coping were reported. Second, quantitative survey data (N = 621) showed that the relationship between stressors and perceived stress was mediated by feelings of overload due to excessive identity-related tasks and caregiving responsibilities. Moreover, community identification was associated with reduced overload and perceived stress. Overall, during extreme events, people can experience distress due to being overloaded by and trapped in particular identities and identity-related tasks, unable to perform other aspects of their social selves. We argue that social psychological analyses can be useful in tracing the complex impacts of extreme events across a range of systems and levels of analysis.

This paper sheds light on how spaces become contested sites for identity construction and negotiation to take place. Applying the Social Representations Approach, a qualitative study of 10 focus group discussions (n = 39), was conducted in Singapore, Malaysia and the UK to explore how, and why racialised identity construction changed in each socio-political context. The study challenged two underlying assumptions in social psychology: (1) that the meaning of the racialised category holds constant across time and space, and (2) there exists a pan-racial identification among Asian identities, for example, which at times allows for racialised categories to be manipulated as variables. We argue that the distinction between the country that the racialised identity originates from, country of birth (or citizenship) for the individual and country that the individual manages the identity in, is important in understanding the changes in the psychology of racialised identities. By taking into consideration the interplay of temporality, space, social relations and social systems, this paper presents a contribution in the form of the concept “politicized psycho-geographies”.

We examined the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and endorsement of honour. We studied the SES-honour link in 5 studies (N = 13,635) with participants recruited in different world regions (the Mediterranean and MENA, East Asian, South-East Asian, and Anglo-Western regions) using measures that tap into various different facets of honour. Findings from these studies revealed that individuals who subjectively perceived themselves as belonging to a higher (vs. lower) SES endorsed various facets of honour more strongly (i.e. defence of family honour values and concerns, self-promotion and retaliation values, masculine honour beliefs, emphasis on personal and family social image, the so-called street code). We discuss implications of these findings for the cultural dynamics linked to SES.

Critical voices within social psychology have, for some time, emphasized that context matters for understanding psychological phenomena and processes. This special issue examines what a social psychology of context, and in context, can contribute to understanding contemporary geopolitics. We argue that, in examining the interplay between social psychology and contemporary geopolitics, we can understand how geopolitical contexts shape psychological processes and how psychology, in turn, informs our understanding of geopolitical phenomena. There are two thematic strands of the special issue; first, how psychological mechanisms influence perceptions and actions within geopolitical contexts, and second, how geopolitics shapes psychology as a discipline, including its theoretical frameworks and power dynamics. Papers examine three dimensions within which psychology and geopolitics meet—the temporal, spatial and embodied—representing history, geography and social relations, while emphasizing their interconnectedness. Drawing on critical geopolitics and social psychology, this introduction underscores the constructed, contested and political nature of time and space. By interlinking historical and social meaning with spatialization, this issue offers a deeper understanding of how individuals, groups and nations create and contest the psychological and geopolitical landscapes that shape contemporary life. The contributions highlight both the opportunities and challenges for social psychology in engaging with these critical intersections.