British Journal of Social Psychology最新文献

The social debate on Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) has been growing in recent years. While the academic literature on social attitudes towards UBI has exploded, qualitative studies analysing the nuances and ideological conflicts that shape public debate remain scarce. Drawing on (action-oriented) social representations theory and conceptions of social order, this study aims to delve into the shared meanings and arguments through which UBI is socially re-presented, as well as the ideological objectives pursued by these arguments. To do so, we conducted a reflexive thematic analysis of 26 individual interviews conducted in the Basque Country. We generated four main themes: (1) Origins of social inequality; (2) The right to a good life; (3) Accessibility: Who should get a UBI; (4) Feasibility in the current system. Results indicated that the re-presentation for UBI is anchored in socially disputed values of equality and freedom, which are objectified into conceptions of distributive justice and group stereotypes. This meaning-making process seems to be conditioned by a social context marked by capitalist realism and political despair. We discuss these results from a theoretical and applied perspective, extending our understanding of how people collectively reason about UBI and what social-psychological processes underpin it.

The circumstances under which people are more likely to use their attitude certainty were examined. Across three studies, participants shared their attitudes on current topics (e.g. refugees). Then, attitude certainty was either measured or manipulated, depending on the study. Elaboration was assessed via need for cognition or manipulated after forming attitudes and certainty, just before the behavioural decision. Attitudes, certainty, and elaboration served as predictors of different behavioural outcomes (e.g. enrolling in a mentoring programme). As predicted, attitudes guided behaviour. Furthermore, the greater the certainty, the greater attitude-behaviour correspondence (A–B consistency), replicating the traditional effect. Most relevant, the effect of already existing attitude certainty in moderating A–B consistency was more likely to occur for high (vs. low) elaboration participants. Following Self-Validation Theory (Briñol & Petty, Psychol. Rev., 129, 2022, 340), this research showed that elaboration can moderate reliance on metacognition determining A–B consistency.

Automated decision-making systems have become increasingly prevalent in morally salient domains of services, introducing ethically significant consequences. In three pre-registered studies (N = 804), we experimentally investigated whether people's judgements of AI decisions are impacted by a belief alignment with the underlying politically salient context of AI deployment over and above any general attitudes towards AI people might hold. Participants read conservative- or liberal-framed vignettes of AI-detected statistical anomalies as a proxy for potential human prejudice in the contexts of LGBTQ+ rights and environmental protection, and responded to willingness to act on the AI verdicts, trust in AI, and perception of procedural fairness and distributive fairness of AI. Our results reveal that people's willingness to act, and judgements of trust and fairness seem to be constructed as a function of general attitudes of positivity towards AI, the moral intuitive context of AI deployment, pre-existing politico-moral beliefs, and a compatibility between the latter two. The implication is that judgements towards AI are shaped by both the belief alignment effect and general AI attitudes, suggesting a level of malleability and context dependency that challenges the potential role of AI serving as an effective mediator in morally complex situations.

This study revisits an alleged ‘sedative’ effect of intergroup friendship on minority support for social change. Focusing on support for political action and empowering policies among Indigenous minorities in Chile, we examine both friendship with majority Chileans and personal discrimination; we distinguish ethnic and politicized minority identifications as hypothetical processes connecting intergroup contact with political outcomes; and we propose majority friends' perceived valuation of Indigenous minority friendships as a hypothetical buffer against sedation. Drawing on a large-scale stratified national sample of Indigenous peoples (N = 1856, aged 17–90), we tested half-longitudinal, (fully) cross-lagged models over 2 years. Qualifying earlier evidence of sedation, negative effects of majority friendship on minority support for social change were exclusively found cross-sectionally, and only when majority friends were perceived not to value minority friendships. In contrast, majority friendship had direct positive effects on support for social change over time. We also found that friendship promoted politicized identification over time, which in turn was associated with more support for social change. Personal discrimination predicted more support for social change both directly and indirectly. We conclude that majority friendship need not compromise and may instead promote minority group members' support for change towards equality.

When witnessing aggression, individuals often empathize more with victims than with aggressors, which may bias their perceptions and interpretations of the transgressions. However, the mechanisms underlying these biases remain poorly understood. Through two experiments, we investigated whether people's decisions to condemn aggressors are influenced by their predisposition to sympathize with the victim and explored how negative sentiments towards the aggressor may influence these decisions. Further, we tested the moderating role of callous-unemotional traits, hypothesizing that moral judgements and decisions to punish may differ among individuals who are less emotionally responsive, as they are less likely to sympathize with victims. Our findings revealed that greater empathy for victims intensified punitive attitudes towards aggressors, primarily mediated by participants' negative evaluations of the aggressor. Notably, such empathic inclinations were less prevalent among individuals with higher levels of callous-unemotional traits, as reflected by their lower concern for victims and greater inclination towards harsh punishments. These results offer insights into how justice-related attitudes may be shaped and potentially biased by individual differences in emotional responsiveness.

The current research examines perceived ingroup strengths and their relationship with collective efficacy, generalized power, and resistance among Black Americans. Two studies investigated how different perceptions of ingroup strengths (e.g. collective resilience, ingroup solidarity, intergroup coalitions, ingroup resistance, and intergroup respect) were associated with generalized power perceptions, perceived collective efficacy, and resistance behaviours. Study 1 demonstrated that collective resilience, ingroup solidarity, and intergroup coalitions predicted increased collective efficacy, which in turn predicted organized resistance but not everyday resistance. Perceived control over resources and influence predicted generalized power but not resistance behaviours. Study 2 extended these findings by including perceived ingroup resistance and intergroup respect. Ingroup resistance and intergroup respect predicted collective efficacy, which mediated their effects on both organized and everyday resistance. Unlike in Study 1, collective resilience, ingroup solidarity, and intergroup coalitions had no significant effects on collective efficacy in Study 2, though ingroup solidarity directly predicted organized resistance. Generalized power perceptions were linked to lower everyday resistance. These findings highlight the complex interplay between different perceived ingroup strengths and their distinct roles in fostering collective efficacy and resistance against racial oppression.

Understanding potential costs of social identity switching contributes to our knowledge of how people manage their various group memberships in a fast-paced and interconnected world. Recent research demonstrates that people can switch between demographic social identities seamlessly. The current studies advance this research by (1) moving beyond demographic identities to identities that are not perceptually distinguishable, (2) developing a new identity switching paradigm based on an implicit computational linguistic style measure of salience and (3) including self-report measures of salience, task difficulty and performance. In two within-subjects studies (N = 211; N = 220), a short writing task was used to prompt a switch from participants' parent identity to their feminist identity or a repetition of the feminist identity. Findings from the implicit measure revealed no identity activation ‘cost’ in the switch relative to the repeat condition, consistent with previous findings for demographic identities. In contrast, we found evidence for lower self-reported salience of the feminist identity in the switch compared to the repeat condition. Furthermore, Study 2 found little difference in self-rated performance or task difficulty between conditions, indicating that switching identities does not affect self-rated performance. The results illustrate a new paradigm for investigating social identity switching.

We investigated the preregistered hypothesis that an optimistic bias in updating beliefs about climate change (i.e., integrating good news more than bad news) cross-sectionally (N_{Study 1} = 109) and longitudinally (N_{Study 2} = 407) predicts self-reported pro-environmental behaviour (PEB). To test this, we employed an experimental task in which participants were presented with multiple climate change scenarios and asked to update their beliefs after receiving scientific evidence. Additionally, we investigated whether biased belief updating and PEB could be altered by brief experimental interventions providing information on different aspects of climate change. Results show that optimistically biased belief updating did not predict PEB cross-sectionally, but did predict PEB 4 weeks later, while controlling for baseline levels of PEB. The experimental interventions did not significantly alter belief updating or increase PEB, although there were significant gender differences. The results suggest that an optimistic bias in belief updating longitudinally predicts low engagement in PEB, possibly because selectively integrating good news over bad news reduces the perceived urgency to take action. Yet the effect may be small and detectable only in sufficiently large samples. The results also indicate that it is challenging to modify this bias. Implications for research on attitude change, social cognition and PEB are discussed.

Across both wealthy and non-wealthy nations, research finds public support for wealthy countries taking greater climate action. However, it is unclear whether this is driven by a belief that wealthier nations have greater economic capacity to respond or a greater historic responsibility for causing climate change. We explore this idea in the context of climate aid policies, which direct support to those most affected by climate change. In a correlational study (N = 292, United Kingdom), individuals who believe their nation has greater historic responsibility for climate change showed stronger support for their country providing climate aid. Two experiments provide conflicting findings. In Study 2 (N = 366, United Kingdom), we experimentally manipulated national wealth and historical emissions using a fictional nation paradigm and found that wealth was the stronger predictor of support for their country providing climate aid. In Study 3 (N = 797, South Africa) we manipulated these factors about participants' own nation and found that neither predicted support for climate aid policy, but both predicted greater support for their country implementing climate mitigation policies. Although higher capacity and responsibility increased support for mitigation policies, further efforts are needed to understand their role in shaping support for climate aid.

Many descendants of migrants feel belonging to both the national group and the ethnic minority group of their family (dual identity), but they often experience that majority members see them only as ethnic minority members. This could hamper their potential to improve intergroup relations. Because social networks tend to be homogeneous, having friends from a particular group could be interpreted as a signal of someone's group belonging. Our research advances the field by examining how the ethnic minority/national majority composition of the friendship network of descendants of migrants may affect the national/dual ascriptions they receive. In two vignette studies, we manipulated the composition of the friend group, using names or AI-generated faces of fictitious Moroccan-Dutch individuals, and examined how this affected ascriptions and stereotypical evaluations given by a representative sample of Dutch majority members. We find mixed results; having Dutch friends increased Dutch ascriptions and having mixed friends increased dual ascriptions when participants read text. However, these effects were attenuated when targets' faces were categorized. This suggests that information about phenotype limits the effects of friend group composition. Future research should examine these dynamics in real-world environments where phenotype and social cues coexist.