European Journal of Social Psychology最新文献

Volunteering can enhance both help-recipients’ and volunteers’ lives, so it is important to explore what motivates people to begin and continue volunteering. For instance, research underpinned by the social identity approach recognises that group-related processes are consequential. Recent quantitative research within this tradition highlighted the potential importance of volunteering as a means of religious identity enactment, but no work has yet explored this idea qualitatively, which means that the richness and complexity of identity enactment as a motive for volunteering remains unexamined. Addressing this, we conducted interviews with volunteers (N = 26) within English religiously motivated voluntary organisations that are responding to an important real-world issue: growing levels of food insecurity. Theoretically guided reflexive thematic analysis developed four themes showing that volunteering can facilitate enactment of different identities (i.e., religious, volunteer and human), thus illustrating the nuanced and complex nature of identity enactment through volunteering. Theoretical and practical implications are explored.

We draw from theory on motivated reasoning to suggest that men would be more prone toward gender pay gap scepticism (PGS) than women because doing so maintains a valued but illusory belief that society is currently fair. Integrating theory on wisdom and wise reasoning—a self-transcendent thinking process composed of intellectual humility, contextualism, perspectivism and dialecticism—we also hypothesised that men who engaged in stronger (vs. weaker) wise reasoning about the pay gap would be less prone toward PGS. Two pre-registered studies (N = 651) supported the predictions: generally, men were more prone toward gender PGS than women, while wise reasoning tended to attenuate scepticism in men. The patterns of effects remained stable when controlling for income, education, political orientation, and perceptions of the effects of COVID-19 on women's economic and psychological well-being. Our studies pave the way for interventions that alter how people reason about inequities such as the gender pay gap in an effort to create fairer workplaces and societies.

This study aims to explore the experiences of female-breadwinning couples (FBCs) in Pakistan. Using the constructivist grounded theory approach, a sample of twenty participants (10 male and 10 females) was interviewed. The study findings show that FBCs experience social stigmatisation, social isolation and differential treatment. These couples are viewed as abnormal, different and violators of the normative gendered expectations. FBCs not only experience societal backlash, but their relationship dynamics are also negatively affected. To deal with societal responses and relationship problems, these couples adopt various normalisation strategies such as exercising discretion, relocation and performing gender identities. This study contributes to the literature by providing a culturally informed perspective on how deeply embedded gender norms shape interpersonal dynamics, normalisation strategies and overall experiences with non-normative roles. The study also suggests for a more explicit consideration of cultural and normative contexts to enrich the application of social psychological theories.

We investigated mean-level changes in social dominance orientation (SDO) and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) during (vs before) New Zealand's nationwide coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdown at a time when New Zealand was led by a left-leaning government. The number of participants in the study ranged from (Ns = 25,065–24,653). Using propensity score matching to approximate experimental conditions, results show that both ideological motivations decreased slightly during the lockdown but rebounded after restrictions were removed several months later. We also tested whether the lockdown differentially moderated the associations SDO and RWA had with institutional attitudes. Lockdown conditions exacerbated the negative association between SDO and government satistfaction but attenuated the negative association between RWA and government satisfaction. Similar patterns emerged for trust in police and politicians but not trust in science. Although SDO and RWA fluctuated in similar directions during New Zealand's nationwide lockdown, our results indicate that people high in RWA may become more supportive of the government and police under such conditions—even in countries with a left-leaning political leader helming the pandemic response.

Sexual minorities continue to face workplace discrimination, which leads to them experiencing concerns about disclosing their own sexual identities. Despite the benefits of disclosure, relatively little research has examined what organizational factors can work together to foster disclosure of a sexual minority identity. Across five experiments (N = 1662), we examined two main factors: diversity ideologies and information about diversity climate. Sexual minorities were more willing to disclose in organizations with diversity messages conveying that they value group differences (an identity-conscious ideology) relative to those that downplay differences (an identity-blind ideology). Identity-conscious ideologies also increased belonging, perceptions of fair treatment and perceptions of LGBTQ+ representation. Despite expectations that contradictory evidence demonstrating a negative diversity climate might create mistrust and impede disclosure, the benefits of an identity-conscious ideology persisted in the face of a negative diversity climate. These findings point to the complexities of facilitating visible sexual minority representation in many workplace environments.

Success of global attempts to limit climate change depends partly upon public support for demands of climate activist groups. We examined the role of social representation and identity processes in shaping opposition to climate activism, through a discursive thematic analysis of 628 online comments on 20 MailOnline articles about climate activists. Members of the commenting community propagated representations of climate activists as an immoral and incompetent, low-value to society, ideological Other. Commenters contrasted negative representations of activists with constructions of their own shared identity as hardworking, moral and competent. These constructions serve to undermine and delegitimize the activist voice, while simultaneously advancing a political project rooted in ideological and class-based concerns. Future research might explore the possibility of engaging wider support through generating competing representations of activist identity. Our research illustrates the value of jointly focusing on social representations and social identity processes for understanding issue-based societal polarisation.

This study examines invited reports of racism in broadcast interviews. Guided by discursive psychology (DP) and conversation analysis (CA), the investigation focuses on the interactional moments wherein the interviewee (is invited to) describe a racist incident. Expanding existing DP and CA research on complaints of racism, this analysis shows how reported speech is treated by speakers as an indispensable device in reproducing the incident and providing evidence for the racism reported. This investigation provides further evidence for how speakers treat reporting racism as a sensitive business. This is reflected in the interviewee's accounts as they begin by describing the circumstance of the incident, and the interviewer's collaboration in co-constructing the interviewee's accounts and co-managing the trajectory of the interview. Overall, the analysis spotlights how an auspicious environment for victims to talk about their experiences of racism is created and fostered at both institutional and interactional levels.

Previous research has shown that merely thinking about an attitude object can make both positive and negative attitudes more extreme. The present research explored whether a specific type of thought—extrapolating from known to unknown attributes—might make attitudes and behavioural intentions more extreme than reviewing known attributes. In three experiments, extrapolating from a social group's ‘known’ personality traits made positive and negative attitudes and behavioural intentions more extreme than reviewing those traits. This pattern of results occurred whether participants self-generated extrapolations (Experiment 1) or rated the likelihood of frequently extrapolated traits (Experiment 2). Attitudes were also more extreme after extrapolating traits high versus low in cognitive relevance to known traits, regardless of trait positivity/negativity (Experiment 3). In all three experiments, the effect of biased trait extrapolation on attitude extremity was mediated by more extreme associations with the extrapolated group. The current findings are consistent with attitude theories that emphasize cognitive processes.

When and why might someone judge an ingroup transgressor more harshly than an outgroup transgressor? Taking a social functionalist perspective, we argue that morality is central to this phenomenon–the Black Sheep Effect–and that it is driven by social cohesion concerns. Using mediation and moderation methods across our studies, we find that people judge ingroup (vs. outgroup) transgressors more harshly because of concerns regarding ingroup social cohesion (Studies 1a–4). We also find that ingroup derogation is stronger for moral transgressions than weak or non-moral transgressions (Studies 2 and 3). Throughout our studies, we address alternative explanations, including moral relativism, naïve realism, moral parochialism and belief in a just world. Our work speaks to the emerging contention around the reliability of the Black Sheep Effect by noting when and why it surfaces.

Previous research suggests that economic inequality has caused a wide range of negative societal impacts. However, little is known about how economic inequality influences prosocial behaviour as a socioecological environment determinant. In five studies (N = 62,342), we examined whether economic inequality reduces prosocial behaviour by decreasing interpersonal trust and the moderation role of interpersonal targets. Studies 1, 2a, and 2b showed that interpersonal trust mediated the negative relationship between perceived economic inequality and prosocial behaviour. In Study 3, we used data from the World Values Survey to explore the relation between inequality and trust and found that it was moderated by the closeness of trust targets. In Study 4, we demonstrated that economic inequality only reduced trust and prosocial behaviour towards strangers, but not among friends and family. Taken together, the current research shed light on how economic inequality undermines trust and negatively impacts prosocial behaviour among different targets.