European Journal of Social Psychology最新文献

The 17 October 2019 uprising in Lebanon marked a pivotal period of economic crisis and discontent with the ruling elite. We examined social cohesion post-uprising by exploring political polarization between “anti-ruling parties” citizens and “partisan/unaligned” citizens, in two surveys with a community sample (Study 1, N = 357) and a nationally representative sample (Study 2, N = 1200). Across both studies, “anti-ruling parties” respondents exhibited lower institutional trust, lower sectarianism, and greater support for a secular system compared to “partisan/unaligned” citizens. Conversely, no differences emerged surrounding economic discontent. Importantly, disenchantment with the status quo emerged across political lines. (De)mobilization tendencies varied. In Study 1 (2020), with lingering revolutionary hope, “anti-ruling parties” respondents showed stronger system-challenging collective action orientations. In Study 2 (2022), amid counter-revolutionary gains, disenchantment with October 17 groups emerged, with “anti-ruling parties” respondents showing lower voting intention, greater migration tendencies, and less readiness to use arms.

Corruption often involves collective actions rather than clandestine individual efforts. It is also socially facilitated via tacit complicity influenced by norms and beliefs. Five studies examine the delegation of decisions about corrupt behaviour as a social form of corruption and the role of attributing outcomes of delegated corrupt decisions to fate. In three correlational studies, belief in fate (i.e., perceiving events as ‘meant to be’ and predetermined) were positively associated with the delegation of decisions between non-corrupt, ethical and corrupt, self-serving behaviours to equally interested others in workplace scenarios. This effect was distinct from religious belief. In two experimental studies, participants attributed others’ corrupt decisions to fate more strongly when they served (vs. harmed) their self-interest. Fate beliefs were positively associated with fate attributions. Collectively, these studies illuminate interindividual differences associated with delegating decisions and how beliefs may be strategically used to justify corrupt outcomes, emphasising the social aspects of corruption.

Reactionary movements—movements that effectively increase inequality by advancing the rights of structurally advantaged groups—are of increasing concern in contemporary politics. Yet few studies assess support for these movements over time. We address this oversight in two studies examining reactionary collective action intentions over 9 years in a nationwide sample of New Zealand Europeans (N_total = 54,561). Random intercept cross-lagged panel modelling (Study 1) and latent class growth analysis (Study 2) reveal that high ethnic identification, social dominance orientation and conservatism, but low system justification, predict both within-person increases in, and class trajectories of, reactionary collective action intentions over time. Although most Europeans (86.62%) reported low and declining reactionary collective action intentions, a subgroup of Reactionaries (13.38%) emerged whose intentions increased over time. Collectively, these results highlight how and when reactionary collective action intentions emerge over time and illustrate the need to monitor social movements seeking to promote inequality.

We would like to bring to your attention an error in Figure 1 of our published article titled “Victim Empowerment and Satisfaction: The Potential of Imagery Rescripting” in the European Journal of Social Psychology (https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.3073).

Importantly, this error solely pertains to the labelling of the horizontal axes in Figure 1 and does not affect the validity of the data, analyses, or interpretations presented in the article. The means and standard deviations for all dependent variables across experimental conditions are reported correctly in Table 2 of the published article.

To address this oversight, we conducted a thorough re-evaluation of our R code and analytical processes. We can confirm that the results as well as the interpretations discussed in the article remain consistent and unaffected by this labelling error.

The corrected figure below accurately represents the experimental conditions on the horizontal axes. We sincerely apologize for any confusion or inconvenience caused by this oversight.

This study investigates how people who believe in conspiracy theory (CT) hold those beliefs. It considers whether believing a conspiracist explanation of an issue or event permits or precludes also believing a non-conspiracist explanation—that is, the degree to which endorsing CTs can be dialogical. Dialogicality involves the coexistence of conspiracist and non-conspiracist beliefs in advancing claims and contrasts with the view that all conspiracist belief endorsement is monological or ‘closed’ from other explanations. Thematic analysis of 39 semi-structured interviews revealed five modalities of belief coexistence: cognitive dissonance between beliefs, analogical beliefs, target-dependent beliefs, synthetic beliefs, and integrative beliefs. This spanned beliefs about the self, ingroup, outgroup, reality, action and the future, on topics concerning science, religion, and politics and society. These findings challenge the view that all CTs are monological belief systems: CT believers recruit both conspiracist and non-conspiracist explanations in building their worldview. Several hypotheses for further research emerge from this challenge to the basic assumption of much research on CTs.

School disciplinary sanctions increase sharply during adolescence, with students from certain backgrounds disproportionately affected. Strong teacher–student relationships that cultivate trust, respect and empathy may be essential to buffer against these changes. This quasi-experimental longitudinal field study trialled a brief empathic mindset intervention with teachers in English secondary schools and examined its effect on their students’ (N = 1347) behaviour records and perceptions of schooling. The intervention was associated with a greater sense of school belonging and a reduction in sanctions (particularly for boys), thereby signalling the importance of making students feel heard and respected.

Practices of bribery in the delivery of public services become entrenched when they are driven by social norms of reciprocity. The resulting economies of favours, which are common across diverse geographical regions, are resilient to conventional anti-corruption measures because they are underpinned by strong social pressures. This article describes the results of a behaviour change intervention to address gift-giving as a form of bribery in a Tanzanian hospital. The intervention utilised environmental cues and a peer-led network approach to deliver messages aimed at disincentivising bribery. An exit survey of hospital users indicates a reduction of the ‘gift-offering propensity score’, capturing self-declared behaviour, from 23% before implementation of the intervention to 13% afterwards. We find similar changes in the enabling norms score. Semi-structured interviews with hospital users and health workers further support these findings. These results suggest that practices and norms around bribery might be changed through a multi-pronged approach that addresses both the ‘supply’ and ‘demand’ side of bribery.