European Journal of Social Psychology最新文献

The online communities of involuntary celibates, or incels, have garnered increased attention for their extreme misogyny and links to violent attacks against women. However, little is known about how (pseudo-)psychological theories are used among the incel community to construct their identities and justify a worldview that centres on hatred against women. This study uses a critical discursive psychological approach to examine identity constructions in discussions on the so-called blackpill worldview within the online community incels.is. Our analysis of more than 1000 discussion threads written in 2020 reveals three distinct incel identities: incels as victimised martyrs, incels as aggrieved masculine actors, and a divided identity negotiating the boundaries of ‘pure’ and ‘impure’ inceldom. These identities are constructed through psychological notions, specifically, fatalism, ‘just-world’ beliefs, evolutionary psychology, eugenics and theories of interpersonal attraction—that serve as interpretative repertoires expressed through a plethora of rhetorical strategies and affective–discursive practices. The study highlights the importance of understanding how psychological concepts are appropriated in the construction of ingroup identities and justifications of outgroup hate within misogynist online communities.

Many governments have invested in interventions that foster social cohesion to promote peace and prevent the rise of violent extremism. Yet, we know little about the relationship between social cohesion and support for violent extremism. This research (N = 5016) examined cross-sectional relationships between different dimensions of social cohesion and violent extremism in 132 villages in the Sahel region of Burkina Faso (Study 1). In addition, using longitudinal data from 66 villages (Study 2: N = 2508), we assessed whether social cohesion predicts violence justification six months later. At the individual level, sense of community, outgroup trust and institutional trust were associated with lower justification of violence. Community participation was associated with higher justification of violence in villages with high levels of community participation. Between-village effects revealed that justification of violence was lower in villages with higher aggregate levels of ingroup and outgroup trust but lower levels of community participation.

The ways in which politicians are stereotyped contribute to perceptions of the legitimacy of their power, status and leadership. In this research, we examined how corruption impacts the stereotypes of politicians. By examining stereotype content, we posited that corruption should elicit morality-related traits, while in contexts of no corruption, both morality and competence should emerge as key dimensions. With two experiments (N_combined = 272), participants were presented with either a corruption or no corruption condition and were asked to provide traits describing politicians. Results revealed that in the corruption conditions, (low) morality emerged as the key dimension explaining most variance. In the no-corruption conditions, (high) morality and (high) competence emerged as a single key dimension. Our findings reveal one of the multiple pathways by which corruption impacts society–perceiving politicians as having extremely low morality has implications for general trust and meritocracy, contributing to the erosion of democracy.

Building on prior work on regulatory fit in leader–follower contexts, the present work investigated such fit regarding followers’ locomotion mode (the concern to move forward and maintain action flow) and leader assertiveness. In three studies, we recruited English-speaking employees online (N_total = 948) and assessed their regulatory mode. In Study 1, we then measured participants’ preferences regarding characteristics their leaders ideally should have. In Study 2, participants reported perceived characteristics (ability/assertiveness/morality/friendliness) of their actual leader. In Study 3, we presented participants with a highly assertive versus highly able leader profile. Participants subsequently indicated their expected satisfaction with and motivation by these leaders. Across studies, the higher the followers’ locomotion mode, the more they valued their leader being assertive. These findings show that feelings of fit can also derive from an alignment with others’ characteristics and shed light on when leader assertiveness is appreciated.

Whether the widespread perception of corruption is associated with lower or higher tolerance towards corrupt practices remains an important research question. Considering that, in economic downturns, citizens may become particularly sensitive to corruption, this paper goes further by exploring how the relationship between perceived sociotropic corruption and tolerance towards corruption may be moderated by perceptions of economic crisis. Findings from Study 1 with a representative sample of the Portuguese population (N = 1020) indicate that the higher the perceived sociotropic corruption, the lower the tolerance for corruption and that the negative relationship between sociotropic corruption and tolerance for corruption is strengthened by an economic crisis perception. Study 2 (N = 120) experimentally explored these findings and provided preliminary evidence of greater intolerance towards corruption under high sociotropic corruption, especially when the economic crisis perception is salient. These results show how the salience of corruption practices might improve adherence to integrity normative expectations and how contextual factors might impact this process.