The relationship between individual differences in spontaneous self-affirmation and affect associated with self-weighing

We investigate whether the tendency to self-affirm in response to threat is associated with how people feel when they weigh themselves. People who were preoccupied with their weight anticipated feeling less negative (Studies 1a and 1b) and felt less negative (Study 2) when self-weighing if they typically affirmed their strengths. Study 3 experimentally manipulated self-affirmation. Although this intervention prompted affirmation of strengths it did not influence how participants felt when they subsequently weighed themselves. Together, the findings suggest that the tendency to spontaneously affirm strengths, but not values or social relations, is associated with the psychological outcomes of self-weighing and thus provide the basis for understanding how such individual differences might moderate how people respond in other self-evaluative contexts.     

Identification and status revisited: the moderating role of self-enhancement and self-transcendence values

Two studies examined the moderating role of the importance attributed to self-enhancement and self-transcendence values on the association of group status with identification. In the first study, students reported their personal value priorities, their identification with a group, and their perception of the status of that group. The more importance respondents attributed to self-enhancement and the less importance to self-transcendence, the more their identification with a group depended on the group's status. In the second study, the salience of self-enhancement and of self-transcendence values was experimentally manipulated. Identification with a group depended more on the status of that group when self-enhancement values were salient than when self-transcendence values were salient.     

Identity salience moderates processing of group-relevant information

When an individual is categorized as a member of a group, the individual’s social identity becomes his or her frame for perceiving the world. This research investigates how information can be perceived and processed differently when relevant social identities are salient. In two studies, participants’ individual, student, or American identities were made salient before they read strong or weak arguments in favor of the institution of comprehensive exams at their university in 10 years time. In both studies, student-salient participants analytically processed the message whereas self-salient (Study 1) and American-salient (Study 2) participants failed to agree differentially with strong and weak messages. These data suggest that social-identity salience changes the information that individuals consider relevant, providing clear support for the contention that social identities have a profound impact on the way individuals perceive and interact with the world around them.     

The attenuating effect of mortality salience on dishonest behavior

People are easily tempted to engage in dishonest behavior when an incentive is given and when full anonymity is provided. In the present work, we investigated existential threat as a motivational factor that might reduce dishonest behavior. Research based on terror management theory has found that mortality salience increases the motivation to fulfill salient values of one’s cultural worldview. Assuming the concept of honesty is important to human societies, we hypothesized that mortality salience will reduce dishonest behavior when the concept of honesty is salient. In two experiments, we assessed dishonesty under full anonymity by applying a die-under-the-cup paradigm with the expected value serving as a stochastic baseline for honest behavior. Both experiments provided support for our hypothesis. Given an incentive to cheat, when the concept of honesty was cognitively activated by a word-search puzzle (Study 1) or by the name of the dice game (i.e., “honest game”; Study 2), mortality salient participants showed not only less dishonest behavior but actually honest behavior.

     

Preventing Contagion With Avian Influenza: Disease Salience,Attitudes Toward Foreigners,and Avoidance Beliefs1

Building on an evolutionary approach to out‐group avoidance, this study showed relations between perceived disease salience and beliefs in the efficacy of avoiding foreigners as protective measures in the context of a real‐life pandemic risk; i.e., avian influenza. People for whom avian influenza was salient and who held unfavorable attitudes toward foreigners were more likely to believe that avoiding contact with foreigners protects against infection. This finding suggests that individual differences in social attitudes moderate evolved mechanisms relating threat of disease to out‐group avoidance.     

The vigilant parent: Parental role salience affects parents' risk perceptions, risk-aversion, and trust in strangers

Since parenting involves protecting children from various risks and dangers, tendencies towards increased risk perception, risk-averse decision-making, and distrust of strangers may come to be associated with the parental role. Consequently, parents may be more likely to exhibit each of these psychological tendencies when their parental role is situationally salient than when it is not salient. We tested this hypothesis in two studies that manipulated the salience of the parental role in samples of parents and nonparents and measured the effects on participants' risk perceptions, risk-aversion, and trust in strangers. As we hypothesized, parents perceived greater risk (Study 1), made more risk averse choices (Study 1), and trusted strangers less (Study 2) when their parental role was salient than when it was not salient. Implications for understanding psychological adaptations to social roles are discussed.     

Implicit Puritanism in American moral cognition

Three studies provide evidence that the judgments and behaviors of contemporary Americans are implicitly influenced by traditional Puritan-Protestant values regarding work and sex. American participants were less likely to display traditional values regarding sexuality when implicitly primed to deliberate, as opposed to intuition and neutral primes. British participants made judgments reflecting comparatively liberal sexual values regardless of prime condition (Study 1). Implicitly priming words related to divine salvation led Americans, but not Canadians, to work harder on an assigned task (Study 2). Moreover, work and sex values appear linked in an overarching American ethos. Asian-Americans responded to an implicit work prime by rejecting revealing clothing and sexually charged dancing, but only when their American cultural identity was first made salient (Study 3). These effects were observed not only among devout American Protestants, but also non-Protestant and less religious Americans.     

Reconstruing intolerance: abstract thinking reduces conservatives' prejudice against nonnormative groups

Myrdal (1944) described the "American dilemma" as the conflict between abstract national values ("liberty and justice for all") and more concrete, everyday prejudices. We leveraged construal-level theory to empirically test Myrdal's proposition that construal level (abstract vs. concrete) can influence prejudice. We measured individual differences in construal level (Study 1) and manipulated construal level (Studies 2 and 3); across these three studies, we found that adopting an abstract mind-set heightened conservatives' tolerance for groups that are perceived as deviating from Judeo-Christian values (gay men, lesbians, Muslims, and atheists). Among participants who adopted a concrete mind-set, conservatives were less tolerant of these nonnormative groups than liberals were, but political orientation did not have a reliable effect on tolerance among participants who adopted an abstract mind-set. Attitudes toward racial out-groups and dominant groups (e.g., Whites, Christians) were unaffected by construal level. In Study 3, we found that the effect of abstract thinking on prejudice was mediated by an increase in concerns about fairness.     

Social identity and worldview validation: the effects of ingroup identity primes and mortality salience on value endorsement

In this article, the authors report an investigation of the relationship between terror management and social identity processes by testing for the effects of social identity salience on worldview validation. Two studies, with distinct populations, were conducted to test the hypothesis that mortality salience would lead to worldview validation of values related to a salient social identity. In Study 1, reasonable support for this hypothesis was found with bicultural Aboriginal Australian participants (N = 97). It was found that thoughts of death led participants to validate ingroup and reject outgroup values depending on the social identity that had been made salient. In Study 2, when their student and Australian identities were primed, respectively, Anglo-Australian students (N = 119) validated values related to those identities, exclusively. The implications of the findings for identity-based worldview validation are discussed.     

Personifying the Radical

This study examines relationships among individual dispositions, news framing of civil liberties restrictions, security concerns, and political tolerance. We theorize that news frames condition the effects of individual dispositions on security and tolerance attitudes. To explore these relationships, an online‐survey experiment was conducted with 650 respondents. This experiment presented alternative versions of news stories about domestic security policies following September 11, and the policies' implications for a fringe activist group. One factor was whether the activists targeted by the government advocated for a cause supported or opposed by the respondent; another factor was whether the story framed government actions against the activists at the individual or group level. Findings show that individual framing—as opposed to group framing—made participants less tolerant of radicals they opposed and more tolerant of radicals they supported. Similar effects were observed for political ideology. Implications of personification as a framing device are discussed.     

Racial Tolerance and Reactions to Diversity Information in Job Advertisements1

The present paper reports the results from two investigations that examined the degree to which racial tolerance influences Caucasians' attraction to organizations. In Study 1, 280 Caucasian job seekers rated the extent to which various organizational features would influence their interest in an organization. Findings suggested that (a) racial tolerance was related to the importance placed on organizational diversity, but not other factors (e.g., pay), and (b) that racial tolerance predicted the importance placed on organizational diversity above and beyond other relevant individual differences. Study 2 extended Study 1 by examining whether the diversity values expressed in job advertisements affect Caucasians' perceptions of organizational image and subsequent job pursuit intentions. The results of Study 2 indicated that racial tolerance was significantly related to organizational perceptions and pursuit intentions when strong diversity values were communicated in a job advertisement.     

Mortality salience increases adherence to salient norms and values

Four studies indicate that mortality salience increases adherence to social norms and values, but only when cultural norms and values are salient. In Study 1, mortality salience coupled with a reminder about cultural values of egalitarianism reduced prejudice toward Blacks among non-Black participants. In Studies 2 through 4, a mortality salience induction (e.g., walking through a cemetery) increased self-reported and actual helping behavior only when the cultural value of helping was salient. These results suggest that people may adhere to norms and values so as to manage awareness of death.     

Idealizing parenthood to rationalize parental investments

Although raising children has largely negative effects on parents' emotional well-being, parenthood is often idealized as a uniquely emotionally rewarding role. We tested the hypothesis that belief in myths idealizing parenthood helps parents cope with the dissonance aroused by the high financial cost of raising children. In Study 1, parents endorsed the idealization of parenthood more when only the costs of parenting were made salient than when both the costs of parenting and the long-term benefits of having children were made salient. When dissonant feelings were measured before idealization of parenthood, these feelings mediated the influence of the salient information on idealization of parenthood. In Study 2, participants reported greater enjoyment of the time they spent with their children and intended to spend more leisure time with their children when only parenting costs were made salient than when the long-term benefits of having children were also made salient (or when no costs or benefits of having children were made salient). We discuss the implications of our results for parental-investment theory and for the propagation of myths idealizing parenthood.     

Who is watching over you? The role of shared identity in perceptions of surveillance

Two studies were conducted to investigate the role of social identity in appraisals of the purpose and acceptance of surveillance. In Study 1 (N = 112), a survey study demonstrated that there is a negative relationship between identification with one's city and the extent to which public closed circuit television (CCTV) surveillance is perceived as an invasion of privacy. This relationship was mediated by perceptions that the purpose of surveillance is to ensure safety. Study 2 (N = 139) manipulated identity salience at the sub‐group and superordinate level and the source of surveillance. Results demonstrated that surveillance originating from fellow sub‐group members was perceived as less privacy invading than surveillance originating from the superordinate group, but only when that sub‐group identity was salient. No differences in perceptions of privacy invasion were found when the more inclusive identity was made salient. We argue that whether surveillance is perceived as an invasion of privacy depends on the perceived social relationship with the source of the surveillance—surveillance is perceived as more acceptable when it originates from a group with which one identifies or shares an identity. Practical implications are discussed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. This article was published online on 25 February 2009. An error was subsequently identified. This notice is included in the online and print versions to indicate that both have been corrected 12 January 2010.     

What Is Social about Justice? Inclusive Identity and Group Values as the Basis of the Justice Motive

Three studies tested the claim that the justice motive is based on commitment to the perceived values of the “primary category” of potential recipients of an allocation. In Study 1, participants who identified more strongly with their group regarded a member who represented the group's strengths as more entitled to a common profit. In Study 2, participants judged their own entitlement versus that of a member who represented the group's strengths. Members who identified more strongly with their group were less likely to display self-interest in their judgments. In Study 3, participants judged the entitlement of an in-group member representing out-group strengths versus an out-group member representing in-group strengths. When identification with the primary category (including in-group and out-group) was strong, members who identified more strongly with their in-group viewed the out-group member representing in-group values as more deserving.     

Externalities Awareness in Anticommons Dilemmas Decreases Defective Behavior

The present paper explores the effect of the salience of collective consequences of opportunistic behavior in commons and anticommons dilemmas. Making this type of externalities salient was expected to increase the awareness of the conflict between collective and personal interests, especially in the anticommons dilemma. The results of a vignette study (Study 1, N = 100) and a laboratory experiment (Study 2, N = 55) confirmed our hypotheses, revealing more opportunistic behavior in the anticommons than in the commons dilemma when externalities were not made salient, while no significant dilemma effect was obtained when the externalities were made salient. Moreover, the results of Study 2 demonstrated that the dilemma effect on cooperation was mediated by externalities awareness. The positive effects of increments in externalities awareness on cooperation are discussed. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reactions to group success and failure as a function of identification level: a test of the goal-transformation hypothesis in social dilemmas

This study examined the combined effects of identification level, social value orientation, and feedback on contributions in a public goods dilemma. Previous research has shown that strengthening group identity promotes cooperation. One explanation for this finding is that a strong group identity transforms people's motives from the personal to the collective level (the goal transformation hypothesis). Evidence for this hypothesis can be found in studies showing that a strong sense of group identity influences proselfs, relative to prosocials, to make larger contributions. In this experiment, we demonstrated that these findings are restricted to situations in which no feedback about a group's performance is provided. When performance feedback is provided, a strong group identity cancels the effects of individual differences in social value orientations. In particular, when a group fails, contributions increase if group identity is salient, but decrease if personal identity is salient, regardless of a person's social value orientation. But when a group succeeds, no differences between group and personal identity are found. These results are discussed in terms of the goal transformation hypothesis.     

Influence of individual values on attitudes toward corruption: What undermine formal anticorruption effectiveness

The causes of corruption are often researched by scholars from the macroscopic perspectives of institutional and cultural factors. Neglected is scholarship on the relationship between individual values and corruption. People’s definitions and attitudes toward corruption are largely determined by personal values. However, scarce scholarly attention has been paid to what and how value factors exert influence on people’s attitudes toward corruption and how values moderate the relationship between the effectiveness of formal institutions against corruption and people’s anticorruption willingness. Drawing on the first‐hand survey data collected among Chinese civil servants, this research explores the impact of civil servants’ values on their tolerance towards corruption and willingness to engage in anticorruption. Adopting Hofstede’s (1984) four values model (power distance, collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, and masculinity), this study reveals that respondents high on collectivism or masculinity hold higher corruption tolerance and lower willingness to participate in actions against corruption whereas uncertainty avoidance is negatively related to corruption tolerance and positively associated with the respondents’ willingness to engage in anticorruption. Furthermore, the values serve as moderating roles in the relationship between formal anticorruption effectiveness and civil servants’ willingness to engage in combating corruption. Specifically, both collectivism and masculinity dilute the positive impact of the government’s anticorruption effectiveness on anticorruption willingness.     

Deviant but desirable: Group variability and evaluation of atypical group members

Two studies investigated how group variability affects reactions to atypical group members. In Study 1 (N = 65) we manipulated group variability and found that an atypical group member was evaluated more positively when the group was heterogeneous than when the group was homogeneous. In Study 2 (N = 276) we also manipulated group value and found a significant interaction whereby an atypical group member was evaluated more positively when the group was homogeneous and group members valued heterogeneity, but was evaluated more negatively when the group was heterogeneous and group members valued homogeneity. The results suggest that deviant or atypical members will not inevitably be rejected by the group, but rather that reactions to deviance are shaped and guided by the dynamic relationship between how the group is perceived by its members and their ideological beliefs about what is good for the group.