Increasing self‐esteem and empathy to prevent violent radicalization: a longitudinal quantitative evaluation of a resilience training focused on adolescents with a dual identity

Quantitative results are reported of a longitudinal evaluation of a resilience training as a possible method to prevent violent radicalization (Diamant; SIPI, 2010). A total of 46 male and female Muslim adolescents and young adults with a migrant background participated. Results show that the training significantly increased participants' reports of agency and a marginal increase was found in reported self‐esteem, empathy and perspective taking but also narcissism. Attitudes toward ideology‐based violence and own violent intentions were significantly lower after the training than before. Higher reports of empathy were related to less positive attitudes toward ideology‐based violence. These results suggest that an intervention aimed at empowering individuals in combination with strengthening empathy is successful in countering violent radicalization.     

群际接触减少偏见的机制：一项整合的研究

以321名少数民族大学生为被试,考察了民族接触（与汉族）、交往态度、民族认同、民族本质论、民族刻板印象和群际焦虑等变量,以整合的视角探讨了民族接触促进民族交往的机制问题。研究结果表明：民族接触通过降低群际焦虑和民族认同、减弱消极刻板印象和民族本质论而间接促进了民族交往,民族认同在民族接触和民族本质论之间、消极刻板印象在民族接触和群际焦虑之间存在中介作用。这项整合的研究理论上丰富了群际接触减少偏见的机制研究,发现了新的中介变量,对促进民族交往的实践具有指导意义。     

Avoiding affect in intergroup relations: The roles of dispositional and intergroup empathy in the relationship between alexithymia and prejudice

Alexithymia, that is, difficulties in recognizing, communicating, and processing one's own emotions, is associated with poorer interpersonal relations. Emotional processes are key drivers and mechanisms of prejudice and its reduction, and alexithymia is thought to influence individuals' empathic responses. This research examined the relationship between alexithymia and prejudice, and the role of empathy in this relationship. Three studies were conducted in three intergroup contexts to test whether alexithymia is also associated with poorer intergroup relations with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender+ individuals (Study 1, N = 126 heterosexual late adolescents) and Asian British people (Study 3, N = 300 White adults) in the United Kingdom, and immigrants in Italy (Study 2, N = 381 Italian adults). Participants completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), measures on dispositional and intergroup empathic concern (EC) and perspective taking (PT) as well as measures of prejudice (anti-outgroup hostility, anti-outgroup attitudes, and anti-outgroup behavioral intentions). Lower dispositional EC (Studies 1, marginal effect in Study 2) and intergroup EC and PT (Study 3) mediated the relationship between the Externally Oriented Thinking subscale of the TAS-20 (i.e., avoiding emotions and affective thinking) and greater prejudice. The findings are important for understanding the challenges of late adolescents and adults with alexithymia in intergroup relations, highlighting the role of dispositional and intergroup empathy for individual differences such as alexithymia in endorsing prejudice.     

Preventing prejudice and improving intergroup attitudes: A meta-analysis of child and adolescent training programs

This article reports the results of a meta-analysis of 81 research reports containing 122 intervention–control comparisons of structured programs to reduce prejudice or promote positive intergroup attitudes in children and adolescents. Overall, the analysis revealed a mean effect size of d = 0.30, indicating low to moderate intervention effects. From the great variety of different approaches, interventions based on direct contact experiences along with social-cognitive training programs designed to promote empathy and perspective taking showed the strongest effect sizes. In addition, effects varied according to the program participant's social status (higher effects for majority groups), the target out-group (lower effect sizes for ethnic vs. disabled and aged out-groups), and the type of outcome assessment (higher effects for cognitive vs. affective and behavioral measures of intergroup attitudes). The discussion considers several limitations including the lack of implementation and follow-up research as well as future direction of research on promoting intergroup relations.     

Brief loving-kindness meditation reduces racial bias,mediated by positive other-regarding emotions

The relationship between positive emotions and implicit racial prejudice is unclear. Interventions using positive emotions to reduce racial bias have been found wanting, while other research shows that positive affect can sometimes exacerbate implicit prejudice. Nevertheless, loving-kindness meditation (LKM) has shown some promise as a method of reducing bias despite increasing a broad range of positive emotions. A randomised control trial (n = 69) showed that a short-term induction of LKM decreased automatic processing, increased controlled processing, and was sufficient to reduce implicit prejudice towards the target’s racial group but not towards a group untargeted by the meditation. Furthermore, the reduction in bias was shown to be mediated by other-regarding positive emotions alongside increased control and decreased automaticity on the IAT. Non-other-regarding positive emotions conversely showed no correlation with bias. The study is the first to show that a short-term positive emotional induction can reduce racial prejudice, and aids the understanding of how positive emotions functionally differentiate in affecting bias.     

Attitudes toward Indigenous Australians: the role of empathy and guilt

Previous research in Perth, Western Australia, finds a disturbing amount of prejudice against Indigenous Australians. At the forefront of much prejudice research has been the distinction between old‐fashioned and modern prejudice. We constructed an Attitude Toward Indigenous Australians scale from items originating from qualitative data. We found that negative attitudes were predicted by collective guilt about past and present wrongs to Indigenous Australians (collective guilt directly linked to Indigenous issues, as well as collective guilt generally). Negative attitudes were also predicted by a lack of empathy for Indigenous Australians, and affective perspective taking generally. Socio‐demographics (e.g. a lack of education) predicted negative attitudes, which indicate the necessity of taking both social‐psychological and socio‐demographic factors into account when examining the nature of prejudice. A number of practical implications arise from these findings. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Age, Race, and Implicit Prejudice: Using Process Dissociation to Separate the Underlying Components

ABSTRACT— Older adults express greater prejudice than younger adults, but it is not clear why. In a community-based sample, we found that older White adults demonstrated more racial prejudice on an implicit measure, the race Implicit Association Test, than did younger adults. Process-dissociation procedures indicated that this difference in implicit prejudice was due to older adults having less control of their automatic prejudicial associations rather than stronger automatic prejudicial associations. Furthermore, this age difference in control was mediated by age-related deficits in inhibitory ability. White participants showed stronger automatic prejudicial associations than did Black participants.     

Hindsight bias from 3 to 95 years of age

Upon learning the outcome to a problem, people tend to believe that they knew it all along (hindsight bias). Here, we report the first study to trace the development of hindsight bias across the life span. One hundred ninety-four participants aged 3 to 95 years completed 3 tasks designed to measure visual and verbal hindsight bias. All age groups demonstrated hindsight bias on all 3 tasks; however, preschoolers and older adults exhibited more bias than older children and younger adults. Multinomial processing tree analyses of these data revealed that preschoolers' enhanced hindsight bias resulted from them substituting the correct answer for their original answer in their recall (a qualitative error). Conversely, older adults' enhanced hindsight bias resulted from them forgetting their original answer and recalling an answer closer to, but not equal to, the correct answer (a quantitative error). We discuss these findings in relation to mechanisms of memory, perspective taking, theory of mind, and executive function.     

Empathy towards individuals of the same and different ethnicity when depicted in negative and positive contexts

Individuals can show different empathy responses towards others depending on in-group and out-group biases. The present research tested empathy biases related to ethnicity when targets were depicted in negative and positive contexts. Caucasian (n = 99) and Asian (n = 99) participants gave subjective ratings for images depicting same or other ethnicity individuals in socially-relevant negative and positive contexts. Participants rated significantly higher on all three dimensions of empathy (affect, perspective taking, and understanding) for same ethnicity targets than for other ethnicity targets. However, this bias was found only for targets depicted in negative contexts. Moreover, no ethnicity bias was found for ratings of valence, arousal, distress, and interest. The results suggest that ethnicity-related biases in empathy are present, are limited to negative contexts, and are not merely a manifestation of a more general cognitive or affective bias.     

Comparison of Cognitive Empathy,Emotional Empathy,and Social Functioning in Different Age Groups

Empathic responses and optimum social functioning are associated with psychological and physical health benefits. The aim of this study was to compare emotional empathy, cognitive empathy, and social functioning among different age groups, including adolescence, young adulthood, middle adulthood, and late adulthood. One hundred and ninety‐six people (92 males, 104 females) with the age range of 14 to 85 assigned to four age groups (adolescents, young adults, middle adults, and older adults) participated in this study. Participants were asked to complete the Empathy Quotient, the Revised Eyes Test, and Social Functioning Scale. The results showed that there were significant differences between older adults and other groups. Emotional empathy increased in older people, but there were deficits in some aspects of cognitive empathy. Also, the findings showed an age‐related decline in social functioning. Due to deficits in cognitive empathy affected by ageing, older adults showed some impairment in their ability to interpret emotional cues. This age‐related decline in cognitive empathy might be a reason for weak social functioning in older adults. Therefore, considering these elements would be helpful to provide healthcare strategies for elderly people.     

Long-term reduction in implicit race bias: A prejudice habit-breaking intervention

We developed a multi-faceted prejudice habit-breaking intervention to produce long-term reductions in implicit race bias. The intervention is based on the premise that implicit bias is like a habit that can be broken through a combination of awareness of implicit bias, concern about the effects of that bias, and the application of strategies to reduce bias. In a 12-week longitudinal study, people who received the intervention showed dramatic reductions in implicit race bias. People who were concerned about discrimination or who reported using the strategies showed the greatest reductions. The intervention also led to increases in concern about discrimination and personal awareness of bias over the duration of the study. People in the control group showed none of the above effects. Our results raise the hope of reducing persistent and unintentional forms of discrimination that arise from implicit bias.     

“Put Yourself in Their Shoes”: Testing Empathy's Ability to Motivate Cosmopolitan Behavior

Political theorists have long contemplated the concept of cosmopolitanism, yet almost no empirical studies have investigated how individuals can be encouraged to act as ethical cosmopolitans in practice. This article reports the findings of an experiment designed to investigate the effect of empathy on cosmopolitan‐helping behavior. The extent to which empathy may be useful in motivating cosmopolitan behavior has been the subject of substantial debate among political theorists. Empathy was manipulated using a perspective‐taking technique adapted from social psychological research, and the extent to which individuals were willing to engage in cosmopolitan helping was measured. Results showed that perspective taking increased cosmopolitan helping and that empathy mediated that effect. Furthermore, empathy was found to predict cosmopolitan helping even after controlling for several related constructs. Overall, results indicate that increasing empathy by encouraging people to take the perspective of distant individuals is a promising way to foster cosmopolitan helping.     

A Mental Imagery Intervention to Increase Future Self‐Continuity and Reduce Procrastination

This research examined how mental imagery practice can increase future self‐continuity to reduce procrastination. A total of 193 undergraduate students were randomly assigned to a present‐focused meditation or to a future self‐focused mental imagery condition. Participants in both conditions were asked to listen to their respective audio recording twice per week for four consecutive weeks and to complete a pre‐intervention, half‐point, and post‐intervention questionnaire. At the four‐week mark, hierarchical regression analyses revealed that both future self‐continuity and empathic perspective taking were significantly higher for the mental imagery condition than the meditation condition. While vividness of future self moderated change in future self‐continuity, affective empathy for future self mediated the relation between vividness of future self and future self‐continuity. Lastly, only empathic perspective taking was a significant moderator of change in procrastination across time. The influence of empathy and future self‐continuity on procrastination is discussed.     

Cognitive and emotional control and perspective taking and their relations to empathy in 5-year-old children

The experience of empathy has been described as involving both emotional and cognitive components. The primary hypothesis tested in this study is that cognition and emotion are integrated within 2 distinct types of abilities-control and perspective taking-and that interactions between emotional and cognitive control and between affective and cognitive perspective taking would be related to children's empathic responding. We also hypothesized that boys' control and perspective-taking skills would be more strongly related to empathy than would those of girls. Fifty-seven 5-year-olds completed tasks measuring cognitive control, cognitive and affective perspective taking, and empathy, and their mothers completed a measure of children's emotional control. Results indicated that cognitive perspective taking moderated the relation between affective perspective taking and empathy. In addition, the relation between cognitive inhibitory control and empathy was moderated by gender; boys' control was positively related to empathy, but girls' control was marginally negatively related to empathy.     

The effectiveness of intergroup contact at work: Mediators and moderators of hospital workers' prejudice towards immigrants

The present research examines the effectiveness of intergroup contact between 167 Italian hospital workers and foreign patients in reducing prejudice towards immigrants in general. The outcomes of contact at work were analysed controlling for the influence of contact outside the workplace and through mass media, and taking into account the role of empathy, anxiety and group membership salience. Results indicate that the beneficial effects of contact at work were partially mediated by increased empathy and reduced anxiety, experienced both in the work environment and towards immigrants in general. Finally, high levels of group membership salience facilitated the influence of contact on intergroup emotions. These findings show that contact at work can be a powerful means to reduce prejudice, thanks to its capacity to evoke changes in affective responses. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Alienation and empathy as mediators of the relation between Social Dominance Orientation,Right-Wing Authoritarianism and expressions of racism and sexism

Prior research has established a link between Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), empathy, and generalized measures of prejudice. Whether empathy functions as a mediator for more specific forms of prejudice has not been studied. Furthermore, alienation and its role in predicting prejudice have been given little attention in the literature. Our results found that empathy functioned as a mediator for SDO, but only for sexism, not racism. Alienation was found to act as a mediator between SDO and both racism and sexism. The relation between Right-Wing Authoritarianism and racism and sexism was not mediated by alienation.     

Aging and prejudice: Diminished regulation of automatic race bias among older adults

A popular view holds that older adults are more prejudiced than younger adults because they grew up in a less tolerant era. An alternative view proposes that aging corresponds with stronger prejudice among older adults because they have reduced capacity to inhibit biased associations that come to mind automatically. To independently assess these possibilities, we modeled the processes underlying implicit racial attitudes in samples of teenagers through people in their nineties. Results indicated that older adults showed greater implicit bias because they were less able to regulate the automatic associations they possessed, not because of holding stronger associations in the first place. These findings suggest that age-related increases in racial biases, even those that are implicit, may be due to self-regulatory failure of older adults, rather than to cohort effects.     

Children's responses to social atypicality among group members – advantages of a contextualized social developmental account

Abrams, Rutland, Palmer, Ferrell, and Pelletier (2014) showed that better second‐order mental state understanding facilitates 6–7‐year‐olds' ability to link a partially disloyal child's atypicality to inclusive or exclusive reactions by in‐group or outgroup members. This finding is interpreted in terms of predictions from the developmental subjective group dynamics model. We respond to thoughtful commentaries by Rhodes and Chalik, Patterson, and Rakoczy. Children face a significant developmental challenge in becoming able to recognize and interpret social atypicality in intergroup contexts. Researching that ability to contextualize judgements raises new questions about the nature of peer inclusion and exclusion, about children's social cognition, and about the way that social cognitive development and social experience combine. Rather than individual‐focused cognition taking priority over category‐based cognition, we argue the two become more systematically integrated during development. We note that loyalty is but one example of typicality, and we also consider the role of more advanced perspective taking among older children, and the role of multiple classification skill among younger children, as well as potential implications for intervention to reduce peer victimization and prejudice.     

消极刻板印象对老年人医疗决策的影响及归因偏差的作用

随着年龄的增长, 对老年人的消极刻板印象和医疗决策逐渐成为了与老年群体越来越相关的两个概念。在此背景下, 很有必要系统地探讨消极刻板印象对老年人医疗决策的效应及其机制。本研究以158名老年人为被试, 通过两个实验考察了消极刻板印象、归因偏差和老年人医疗决策质量间的关系。实验1结果发现, 消极刻板印象负向影响老年人的医疗决策质量, 同时, 归因偏差在刻板印象对老年人医疗决策质量的效应中起到中介作用。实验2结果表明, 减少归因偏差的干预控制可以有效降低刻板印象对医疗决策质量的消极效应。本研究对理解刻板印象效应机制、缓解刻板印象消极效应、以及改善老年人医疗决策质量具有一定的理论意义和实践价值。     

Why it pays to get inside the head of your opponent: the differential effects of perspective taking and empathy in negotiations

The current research explored whether two related yet distinct social competencies -- perspective taking (the cognitive capacity to consider the world from another individual's viewpoint) and empathy (the ability to connect emotionally with another individual) -- have differential effects in negotiations. Across three studies, using both individual difference measures and experimental manipulations, we found that perspective taking increased individuals' ability to discover hidden agreements and to both create and claim resources at the bargaining table. However, empathy did not prove nearly as advantageous and at times was detrimental to discovering a possible deal and achieving individual profit. These results held regardless of whether the interaction was a negotiation in which a prima facie solution was not possible or a multiple-issue negotiation that required discovering mutually beneficial trade-offs. Although empathy is an essential tool in many aspects of social life, perspective taking appears to be a particularly critical ability in negotiations.