Agents of Prosociality: Agency Affirmation Promotes Mutual Prosocial Tendencies and Behavior Among Conflicting Groups

Members of conflicting groups are motivated to restore their ingroup's agency, leading to antisocial tendencies against the outgroup. The present research tested the hypothesis that affirming conflicting groups' agency would increase their members' mutual prosociality. The effectiveness of agency affirmation was demonstrated in three contexts of conflict between groups: Switzerland and the EU following the 2014 referendum (Study 1), Israelis and Palestinians (Study 2), and Israeli rightists and leftists (Study 3). Study 1 found that in a nonconflictual context Swiss participants prioritized their moral (prosocial) over agentic goals, yet in the context of conflict with the EU, they prioritized their agentic over moral goals. This “primacy‐of‐agency” effect, however, was eliminated once their ingroup's agency was affirmed. Studies 2 and 3 demonstrated the positive effect of agency affirmation on prosociality among Israelis referring to Palestinians and Israeli rightists and leftists referring to the adversarial political camp. This effect was mediated by group members' readiness to relinquish some power for the sake of morality. Pointing to the importance of the affirmation's specific content, Studies 2 and 3 demonstrated that morality affirmation failed to increase prosociality. As such, the present research puts forward a promising strategy to reduce hostility and promote prosociality between conflicting groups.     

Setting the record straight: System justification and rigidity-of-the-right in contemporary Hungarian politics

Despite international concern about the resurgence of right-wing authoritarianism and xenophobic prejudice throughout Central and Eastern Europe, researchers have argued recently that rightists may be less cognitively rigid and system-justifying than liberals and leftists in the context of Hungary (Kelemen, Szabó, Mészáros, László, & Forgas, 2014; Lönnqvist, Szabó, & Kelemen, 2019). We identify shortcomings of the research on which these claims are based and provide evidence that “rigidity-of-the-right” does indeed characterise contemporary Hungarian politics. Specifically, we hired professional survey firms to administer measures of personal needs for order and structure, system justification and political orientation to two large, nationally representative samples in Hungary. Results revealed that self-identified rightists scored higher than leftists on needs for order and structure and system justification (Study 1, N = 1005) and that supporters of right-wing parties (Fidesz and Jobbik) scored higher on both general and economic system justification than supporters of liberal and leftist parties (Study 2, N = 886). In exploratory analyses, we also observed that rightists expressed more intolerance than leftists toward groups that are commonly mistreated in Eastern Europe, including the Roma, religious minorities and sexual minorities.     

Thinking outside the ballot box

A deeply heterogeneous set of ideological cohorts have shaped the course of history. From anarchists and authoritarians to Zionists and Zapatistas, the expansive alphabet of politics demands an equally expansive psychological vocabulary to describe political belief systems. We propose that constructing such a vocabulary is best facilitated by decentering familiar models that emphasize psychological differences between leftists and rightists. Synthesizing recent developments in the fields of personality, political science, and psychopathology, we characterize individual variation in politics as high-dimensional, heterarchical, intrapersonally eclectic, and contextually shaped and activated. Developing a data-driven taxonomic model of political-psychological phenomena will help create a foundational base of knowledge within political psychology that is more rigorous, more replicable, and certainly richer to investigate.     

Emotion regulation of fear and disgust: differential effects of reappraisal and suppression

Although excessive fear has been central to traditional conceptualisations of the anxiety disorders, recent research suggests that disgust may also play a role in the development of some anxiety disorders. While dysregulation of emotion may confer risk for the development of anxiety disorders, it remains unclear if there are differences in the extent to which fear and disgust can be effectively regulated. To fill this important gap in the literature, unselected participants (N?=?95) experienced fear or disgust via video exposure, and they were instructed to employ either reappraisal or suppression to regulate their emotional experience while viewing the videos. For those exposed to fear-relevant content, change in emotional distress did not significantly differ between those that suppressed and those that reappraised. However, significantly less emotional distress was observed for those that reappraised compared to those that suppressed when exposed to disgust-relevant content. Although physiological arousal varied over time as a function of the emotional content of the videos, it did not vary as a function of emotion regulation strategy employed. These findings suggest that reappraisal may be especially effective in regulating verbal distress when exposed to disgusting cues in the environment. The implications of these findings for the treatment of anxiety disorders that are characterised by excessive disgust reactions will be discussed.     

Stereotypes as justifications for prior intergroup discrimination: Studies of Scottish national stereotyping

Two studies provide support for the group‐justification approach to stereotyping (Tajfel, 1981 ; Huici, 1984 ). This approach contends that stereotypes not only serve cognitive functions for individuals but also provide a means of justifying prior intergroup discrimination. Study 1 investigated whether the content of the Scottish ingroup stereotype changes due to the prior expression of intergroup discrimination. Scottish students were primed with either a ‘differentiation’ or a ‘fairness’ ingroup norm and completed two intergroup judgement tasks. Other Scottish students were primed only with a ‘differentiation’ ingroup norm, while a control group received no prime or judgement tasks. Only participants who experienced the ‘differentiation’ ingroup norm prime and the intergroup judgement tasks changed the content of their ingroup stereotype as an attempt to justify their discriminatory behaviour. Study 2 examined whether Scottish students would use both positive ingroup and negative outgroup stereotypes to rationalize intergroup discrimination. Students who experienced a ‘differentiation’ ingroup norm prime and intergroup judgement tasks showed the highest level of superior recall for positive ingroup and negative outgroup stereotype‐consistent words compared to stereotype‐neutral words. This finding suggests that the expression of intergroup discrimination activates the use of both positive ingroup and negative outgroup stereotypes. Together the findings of these two studies provide empirical support for the notion that stereotypes serve social as well as cognitive functions. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Ideological Asymmetries and the Essence of Political Psychology

Individuals are not merely passive vessels of whatever beliefs and opinions they have been exposed to; rather, they are attracted to belief systems that resonate with their own psychological needs and interests, including epistemic, existential, and relational needs to attain certainty, security, and social belongingness. Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, and Sulloway ( 2003 ) demonstrated that needs to manage uncertainty and threat were associated with core values of political conservatism, namely respect for tradition and acceptance of inequality. Since 2003 there have been far more studies on the psychology of left‐right ideology than in the preceding half century, and their empirical yield helps to address lingering questions and criticisms. We have identified 181 studies of epistemic motivation (involving 130,000 individual participants) and nearly 100 studies of existential motivation (involving 360,000 participants). These databases, which are much larger and more heterogeneous than those used in previous meta‐analyses, confirm that significant ideological asymmetries exist with respect to dogmatism, cognitive/perceptual rigidity, personal needs for order/structure/closure, integrative complexity, tolerance of ambiguity/uncertainty, need for cognition, cognitive reflection, self‐deception, and subjective perceptions of threat. Exposure to objectively threatening circumstances—such as terrorist attacks, governmental warnings, and shifts in racial demography—contribute to modest “conservative shifts” in public opinion. There are also ideological asymmetries in relational motivation, including the desire to share reality, perceptions of within‐group consensus, collective self‐efficacy, homogeneity of social networks, and the tendency to trust the government more when one's own political party is in power. Although some object to the very notion that there are meaningful psychological differences between leftists and rightists, the identification of “elective affinities” between cognitive‐motivational processes and contents of specific belief systems is essential to the study of political psychology. Political psychologists may contribute to the development of a good society not by downplaying ideological differences or advocating “Swiss‐style neutrality” when it comes to human values, but by investigating such phenomena critically, even—or perhaps especially—when there is pressure in society to view them uncritically.     

Disappointment expression evokes collective guilt and collective action in intergroup conflict: the moderating role of legitimacy perceptions

Research on intergroup emotions has largely focused on the experience of emotions and surprisingly little attention has been given to the expression of emotions. Drawing on the social-functional approach to emotions, we argue that in the context of intergroup conflicts, outgroup members’ expression of disappointment with one’s ingroup induces the complementary emotion of collective guilt and correspondingly a collective action protesting ingroup actions against the outgroup. In Study 1 conducted immediately after the 2014 Gaza war, Jewish-Israeli participants received information about outgroup’s (Palestinians) expression of emotions (disappointment, fear, or none). As predicted, outgroup’s expression of disappointment increased collective guilt and willingness to participate in collective action, but only among those who saw the intergroup situation as illegitimate. Moreover, collective guilt mediated the relationship between disappointment expression and collective action, moderated, again, by legitimacy perception. In Study 2, we replicated these results in the context of racial tension between Black and White Americans in the US. We discuss the theoretical and applied implications of the findings.     

Trait reappraisal amplifies subjective defeat, sadness, and negative affect in response to failure versus success in nonclinical and psychosis populations

Perceptions of defeat have been linked to a range of clinical disorders including psychosis. Perceived defeat sometimes increases in response to failure, but the strength of this association varies between individuals. The present research investigated whether trait reappraisal, a thought-focused coping style, amplified response to stressful events. Two studies (Study 1, n = 120 nonclinical participants; Study 2, n = 77 participants with schizophrenia-spectrum disorders) investigated whether trait reappraisal amplified feelings of defeat following an experience of failure versus success. Frequent reappraisers showed the largest increases in subjective defeat after failure versus success in both studies, with nonclinical participants with greater habitual reappraisal also showing larger increases in sadness and general negative affect. Frequent use of reappraisal may confer vulnerability to subjective defeat in response to stressful life events among nonclinical and clinical populations and could be an area for relapse prevention interventions to target.     

对条件化恐惧反应的抑制效应:指导性与习惯性情绪调节的作用

为了考察实验室指导性与个体习惯性情绪调控策略对恐惧反应的影响,先使用问卷调查了81名大学生的习惯性重评与抑制水平,随后将被试分为两组,指导其在条件化恐惧习得过程中进行主动的情绪调节或自然观看,24h后进行恐惧的表达测试。结果发现,习惯性抑制水平与恐惧习得及表达水平呈显著负相关,且指导性情绪调节与习惯性抑制均显著降低了恐惧习得及表达水平。这提示指导性与习惯性情绪调节策略均能够削弱应激的伤害以保护个体。     

Beyond ‘Liberals’ and ‘Conservatives’: Complexity in Ideology,Moral Intuitions,and Worldview Among Swedish Voters

This research investigated the congruence between the ideologies of political parties and the ideological preferences (N = 1515), moral intuitions (N = 1048), and political values and worldviews (N = 1345) of diverse samples of Swedish adults who voted or intended to vote for the parties. Logistic regression analyses yielded support for a series of hypotheses about variations in ideology beyond the left–right division. With respect to social ideology, resistance to change and binding moral intuitions predicted stronger preference for a social democratic (vs. progressive) party on the left and weaker preference for a social liberal (vs. social conservative or liberal-conservative) party on the right. With respect to political values and broader worldviews, normativism and low acceptance of immigrants predicted the strongest preference for a nationalist party, while environmentalism predicted the strongest preference for a green party. The effects were generally strong and robust when we controlled for left–right self-placements, economic ideology, and demographic characteristics. These results show that personality variation in the ideological domain is not reducible to the simplistic contrast between ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’, which ignores differences between progressive and non-progressive leftists, economic and green progressives, social liberal and conservative rightists, and nationalist and non-nationalist conservatives.     

The implicit power motive predicts decisions in line with perceived instrumentality

Past research suggests that the implicit power motive (i.e., an unconsciously held motivational disposition to derive pleasure from having impact on others) predicts a preference to interact with individuals having submissive-looking faces. The present research extends this finding by testing whether the relation between the implicit power motive and approaching submissiveness depends on instrumentality. In two experiments, participants were assigned to a group that would ostensibly compete with another group. Within this intergroup context, they were asked to select persons as leaders or members for the in-group or the out-group. Potential leaders and members were displayed as submissive-looking or dominant-looking. Results showed that the implicit power motive predicted decisions favoring dominant-looking persons as in-group leaders, and submissive-looking persons as out-group leaders (Study 1) or in-group members (Study 2). These findings indicate that the tendency for people high in the implicit power motive to approach submissive-looking persons depends on the perceived instrumentality for gaining influence over others.     

The effects of emotion regulation strategies on positive and negative affect in early adolescents

Recent research suggests that impaired emotion regulation (ER) may play an important role in the development of youth psychopathology. However, little research has explored the effects of ER strategies on affect in early adolescents. In Study 1 (n?=?76), we examined if early adolescents are able to use distraction and whether the effects of this strategy are similar to talking to one’s mother. In Study 2 (n?=?184), we compared the effects of distraction, cognitive reappraisal, acceptance, and rumination. In both studies, participants received instructions on how to regulate their emotions after a standardised negative mood induction. In general, the results indicated that distraction, but also cognitive reappraisal and acceptance, had promising short-term effects on positive and negative affect in early adolescents. These findings suggest that targeting adaptive ER skills, such as distraction, acceptance, and cognitive reappraisal, may be an important strategy to prevent or treat psychological problems in early adolescents.     

Electromyographic Analyses of Responses to Intergroup Threat

Two studies tested predictions from intergroup threat theory concerning emotional responses to intergroup threat. Study 1 employed threatening video clips of the 9/11/01 World Trade Center attacks. Study 2 employed video clips of a threatening “opponent” in a competition. Facial electromyography (EMG) was employed to capture emotion‐related muscle activity. As participants viewed videos in Study 1, they were instructed to consider Americans' reactions or their personal reactions. In Study 2, an “opponent” presented individually directed or group‐directed stereotype threat. Both studies provide support for the theory: Participants experiencing individual threats displayed greater EMG activity in muscles corresponding to inwardly directed emotions (fear), while participants experiencing group threats displayed greater EMG activity in muscles corresponding to outwardly directed emotions (anger).     

Leftists’ and rightists’ IQ as a function of stereotype salience

This study examined the intellectual performance of leftists (or liberals) and rightists (or conservatives) when a stereotype about members of a disadvantaged outgroup (immigrants) is salient. Building on system-justification theory (SJT) and the motivated social cognition approach of political conservatism, it was predicted that when the stereotype about immigrant students’ underachievement is salient in academic settings, leftist students would perform worse, whereas rightist students would perform better than in a control condition. In two samples, Swiss native students were first reminded (or not) of the stereotype and then performed a difficult intellectual test. The results yielded support for the predictions. These findings illustrate how different ideological motives (system-challenging vs. system-justifying) might influence performance among leftist and rightist students.     

Come together: longitudinal comparisons of Pettigrew's reformulated intergroup contact model and the common ingroup identity model in Anglo‐French and Mexican‐American contexts

Both Anglo‐French and Mexican‐American relations are embedded in histories of conflict. Within these intergroup contexts, two longitudinal field studies of contact tested Pettigrew's ( 1998 ) reformulated model of the intergroup contact theory and Gaertner and Dovidio's (2000) Common Ingroup Identity Model (CIIM). In Pettigrew's model, intergroup friendship is accorded a special role and the contact‐bias relation is mediated by changing behaviour, ingroup reappraisal, generating affective ties, and learning about the outgroup. Pettigrew's integration of the three central models of contact generalization into a time‐sequence holds that contact first elicits decategorization, then salient categorization, and finally recategorization. In the CIIM, these three levels of categorization—plus a fourth, dual identity—are conceptualized to be mediators in the contact‐bias relation. Results point to the crucial importance of intergroup friendship and underline the mediating roles of learning about the outgroup, behaviour modification, and generating affective ties, but not ingroup reappraisal in Pettigrew's model. As for the CIIM, in Study 1 interpersonal and intergroup levels were most central, while in Study 2 the dual identity and superordinate group levels were most effective. The implications of the findings are discussed with reference to the likely stability of these effects in different intergroup contexts. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Individual differences in the regulation of intergroup bias: the role of conflict monitoring and neural signals for control

Low-prejudice people vary considerably in their ability to regulate intergroup responses. The authors hypothesized that this variability arises from a neural mechanism for monitoring conflict between automatic race-biased tendencies and egalitarian intentions. In Study 1, they found that low-prejudice participants whose nonprejudiced responses are motivated by internal (but not external) factors exhibited better control on a stereotype-inhibition task than did participants motivated by a combination of internal and external factors. This difference was associated with greater conflict-monitoring activity, measured by event-related potentials, when responses required stereotype inhibition. Study 2 demonstrated that group differences were specific to response control in the domain of prejudice. Results indicate that conflict monitoring, a preconscious component of response control, accounts for variability in intergroup bias among low-prejudice participants.     

Reappraising the situation and its impact on aggressive behavior

Much work has focused on how reappraisal is related to emotions, but not behaviors. Two experiments advanced aggression theory by (a) testing how cognitive and attributional forms of reappraisal are related to aggressive affect and behavior, (b) testing variables that theoretically mediate the relation between attributional reappraisal and aggressive behavior, (c) testing the moderating influences of cognitive and attributional reappraisal on aggressive behavior, and (d) developing and testing an intervention aimed at reducing vengeance through reappraisal training. Study 1 used an essay writing task in a 3 (feedback: provocation, no feedback, praise) × 2 (mitigating information: present, absent) experimental design. Provoked participants who did not receive mitigating information were significantly more aggressive than provoked participants who received mitigating information. State vengeance was a significant mediator. Study 2 examined an experimental intervention on vengeance over a 16-week semester. Intervention participants who had the largest increase in reappraisal displayed the greatest decrease in vengeance. Overall, these findings suggest that reappraisal reduces vengeance and aggressive behavior.     

Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: implications for affect,relationships, and well-being

Five studies tested two general hypotheses: Individuals differ in their use of emotion regulation strategies such as reappraisal and suppression, and these individual differences have implications for affect, well-being, and social relationships. Study 1 presents new measures of the habitual use of reappraisal and suppression. Study 2 examines convergent and discriminant validity. Study 3 shows that reappraisers experience and express greater positive emotion and lesser negative emotion, whereas suppressors experience and express lesser positive emotion, yet experience greater negative emotion. Study 4 indicates that using reappraisal is associated with better interpersonal functioning, whereas using suppression is associated with worse interpersonal functioning. Study 5 shows that using reappraisal is related positively to well-being, whereas using suppression is related negatively.     

Powerless people don't yell but tell: The effects of social power on direct and indirect expression of anger

Expressing anger can engender desired change, but it can also backfire. In the present research we examined how power shapes the expression of anger. In Study 1, we found that powerless individuals were less inclined to express their anger directly but more inclined to express it indirectly by sharing it with others. Powerless participants’ reluctance to express anger directly was mediated by negative social appraisals. In Study 2, we replicated the effect of power on direct anger expression in a situation in which participants had actual power (or not). Anger was evoked in the laboratory using an ecologically valid procedure, and participants were given an opportunity to express anger. Study 3 showed that powerless participants expected direct anger expression to arouse more anger than fear in the target, whereas the opposite was true for indirect anger expression. Powerful participants always expected to elicit more fear than anger in the target.     

Efficiency and defense motivated ingroup projection: Sources of protoypicality in intergroup relations

Members of higher status groups generalize characteristics of their ingroup to superordinate categories that serve as a frame of reference for comparisons with outgroups (ingroup projection). We propose that the causal process depends on the security of the intergroup context: When intergroup relations are secure, projection derives from a motivation to represent the superordinate category efficiently; when they are insecure, projection is a defense motivated process. Accordingly, we hypothesized that inducing participants to use heuristic vs. systematic information processing (via time pressure, cognitive load, or thoughtfulness instructions) would have differential effects on ingroup projection in secure as compared to insecure intergroup relations. Three experiments manipulated security of the intergroup context and information processing mode in artificial (Studies 1 and 2) or natural (Study 3) groups. We found that time pressure increased ingroup projection in the secure-group condition but decreased it in the insecure-group condition (Study 1), cognitive load increased projection in the secure but not in the insecure condition (Study 2) and thoughtfulness instructions increased projection for high identifiers in the insecure but not in the secure condition (Study 3). Results support the hypothesis that ingroup projection occurs as a cognitive bias in secure intergroup relations but that it is socially motivated by the specific intergroup relation when this relation is insecure.