Making and Unmaking Prejudice: Religious Affiliation Mitigates the Impact of Mortality Salience on Out‐Group Attitudes

Research inspired by terror management theory has established that being reminded of the inevitability of death (i.e., “mortality salience”) leads people to express more negative attitudes toward out‐groups. We examined the hypothesis that being affiliated with a religion may buffer individuals against this negative impact of mortality salience. Two studies, conducted in two cultures that differ in their emphasis on religiosity (the United Kingdom and Italy), supported this hypothesis. Specifically, we found that mortality salience resulted in more negative out‐group attitudes only among participants not affiliated with any religion. Further, this buffering effect of religious affiliation was not moderated by participants’ specific religious orientations or by their levels of social dominance orientation. In addition, the buffering effect did not hold when prejudice against the target out‐group was not proscribed by religious authorities. Implications for research on religion, prejudice, and terror management are discussed.     

The Spatial Power Motivation Scale: A Semi-Implicit Measure of Situational Power Motivation

We introduce a new nonverbal and unobtrusive measure to assess power motive activation, the Spatial Power Motivation Scale (SPMS). The unique features of this instrument are that it is (a) very simple and economical, (b) reliable and valid, and (c) sensitive to situational changes. Study 1 demonstrates the instrument's convergent and discriminant validity with explicit measures. Study 2 demonstrates the instrument's responsiveness to situational power motive salience: anticipating and winning competition versus losing competition and watching television. Studies 3 and 4 demonstrate that thoughts of competition result in higher power motivation specifically for individuals with a high dispositional power motive.     

Construing multiple ingroups: Assessing social identity inclusiveness and structure in ethnic and religious minority group members

The combination of multiple social identities into a coherent ingroup construal is of immediate relevance in today's complex and diverse societies. This paper proposes a conceptual and operational framework to examine how individuals subjectively construe their ingroup in the context of multiple, cross‐cutting group memberships. The subjective combination of multiple social identities is described in terms of structure (social identity structure) and inclusiveness (social identity inclusiveness (SII)). Two studies assess SII and social identity structure in community samples to whom the subjective combination of multiple, cross‐cutting ingroups is of particular relevance: a sample of Turkish‐Belgian Muslims (Study 1) and Turkish‐Australian Muslims (Study 2). Across both studies, SII uniquely predicted attitudes toward a range of outgroups, over and above identification with singular ingroups. Moreover, a wide range of social identity structures were identified, further attesting to broad individual differences in the construal of the perceived ingroup. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Mediating Role of Street Code Attitudes on the Self-Control and Crime Relationship

Research has demonstrated strong but independent attention to the role of self-control and street code attitudes in predicting criminal and violent behavior. Yet, there are good theoretical notions to believe that street code attitudes may be a salient mechanism in the self-control–offending relationship. Specifically, the present study investigates: (1) the extent to which self-control predicts adopting street code attitudes and (2) whether street code attitudes mediate the effect of self-control on criminal behavior. Using data collected from a multisite sample of over 900 young adults, we assess this mediation hypothesis for three distinct types of criminal activity: violent, property, and drug use. Our results reveal that individuals with lower self-control are more likely to adopt street code attitudes, that self-control is related to all three forms of offending, and that street code attitudes fully mediate the effect of self-control on violence, partially on property crime, but not in the case of drug use. Findings and directions for future research are discussed.     

Visual snake aversion in Octodon degus and C57BL/6 mice

Animal Cognition - Phobia against spiders or snakes is common in humans, and similar phobia-like behaviors have been observed in non-human animals. Visual images of snakes elicit phobia in humans,...     

Dimensional comparisons: Much is known about the effects,less about the processes

Dimensional comparisons are comparisons between different domains. They are well known in educational psychology. Here, they explain the seemingly paradoxical finding that students' math and verbal self-concepts of ability usually show correlations close to zero, although students' math and verbal achievements show strong positive correlations. This finding can be explained by the fact that students overemphasize potential differences between their math and verbal achievements when they form their self-concepts. However, dimensional comparisons also take place and affect self-evaluations outside the educational context, and the number of studies examining dimensional comparisons in different contexts has significantly increased during the last few years. This paper provides an up-to-date overview of findings on dimensional comparisons. It presents findings from studies that have examined effects of dimensional comparisons (as most studies dealing with dimensional comparisons have done so far), as well as studies that have focused on an understanding of the psychological processes involved in dimensional comparison (which relatively few studies have done so far). It is hoped that this paper will help broaden awareness of dimensional comparisons and stimulate further research on this type of comparison, especially in disciplines other than educational psychology.     

Abusive Supervision from an Integrated Self‐Control Perspective

We investigate the relationship between supervisors’ irritation and follower perceptions of abusive supervision. Based on the integrated self‐control framework, we propose a positive relationship between supervisor irritation and abusive supervision. Moreover, we propose this relationship to be buffered by supervisors’ self‐control capacities and by external monitoring of the supervisor by upper management. We tested our hypotheses in a two‐source survey study with 96 supervisor‐follower dyads. Our results show a positive relationship between supervisor irritation and abusive supervision and an interaction between supervisor irritation and supervisor self‐control. The interaction pattern revealed a positive relationship between supervisor irritation and abusive supervision if supervisor self‐control is low. We also found an interaction between supervisor irritation and external monitoring in predicting active but not passive forms of abusive supervision. Our findings underline the role of self‐control processes in explaining abusive supervision.     

Where to seat the applicant? How spatial distance influences the effect of self‐promotion on interviewer evaluations

In high‐stakes contexts such as job interviews, people seek to be evaluated favorably by others and they attempt to accomplish such favorable judgments particularly through self‐promotional behaviors. We sought to examine the persuasiveness of job candidates’ self‐promotion by examining job applicants’ subjective hireability from the perspective of construal‐level theory. Construal‐level theory states that perceptions occur from different levels of psychological distance (i.e., distal vs. proximal). This distance is created by other dimensions of distance (e.g., spatial or social distance) and affects how individuals construe incoming information. From a large distance, people more readily process abstract information, whereas from a close distance, people more readily process concrete information. Specifically, construal compatibility occurs when abstract versus concrete features of a stimulus match the psychological distance experienced by message‐recipients. Construal compatibility (vs. incompatibility) makes evaluations (e.g., of messages) more favorable. To apply this principle to self‐promotion, we created self‐promotional videos of a job interview, in which the applicant sat either far away from or close to the hiring manager (manipulating psychological distance); the applicant, then, used either direct or indirect self‐promotion (manipulating message construal level). The results showed participants reported stronger intention to hire the applicant when distance matched (vs. did not match) the type of self‐promotion the applicant used.     

The being a patient effect: negative expectations based on group labeling and corresponding treatment affect patient performance

Patient studies provide insights into mechanisms underlying diseases and thus represent a cornerstone of clinical research. In this study, we report evidence that differences between patients and controls might partly be based on expectations generated by the patients’ knowledge of being invited and treated as a patient: the Being a Patient effect (BP effect). This finding extends previous neuropsychological reports on diagnosis threat. Participants with mild allergies were addressed either as patients or control subjects in a clinical study. We measured the impact of this group labeling and corresponding instructions on pain perception and cognitive performance. Our results provide evidence that the BP effect can indeed affect physiological and cognitive measures in clinical settings. Importantly, these effects can lead to systematic overestimation of genuine disease effects and should be taken into account when disease effects are investigated. Finally, we propose strategies to avoid or minimize this critical confound.     

A Practitioner's Guide to Successful Coalitions

The highly complex practice of building successful community coalitions is explored. Key dimensions related to coalition success are identified and best practices are delineated. Nine dimensions are explored that are critical to coalition success: coalition readiness, intentionality, structure and organizational capacity, taking action, membership, leadership, dollars and resources, relationships, and technical assistance. Two coalition case studies follow the discussion of dimensions and illustrate the journey traveled to create successful community coalitions.