Connected guys: Endorsement of masculine honour predicts more frequent contact with members of criminal organisations

Italian criminal organisations (COs) engage in contact with community members to assert their control over local populations in Southern Italy. According to intracultural appropriation theory, COs’ presence in these regions is legitimised by values of masculinity and honour. Here, we test the role of these values in drawing people closer to COs, facilitating more frequent contact with COs’ members. Study 1 (N_T1 = 176, N_T2 = 170) used a two-wave longitudinal design demonstrating that endorsement of masculine honour predicts more frequent contact with COs after five months. In contrast, results revealed no longitudinal effect of contact frequency on masculine honour endorsement. Using a cross-sectional design, Study 2 (N = 314) extended these results by revealing an indirect effect of masculine honour on the tendency to see COs as embodying honour and respect (romanticisation), through more frequent contact with COs’ members. Limitations, directions for future research and implications of these results are discussed.     

Neighborhood Identity Helps Residents Cope with Residential Diversification: Contact in Increasingly Mixed Neighborhoods of Northern Ireland

Research on residential diversification has mainly focused on its negative impacts upon community cohesion and positive effects on intergroup relations. However, these analyses ignore how neighborhood identity can shape the consequences of diversification among residents. Elsewhere, research using the Applied Social Identity Approach (ASIA) has demonstrated the potential for neighborhood identity to provide social and psychological resources to cope with challenges. The current article proposes a novel model whereby these “Social Cure” processes can enable residents to cope with the specific challenges of diversification. We present two studies in support of this model, each from the increasingly religiously desegregated society of postconflict Northern Ireland. Analysis of the 2012 “Northern Ireland Life and Times” survey shows that across Northern Ireland, neighborhood identity impacts positively upon both well‐being and intergroup attitudes via a reduction in intergroup anxiety. A second custom‐designed survey of residents in a newly mixed area of Belfast shows that neighborhood identification predicts increased well‐being, reduced intergroup anxiety, and reduced prejudice independently of group norms and experiences of contact. For political psychologists, our evidence suggests a reformulation of the fundamental question of “what effects do residential mixing have on neighborhoods?” to “how can neighborhood communities support residents to collectively cope with contact?”     

Fostering Contact After Historical Atrocities: The Potential of Moral Exemplars

Intergroup contact is a known remedy for complicated intergroup relations. At the same time, contact is rare in postconflict settings. In the present article, we examine whether exposure to narratives about moral exemplars (i.e., members of a perpetrator group who acted morally and in opposition to the passivity or aggression displayed by majority) could increase openness to contact among historical adversaries. In Study 1 (N = 73), presenting members of a historical perpetrator group with information about ingroup moral exemplars led to a decrease of prejudice towards individuals from a historical victim group, which, in turn, resulted in higher openness to contact with them. In Study 2 (N = 100) and 3 (N = 92), exposure to narratives about outgroup moral exemplars in a historically victimized group increased openness to contact with members of a perpetrator group. These effects were mediated by a decrease in prejudice (Studies 2 and 3) and by an increase in trust towards historical perpetrators (Study 2).     

Re-identifying residential mixing: Emergent identity dynamics between incomers and existing residents in a mixed neighbourhood in Northern Ireland

Research on residential diversification has neglected its impact on neighbourhood identity and overlooked the very different identity-related experiences of new and existing residents. The present research examines how incoming and established group members relate to their changing neighbourhood in the increasingly desegregated city of Belfast, Northern Ireland. Thematic analysis of interviews with 24 residents (12 Protestant long-term residents, 12 Catholic incomers) from an increasingly mixed neighbourhood identified asymmetrical concerns and experiences: Incomers reported undergoing an ‘identity transition’ between local communities, while long-term residents faced an ‘identity merger’ within their neighbourhood. Where their identity concerns diverged, emergent intergroup perceptions of the residents were negative and divisive; where they accorded, positive intergroup perceptions and a shared neighbourhood identity evolved. From this, we propose a Social Identity Model of Residential Diversification (SIMRD) to encourage future research into how different identity concerns shape emergent intergroup dynamics between long-term residents and incomers within diversifying neighbourhoods.     

The influence of perceived warmth and competence on realistic threat and willingness for intergroup contact

Unwillingness for contact with outgroup members is a form of prejudice. In two studies, we tested the proposition that perceived competence has an indirect effect on willingness for intergroup contact through its effect on realistic threat, and that perceived warmth moderates this relationship. In Study 1, Hong Kong students (N = 144) rated the perceived warmth and competence of an outgroup, Mainland Chinese students, as well as the extent to which they perceived the group as presenting a realistic threat, and willingness for contact with them. In Study 2 (N = 205), we attempted to manipulate the warmth (high vs. low) and competence (high vs. low) of an unfamiliar outgroup, and tested the effects on realistic threat and willingness for intergroup contact. In both studies, we found an interaction effect between warmth and competence in the prediction of realistic threat. When the outgroup was perceived as warm, competence was found to have a negative association with realistic threat (Study 1), whereas when the outgroup was perceived as lacking warmth, competence was found to have a positive association with realistic threat (Study 2). In both studies, perceived warmth moderated the indirect effect of perceived competence on willingness for intergroup contact. Implications for the role of warmth and competence stereotypes in threat perception and prejudice are discussed.     

A closer look at the size of the gaze-liking effect: a preregistered replication

This study is a direct replication of gaze-liking effect using the same design, stimuli and procedure. The gaze-liking effect describes the tendency for people to rate objects as more likeable when they have recently seen a person repeatedly gaze toward rather than away from the object. However, as subsequent studies show considerable variability in the size of this effect, we sampled a larger number of participants (N?=?98) than the original study (N?=?24) to gain a more precise estimate of the gaze-liking effect size. Our results indicate a much smaller standardised effect size (d_z?=?0.02) than that of the original study (d_z?=?0.94). Our smaller effect size was not due to general insensitivity to eye-gaze effects because the same sample showed a clear (d_z?=?1.09) gaze-cuing effect – faster reaction times when eyes looked toward vs away from target objects. We discuss the implications of our findings for future studies wishing to study the gaze-liking effect.     

Forgive and Forget? Antecedents and Consequences of Intergroup Forgiveness in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The present study examines the effects of contact and common-ingroup identification on intergroup forgiveness and outgroup behavioral tendencies. A sample of Bosnian Muslims (N  =  180) were asked to report their readiness to forgive the misdeeds committed by Bosnian Serbs during the 1992–95 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. A path analysis of the presumed antecedents and consequences of forgiveness revealed that frequent and good quality contact with members from the perpetrator group predicted forgiveness (positively) and desire for social distance (negatively). Moreover, the positive relationship between contact and forgiveness was mediated by empathy and trust towards the outgroup and by perceived outgroup heterogeneity. Common-ingroup identification was also found to be positively associated with forgiveness and negatively with social distance towards the outgroup. Finally, intergroup forgiveness also predicted social distance from the outgroup. The theoretical and applied implications of these findings are discussed.     

SPEECH EVENTS, LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT, AND THE CLINICAL SITUATION

Psychoanalysis brings about psychic change by the mediation of speech. This paper reflects upon the significance of the structure and developmental organisation of the speech event as a verbal and non-verbal unit composed of semantically and prosodically encoded messages, interactions and emotional contact between partners. Spoken words communicate semantic meanings and the affects of a given speech event. Words carry personal emotional meanings which are inseparable from their referential significance. Such emotional meanings are very hard to articulate in words. They are conveyed by the ineffable but essential feelings present in their sound and pronunciation. Speech is an intentionally object-related and emotionally engaging social activity resulting from a child having been spoken to early in life by an adult wanting to establish affective verbal contact. The early organisation and later transformation of the structure of the speech event carries private meanings for each person's listening and speaking stance. A refined understanding of the structural and emotional complexities of verbal communicative exchanges during analysis may enhance the analyst's ability to understand the patient'smanner of participation in the analytic process.     

Does contact with lesbians and gays lead to friendlier attitudes? a two year longitudinal study

Attitudes toward and contact with lesbian women and gay men were assessed through questionnaires in a 2‐year follow‐up study in a cohort of 511 Norwegian participants, 19 years of age at first data collection. A substantial proportion reported negative attitudes at baseline (between 39 and 63%) and two years later (between 32 and 59%), females being more positive than males. A majority reported having no contact with lesbian women or gay men either at 19 years of age (66–79%) or 2 years later (51–62%). Longitudinally, the measures were moderately stable (Pearson's r 0.43–0.73), and contact change was positively related to attitude change. Also, attitude change positively predicted contact change. The findings imply that efforts to reduce stigma associated with homosexuality are still needed among young people in Norway. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mixing against culture vs mixing against nature: ontologization of prohibited interethnic relationships

In this paper, we develop the theory of ontologization: Social representations that prevent members of minority and majority groups who are living in contact with each other to mingle. The process of ontologization consists of separating some humans from their own species, and anchoring them in another environment, that of an animal, for example. We propose that underlying the famous slogan “equal but separate” is the social representation of interracial mixing as a “counter‐nature” phenomenon. It is predicted that a sexual relationship between people of different “races” leads to a greater degree of ontologization, and, as such, this miscegenation will be explained in terms of biologistic thinking, like an instinctive nature or atavistic animal impulse. An experiment (N = 360) features the case of a woman who, though already in a stable relationship, is unfaithful to her partner. In a 2×3 factor design, the ethnic‐national identity of this woman (in‐group: Spanish/Italian vs out‐group: Senegalese) and the ethnic‐national identity of her lovers (in‐group: Spanish/Italian vs out‐group: Rumanian vs out‐group: Senegalese) were manipulated. In general, results fit the hypothesis of ontologization in interracial conditions better, rather than the customary in‐group favouritism and/or out‐group discrimination bias. We then go on to discuss the way in which a biologistic way of thinking enables a differentiation at the human level, in terms of culture groups and nature groups, in “races,” so that an interracial sexual relationship is seen as evidence of a wild and irrepressible impulse, which stigmatizes the people involved in these relationships.