Secular Tolerance? Anti‐Muslim Sentiment in Western Europe

The literature about secularization proposes two distinct explanations of anti‐Muslim sentiment in secularized societies. The first theory understands it in terms of religious competition between Muslims and the remaining minority of orthodox Protestants; the second understands it as resulting from value conflicts between Muslims and the nonreligious majority. The two theories are tested by means of a multilevel analysis of the European Values Study 2008. Our findings indicate that, although more secularized countries are on average more tolerant towards Muslims and Islam, strongest anti‐Muslim attitudes are nonetheless found among the nonreligious in these countries.     

Can false memories prime alternative solutions to ambiguous problems?

Research has demonstrated that false memories are capable of priming and facilitating insight-based problem-solving tasks by increasing solution rates and decreasing solution times. The present research extended this finding by investigating whether false memories could be used to bias ambiguous insight-based problem-solving tasks in a similar manner. Compound remote associate task (CRAT) problems with two possible correct answers, a dominant and a non-dominant solution, were created and normed (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2, participants were asked to solve these CRAT problems after they were given Deese/Roediger-McDermott lists whose critical lures were also the non-dominant solution to half of the corresponding CRATs. As predicted, when false memories served as primes, solution rates were higher and solution times were faster for non-dominant than dominant CRAT solutions. This biasing effect was only found when participants falsely recalled the critical lure, and was not found when participants did not falsely recall the critical lure, or when they were not primed. Results are discussed with regard to spreading activation models of solution competition in problem-solving tasks and current theories of false memory priming effects.     

Social Behaviors as Determined by Different Arrangements of Social Consequences: Diffusion of Responsibility Effects With Competition

Abstract

According to a recently proposed synthesis, social loafing, social facilitation, and deindividuation can be viewed as different ways of arranging social consequences (B. Guerin, 1999). The effects of such arrangements have been measured in past research as productive output (social loafing and social facilitation) or as antinormative behaviors (deindividuation), but all 3 effects are manipulable by changing individual identifiability, evaluation, social identity, task difficulty, and presence in a group. The synthesis also predicted that these same variables would apply to other measures and other arrangements of social consequences. To this end, in the present 2 experiments, the author varied the arrangements for consequence diffusion in a competition situation by varying small and large competing groups and measured productive output and antinormative behaviors simultaneously. The 2 experiments showed social-consequence effects in competition situations with college students, giving further support for the social-consequence synthesis and the idea that the verbal naming of phenomena in social psychology is arbitrary.