Need for approval from others and face concerns as predictors of interpersonal conflict outcome in 29 cultural groups.

The extent to which culture moderates the effects of need for approval from others on a person's handling of interpersonal conflict was investigated. Students from 24 nations rated how they handled a recent interpersonal conflict, using measures derived from face-negotiation theory. Samples varied in the extent to which they were perceived as characterised by the cultural logics of dignity, honour, or face. It was hypothesised that the emphasis on harmony within face cultures would reduce the relevance of need for approval from others to face-negotiation concerns. Respondents rated their need for approval from others and how much they sought to preserve their own face and the face of the other party during the conflict. Need for approval was associated with concerns for both self-face and other-face. However, as predicted, the association between need for approval from others and concern for self-face was weaker where face logic was prevalent. Favourable conflict outcome was positively related to other-face and negatively related to self-face and to need for approval from others, but there were no significant interactions related to prevailing cultural logics. The results illustrate how particular face-threatening factors can moderate the distinctive face-concerns earlier found to characterise individualistic and collectivistic cultural groups.

Differentiating Between Belief-Indicative and Status-Indicative Groups Improves Predictions of Intergroup Attitudes.

Ingroup bias is often treated as the default outcome of intergroup comparisons. We argue that the mechanisms of impression formation depend on what information people infer from groups. We differentiate between belief-indicative groups that are more informative of beliefs and affect attitudes through ingroup bias and status-indicative groups that are more informative of status and affect attitudes through a preference for higher status. In a cross-cultural factorial experiment (Ntotal = 1,281), we demonstrate that when information about targets' multiple group memberships is available, belief-indicative groups affect attitudes via ingroup bias, whereas status-indicative groups-via preference for higher status. These effects were moderated by social-structural context. In two follow-up studies (Ntotal = 451), we develop and validate a measure of belief- and status-indicativeness (BISI) of groups. BISI showed expected correlations with related constructs of entitativity and essentialism. Belief-indicativeness of groups was a better predictor of ingroup bias than entitativity and essentialism.

Multiple categorization and intergroup bias: Examining the generalizability of three theories of intergroup relations.

Research on intergroup bias usually focuses on a single dimension of social categorization. In real life, however, people are aware of others' multiple group memberships and use this information to form attitudes about them. The present research tests the predictive power of identification, perceived conflict, and perceived symbolic threat in explaining the strength of intergroup bias on various dimensions of social categorization in multiple categorization settings. We conduct a factorial survey experiment, manipulating 9 dimensions of social categorization in diverse samples from 4 countries (n = 12,810 observations, 1,281 participants representing 103 social groups). The dimensions studied are age, gender, ethnicity, religion, place of residence, education, occupation, income, and 1 country-specific dimension. This approach allows exploring the generalizability of established determinants of bias across dimensions of categorization, contexts, and target groups. Identification and symbolic threat showed good generalizability across countries and categorization dimensions, but their effects varied as a function of participant and target groups' status. Identification predicted stronger bias mainly when the participant belonged to a higher status and the target belonged to a lower status group. Symbolic threat predicted stronger bias mainly when the target was a minority group member. Conflict predicted bias only in few cases, and not only the strength but also the direction of the effects varied across countries, dimensions, and target and participant groups. These findings help to clarify the limits of generalizability of established determinants of intergroup bias and highlight the need for new explanations of social-cognitive processes among minority group members. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Stereotypes as Historical Accidents: Images of Social Class in Postcommunist Versus Capitalist Societies.

Stereotypes are ideological and justify the existing social structure. Although stereotypes persist, they can change when the context changes. Communism's rise in Eastern Europe and Asia in the 20th century provides a natural experiment examining social-structural effects on social class stereotypes. Nine samples from postcommunist countries (N = 2,241), compared with 38 capitalist countries (N = 4,344), support the historical, sociocultural rootedness of stereotypes. More positive stereotypes of the working class appear in postcommunist countries, both compared with other social groups in the country and compared with working-class stereotypes in capitalist countries; postcommunist countries also show more negative stereotypes of the upper class. We further explore whether communism's ideological legacy reflects how societies infer groups' stereotypic competence and warmth from structural status and competition. Postcommunist societies show weaker status-competence relations and stronger (negative) competition-warmth relations; respectively, the lower meritocratic beliefs and higher priority of embeddedness as ideological legacies may shape these relationships.

Social Construction of the Value-Behavior Relation.

Personal values are reliable cross-situational predictors of attitudes and behavior. Since the resurgence in research on values following the introduction of Schwartz's theory of basic values, efforts were focused on identifying universal patterns in value-attitude relations. While some evidence for such universal patterns exists more recent studies point out, there is still considerable variation in value-attitude and value-behavior links across cultures and contexts. Extending the existing literature on potential moderators in this paper, we introduce the concept of value-instantiating beliefs. This study looks at subjective construal of the value relevance of specific behaviors as a proximal moderator of value-attitude and value-behavior relations. We argue that a belief that construes a behavior as a valid instantiation of a value is a prerequisite for the relationship between said value and the behavior. We also argue that such value-instantiating beliefs play a central role in determining the direction of the relationship. In a web-based survey experiment (N = 1724) consisting of three trials, we presented participants with vignettes describing behavioral choices. In order to manipulate the value-instantiating beliefs, the behaviors were described either neutrally, as reinforcing the value, or as inhibiting the value. We then measured the value-instantiating beliefs, the attitude toward the behavior, and the intention to perform it. Instantiating beliefs strongly moderated the relationship between the personal values and the dependent variables in all three trials. Moreover, the direction of the relationship was determined by the instantiating beliefs. The results emphasize the plasticity of the value-behavior relation and the role of social construction in directing the motivational power of values toward concrete instantiating behaviors.