"We're tolerant and they're prejudiced": Same-sex marriage supporters' and opponents' perceptions of supportive and oppositional claims.

The current research examined the proposition that debates over same-sex marriage are characterized, at least in part, by conflicting understandings about what is and is not prejudiced, normative and true. Toward this end, Australians' (N = 415) prejudice judgements of supportive and oppositional statements toward same-sex marriage were measured and analysed with analyses of variance. Unsurprisingly, same-sex marriage supporters perceived a supportive statement as unprejudiced, tolerant, truthful, in pursuit of individual liberty, and normative; oppositional statements were seen in precisely the opposite manner. Same-sex marriage opponents, however, disagreed, instead judging an oppositional statement as unprejudiced, tolerant, truthful, in pursuit of individual liberty, and normative; it was a supportive statement that was seen as relatively prejudiced. These effects remained even after controlling for independent expressions of in-group favouritism. The current data align with a collective naïve realism perspective, in which group members see their own views as veridical and those of disagreeing others as biased. We argue that prejudice-reduction efforts must be instantiated to facilitate a common in-group identity between supporters and opponents to enable consensus over facts and, ultimately, what is and is not prejudice. Without this consensus, each side of the political debate may simply hurl the pejorative label of "prejudice" against the other, with likely little opportunity for social influence and social change.

Classified out of society? How educational classification induces political alienation through feelings of misrecognition.

Less educated citizens are both descriptively and substantively outnumbered by higher educated citizens in political and societal institutions. While social science has devoted much time to explain why such education effects exist, it has largely neglected the role of feelings of misrecognition in inducing political alienation among less educated citizens. We argue that education has become so central in processes of economic and social stratification that it is likely that less educated citizens feel misrecognized due to their marginal presence in societal and political institutions, which would then lead to their political alienation. This would in particular be the case in societies that are more 'schooled', that is, societies where schooling is a more dominant and steering institution. We analysed data from 49,261 individuals in 34 European countries and found that feelings of misrecognition were strongly related to political distrust, dissatisfaction with democracy, and vote abstention. These relations explained a significant part of the difference between higher and less educated citizens in political alienation. We also found that this mediation effect was larger in countries that are more schooled.

Gender-based in-group social influence can lead women to view a hostile sexist attitude as less prejudiced and more true.

Social influence processes by which women come to judge a hostile sexist attitude as relatively true and unprejudiced were examined. Based upon status characteristics theory, women's judgments were expected to be more strongly influenced by a man's than a woman's interpretation of the sexist attitude as true or prejudiced. Based upon self-categorization theory, women's judgments were expected to be more strongly influenced by a woman's than a man's interpretation. Support was primarily observed for the self-categorization theory prediction. This effect, however, was initially suppressed by participants' acceptance of the legitimacy of gender status differences. A post-hoc mediational analysis revealed two pathways by which in-group social influence affected women's acceptance the relative veracity of negative claims about their own group: a direct path from shared in-group membership with the influencing agent, and an indirect path through their acceptance of the legitimacy of gender status differences. The research highlights how women's endorsement of sexist views can have the capacity to minimize other women's challenges of these views as prejudice.

Further evidence that system justification amongst the disadvantaged is positively related to superordinate group identification.

Members of disadvantaged groups sometimes support societal systems that enable the very inequalities that disadvantaged them. Is it possible to explain this puzzling system-justifying orientation in terms of rational group-interested motives, without recourse to a separate system motive? The social identity model of system attitudes (SIMSA) claims that it is. SIMSA proposes that the system justification shown by a disadvantaged group (e.g., African American women) can sometimes support identity needs that are tied to a more inclusive (superordinate) in-group (e.g., Americans). There is already some supportive evidence for this proposition, but it is not yet clear whether: (1) such trends are visible in a wider range of disadvantaged contexts, and (2) this explanation also applies to those who are strongly invested in their subgroup (e.g., feminists). In two waves of a large nationally representative survey from 21 to 23 European states (Ntotal = 84,572) and two controlled experiments (Ntotal = 290 women), we found that: (a) system justification was positively associated with superordinate ingroup identification across multiple cases of disadvantage (Studies 1-3), (b) system justification increased when this inclusive identity was made more salient (Studies 2 & 3), and (c) system justification was visible even amongst feminists when they activated their superordinate (Italian) identity (Study 3).

When and Why People Prefer Higher Educated Politicians: Ingroup Bias, Deference, and Resistance.

When choosing between political candidates of different educational levels, do voters show ingroup bias or base their vote choice on candidates' perceived competence? We aim to investigate how (fictional) political candidates of different educational levels are evaluated and voted for, how this is affected by voters' educational level, and the role of perceived (Study 1) and manipulated competence (Study 2). Higher educated participants preferred higher to less educated candidates over and above their level of competence, particularly when they identified strongly with their educational level. This reflects ingroup bias among the higher educated. Less educated participants preferred higher educated candidates in Study 1, but did not prefer higher educated candidates when competence was manipulated independently from education in Study 2. The less educated, unlike the higher educated, therefore, seem to show deference to the assumed competence of the higher educated, because it disappears when more reliable competence information is available.

Brexit and Trump: Which Theory of Social Stasis and Social Change Copes Best With the New Populism?

Why do voters seek to change the political landscape or to retain it? System justification theory (SJT) proposes that a separate system motive to preserve the existing order drives support for the status-quo, and that this motivation operates independently from personal and collective interests. But how does this explanation apply to recent populist shifts in the political order such as Brexit and the emergence of Donald Trump? While the system motive may seem useful in understanding why the usual progressives (Remain/Clinton voters) may want to stick with an established order, it seems insufficient to explain why the more conservative voters (Brexit/Trump voters) would want to upend the establishment. Thus, we compared SJT's system motive explanation for the system attitudes of voters on both sides of the political divide to an alternative explanation drawn from the newer social identity model of system attitudes (SIMSA). According to SIMSA, the difficulty in explaining the system attitudes of Brexit/Trump and Remain/Clinton voters from SJT's system motive standpoint can be resolved by focusing instead on the collective interests that both camps seek to satisfy with their votes. We examined these explanations in two studies conducted soon after Brexit (N = 313) and Trump's election (N = 289) in 2016, with results providing more support for SIMSA than for SJT.

When are intergroup attitudes judged as free speech and when as prejudice? A social identity analysis of attitudes towards immigrants.

Although anti-immigrant attitudes continue to be expressed around the world, identifying these attitudes as prejudice, truth or free speech remains contested. This contestation occurs, in part, because of the absence of consensually agreed-upon understandings of what prejudice is. In this context, the current study sought to answer the question, "what do people understand to be prejudice?" Participants read an intergroup attitude expressed by a member of their own group (an "in-group" member) or another group (an "out-group" member). This was followed by an interpretation of the attitude as either "prejudiced" or "free speech." This interpretation was also made by in-group or an out-group member. Subsequent prejudice judgements were influenced only by the group membership of the person expressing the initial attitude: the in-group member's attitude was judged to be less prejudiced than the identical attitude expressed by an out-group member. Participants' judgements of free speech, however, were more complex: in-group attitudes were seen more as free speech than out-group attitudes, except when an in-group member interpreted those attitudes as prejudice. These data are consistent with the Social Identity Approach to intergroup relations, and have implications for the processes by which intergroup attitudes become legitimised as free speech instead of prejudice.

Counteracting subliminal cues that threaten national identity.

In spite of their subtle nature, subliminal cues of group devaluation can have profound effects on members of targeted groups. Across three studies, we examine factors that allow people to counteract subliminal cues of group devaluation. We do this in the context of Spanish-German intergroup relations following the 2008 financial crisis. Throughout the crisis, narratives in politics and the media have drawn on national stereotypes to legitimize the economic situation in Spain. We argue that this represents a threat to our Spanish participants and that exposure to subliminal cues that reflect this threat will trigger responses that counteract this threat. Indeed, results showed that when subliminal associations legitimize the disadvantage faced by the group, our Spanish participants reversed the subliminal associations to which they were exposed. These findings show that Spanish participants are able to counteract the devaluation of their national in-group, even when that devaluation occurs outside of conscious awareness.

The Rocky Road from Experience to Expression of Emotions-Women's Anger About Sexism.

We investigated women's anger expression in response to sexism. In three studies (Ns = 103, 317, and 241), we tested the predictions that women express less anger about sexism than they experience-the anger gap-and that the anger expressed by women is associated with instrumental concerns, specifically perceived costs and benefits of confronting sexism. To estimate the specificity of the proposed gap, we compared women's anger reactions to men's anger reactions as well as anger reactions to sadness reactions. Across studies, we found support for the anger gap, that is, lower anger expression than experience, and the gap was more pronounced for women than for men (Study 3). Surprisingly, a gap also occurred in sadness reactions. Regarding instrumental concerns, there was converging evidence that expressed anger was negatively associated with individual costs. We also investigated whether anger expression can be encouraged through women's identification with feminists (Studies 1 and 2) and support by other women (Study 2); yet, we found no evidence. We conclude that, to understand women's-and men's-reactions to sexism, it is critical not to mistake their emotion expression for how they really feel, but instead to also consider strategic concerns. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-021-00081-7.

Social Influence and Group Identity.

This chapter reviews research on the group identity explanation of social influence, grounded in self-categorization theory, and contrasts it with other group-based explanations, including normative influence, interdependence, and social network approaches, as well as approaches to persuasion and influence that background group (identity) processes. Although the review primarily discusses recent research, its focus also invites reappraisal of some classic research in order to address basic questions about the scope and power of the group identity explanation. The self-categorization explanation of influence grounded in group norms, moderated by group identification, is compared and contrasted to other normative explanations of influence, notably the concept of injunctive norms and the relation to moral conviction. A range of moderating factors relating to individual variation, features of the intragroup and intergroup context, and important contextual variables (i.e., anonymity versus visibility, isolation versus copresence) that are particularly relevant to online influence in the new media are also reviewed.

Subjective status and perceived legitimacy across countries.

The relationships between subjective status and perceived legitimacy are important for understanding the extent to which people with low status are complicit in their oppression. We use novel data from 66 samples and 30 countries (N = 12,788) and find that people with higher status see the social system as more legitimate than those with lower status, but there is variation across people and countries. The association between subjective status and perceived legitimacy was never negative at any levels of eight moderator variables, although the positive association was sometimes reduced. Although not always consistent with hypotheses, group identification, self-esteem, and beliefs in social mobility were all associated with perceived legitimacy among people who have low subjective status. These findings enrich our understanding of the relationship between social status and legitimacy.

Frustration-affirmation? Thwarted goals motivate compliance with social norms for violence and nonviolence.

When thwarted goals increase endorsement of violence, it may not always reflect antisocial tendencies or some breakdown of self-regulation per se; such responses can also reflect an active process of self-regulation, whose purpose is to comply with the norms of one's social environment. In the present experiments (total N = 2,145), the causal link between thwarted goals and endorsement of violent means (guns and war) was found to be contingent on perceptions that violence is normatively valued. Experiments 1-3 establish that thwarted goals increase endorsement of violence primarily among U.S. adults of a lower educational background and/or men who endorse a masculine honor culture. Experiment 4 manipulates the perceived normative consensus of college educated Americans, and demonstrates that thwarted goals increase college educated Americans' endorsement of whatever norm is salient: prowar or antiwar. Generalizing the model beyond violent means, Experiment 5 demonstrates that goal-thwarted Europeans report increased willingness to volunteer for refugee support activities if they perceive strong social norms to volunteer. Altogether, these findings support a frustration-affirmation model rather than frustration-aggression, whereby thwarted goals increase compliance with perceived norms for behavior, which can increase endorsement of violent means such as guns and war, but also nonviolent charitable actions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Is Martin Luther King or Malcolm X the more acceptable face of protest? High-status groups' reactions to low-status groups' collective action.

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported online in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology on Jul 8 2019 (see record 2019-40588-001). In the article, Malcolm X was misspelled in the article title, in the second epigraph below the abstract, and in the second paragraph of the first paragraph and the first sentence of the fifth paragraph of the Implications for the Effectiveness of Low-Status Collective Action section. All versions of this article have been corrected.] Work on collective action focuses mainly on the perspective of disadvantaged groups. However, the dynamics of social change cannot be fully understood without taking into account the reactions of the members of advantaged groups to collective action by low-status groups. In 10 experiments conducted in 4 different intergroup contexts (N = 1349), we examine advantaged groups support for normative versus non-normative collective action by disadvantaged groups. Experiments 1a to 1e show that normative collective action is perceived as more likely to improve the disadvantaged group's position and that non-normative collective action is perceived as more damaging to the advantaged group's social image. Also, these differences are due to differences in perceptions of actions violating norms of protest and perceptions of protesters as blaming the advantaged group for the inequality. Experiments 2a to 3 show that high compared with low identified members of advantaged groups distinguish more between types of collective action, showing a greater preference for the normative type. Both a mediational design and an experimental-causal-chain design (Experiments 3 and 4) show that support among high identifiers depends more on whether collective action damages the high-status group's social image than on whether it actually reduces inequality. Findings suggest that high-status groups' support for collective action is not only shaped by the perceived likelihood of change but also by its potential damage to the image of the high-status ingroup. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Having pity on our victims to save ourselves: Compassion reduces self-critical emotions and self-blame about past harmful behavior among those who highly identify with their past self.

Previous research has shown that people often separate the present self from past selves. Applying knowledge gained from intergroup research to the interpersonal domain, we argue that the degree to which people identify with their past self (self-identification) influences their reaction when recalling a past event during which they harmed another person. Because they feel close to their past self, we expected this to be threatening for high self-identifiers, and expected them to be motivated to avoid self-critical emotions and blame. Using four meta-analyses, conducted on a set of seven experimental studies, we investigated four ways in which high self-identifiers can distance themselves from the event: by feeling compassion, by taking a third-person rather than first-person perspective, by emphasizing ways in which their present self is different to their past self, and by disidentifying with the past self altogether. We found the strongest interaction effects for compassion: whereas a compassion manipulation increased self-critical emotions and self-blame about the past event for low self-identifiers, it decreased them for high self-identifiers. We argue that this occurs because the other-focused nature of compassion allows high self-identifiers subtly to shift the focus away from their harmful behavior. Our concept of past self-identification had stronger effects than a measure of self-continuity beliefs. It also correlated only moderately with the latter, suggesting they are distinct concepts. Our findings suggest that, ironically, the most effective way to protect the self against reminders of an undesirable past, may be to have compassion for our victims.

Is a system motive really necessary to explain the system justification effect? A response to Jost (2019) and Jost, Badaan, Goudarzi, Hoffarth, and Mogami (2019).

The debate between the proponents of SIMSA and SJT does not pivot on whether system justification occurs - we all agree that system justification does occur. The issue is why it occurs? System justification theory (SJT; Jost & Banaji, 1994, British Journal of Social Psychology, 33, 1) assumes that system justification is motivated by a special system justification motive. In contrast, the social identity model of system attitudes (SIMSA; Owuamalam, Rubin, & Spears, , Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27, 2) argues that there is insufficient conclusive evidence for this special system motive, and that system justification can be explained in terms of social identity motives, including the motivation to accurately reflect social reality and the search for a positive social identity. Here, we respond to criticisms of SIMSA, including criticisms of its social reality, ingroup bias, and hope for future ingroup status explanations of system justification. We conclude that SJT theorists should decide whether system justification is oppositional to, or compatible with social identity motives, and that this dilemma could be resolved by relinquishing the theoretically problematic notion of a system justification motivation.

Revisiting 25 years of system motivation explanation for system justification from the perspective of social identity model of system attitudes.

Do the disadvantaged have an autonomous system justification motivation that operates against their personal and group interests? System justification theory (SJT; Jost & Banaji, 1994, Br. J. Soc. Psychol, 33, 1) proposes that they do and that this motivation helps to (1) reduce cognitive dissonance and associated uncertainties and (2) soothe the pain that is associated with knowing that one's group is subject to social inequality. However, 25 years of research on this system justification motivation has given rise to several theoretical and empirical inconsistencies. The present article argues that these inconsistencies can be resolved by a social identity model of system attitudes (SIMSA; Owuamalam, Rubin, & Spears, 2018, Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci, 27, 91). SIMSA assumes that instances of system justification are often in alignment with (rather than opposed to) the interests of the disadvantaged. According to SIMSA, the disadvantaged may support social systems (1) in order to acknowledge social reality, (2) when they perceive the wider social system to constitute a superordinate ingroup, and (3) because they hope to improve their ingroup's status through existing channels in the long run. These propositions are corroborated by existing and emerging evidence. We conclude that SIMSA offers a more coherent and parsimonious explanation for system justification than does SJT.

When to reveal what you feel: How emotions towards antagonistic out-group and third party audiences are expressed strategically.

In intergroup conflicts, expressed emotions influence how others see and react to those who express them. Here, we investigated whether this in turn implies that emotions may be expressed strategically. We tested whether emotion expression can differ from emotion experience, and whether emotion expression (more than emotion experience) is used to pursue specific goals. Specifically, we focused on whether support-seeking emotions (fear and sadness) are used to call for support from a powerful third party and contempt to distance from an antagonistic out-group. In two studies, using the same ostensible conflict, we manipulated whether participants communicated their emotions towards the out-group (no vs. yes) and third party (no vs. yes) and employed a between-subjects design in Study 1 (N = 86) and a within-subjects design in Study 2 (N = 83). In both studies, we found that members of a disadvantaged group expressed reduced support-seeking emotions towards the out-group than they experienced (i.e., in conditions without an audience), providing support for the assumption that emotion expression does not necessarily reflect experience. Further, in Study 2, we found in line with expectations that the goal to call for support was more important in the communication with the third party than with the antagonistic out-group. The goal was best predicted by expressed support-seeking emotions, providing support for the assumption that emotion expression is used to pursue goals. Interestingly, we only found this association for a beneficial goal (i.e., calling for support) and not for distancing, a destructive goal. These results support the proposed strategic use of emotion expression and as such advance our understanding of the function of expressed emotions.

Subliminal Gender Stereotypes: Who Can Resist?

We examine women's responses to subliminal gender stereotypes, that is, stereotypes present outside conscious awareness. Previous research suggests that subtle stereotypes elicit acceptance and assimilation, but we predict that subliminal exposure to gender stereotypes will trigger resistance in some women. Specifically, we expect resistance to occur among women who are relatively strongly identified with feminists, but not with the broader group of women. We predict that resistance takes the form of persistence in stereotypically masculine domains and (implicit) in-group bias. Indeed, we found that subliminal exposure to stereotypes (vs. counter-stereotypes) led women who identify relatively strongly with feminists, but less strongly with women, to (a) persist in a math task, (b) show increased willingness to sacrifice men in a Moral Choice Dilemma task, and (c) show implicit in-group bias on an evaluative priming task. This evidence of resistance suggests that members of devalued groups are more resilient than previously thought.

A Multiple Identity Approach to Gender: Identification with Women, Identification with Feminists, and Their Interaction.

Across four studies, we examine multiple identities in the context of gender and propose that women's attitudes toward gender group membership are governed by two largely orthogonal dimensions of gender identity: identification with women and identification with feminists. We argue that identification with women reflects attitudes toward the content society gives to group membership: what does it mean to be a woman in terms of group characteristics, interests and values? Identification with feminists, on the other hand, is a politicized identity dimension reflecting attitudes toward the social position of the group: what does it mean to be a woman in terms of disadvantage, inequality, and relative status? We examine the utility of this multiple identity approach in four studies. Study 1 showed that identification with women reflects attitudes toward group characteristics, such as femininity and self-stereotyping, while identification with feminists reflects attitudes toward the group's social position, such as perceived sexism. The two dimensions are shown to be largely independent, and as such provide support for the multiple identity approach. In Studies 2-4, we examine the utility of this multiple identity approach in predicting qualitative differences in gender attitudes. Results show that specific combinations of identification with women and feminists predicted attitudes toward collective action and gender stereotypes. Higher identification with feminists led to endorsement of radical collective action (Study 2) and critical attitudes toward gender stereotypes (Studies 3-4), especially at lower levels of identification with women. The different combinations of high vs. low identification with women and feminists can be thought of as reflecting four theoretical identity "types." A woman can be (1) strongly identified with neither women nor feminists ("low identifier"), (2) strongly identified with women but less so with feminists ("traditional identifier"), (3) strongly identified with both women and feminists ("dual identifier"), or (4) strongly identified with feminists but less so with women ("distinctive feminist"). In sum, by considering identification with women and identification with feminists as multiple identities we aim to show how the multiple identity approach predicts distinct attitudes to gender issues and offer a new perspective on gender identity.

Collective resistance despite complicity: High identifiers rise above the legitimization of disadvantage by the in-group.

How do individuals deal with group disadvantage when their fellow in-group members conceive it as legitimate? Integrating research on the normative conflict model (Packer, 2008, Pers. Soc. Psychol. Rev., 12, 50) and collective action, we expect high identifiers to reject the in-group norm of legitimacy that justifies the inequality, and to assert that the group is actually able and willing to contest the disadvantage by collective means. In Study 1 and Study 2, we tested this hypothesis in different intergroup contexts. The results confirmed our predictions and also showed one boundary condition for high identifiers, namely that the content of the social identity supports resistance. In Study 3, we found support for our hypothesis using artificial groups and manipulating identification experimentally. These results show that even when a disadvantaged group appears to accept its situation, high identified in-group members will still contest this and, moreover, expect other in-group members to support them in this endeavour.