Consequences of interminority ingroup rejection for group identification and well-being.

OBJECTIVES: The rejection-identification model (RIM; Branscombe et al. 1999) suggests group identification mitigates the negative effects of perceived discrimination on psychological well-being. The RIM has not been applied to instances of interminority ingroup rejection-discrimination by one's ingroup toward another of their ingroups (e.g., a gay Black American perceiving racial discrimination within his LGBTQ+ community). We address two questions: (a) do the predicted relationships between constructs in the RIM replicate for interminority ingroup rejection? (b) How does interminority ingroup rejection relate to identification with the discriminating ingroup? METHODS: We test these questions using structural equation modeling (SEM) on a secondary dataset including respondents (N = 3,300) who identify as members of both a racial and sexual minority. RESULTS: Our analysis produced two key findings. First, replicating past RIM research, we show that perceived discrimination-whether heterosexist or racist in nature-predicts worse well-being and higher identification with the target group. Furthermore, we demonstrate an indirect effect such that discrimination predicts higher group identification and this is positively related to well-being. Second, the interminority ingroup rejection-identification paths varied as a function of whether discrimination was heterosexist or racist. Greater heterosexism within one's racial community predicted greater racial ingroup identification; however, racism within one's sexual minority community was not a significant predictor of sexual minority group identification. CONCLUSIONS: We discuss implications of interminority ingroup rejection for people who belong to intersecting minority groups and make recommendations for extending research on this issue. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Perceived discrimination and well-being among unauthorized Hispanic immigrants: The moderating role of ethnic/racial group identity centrality.

OBJECTIVES: We investigated the association between perceived ethnic discrimination with psychological well-being and life satisfaction among a community sample of unauthorized Hispanic immigrants in the United States. We also assessed whether ethnic/racial group identity centrality moderated this relationship. METHOD: A community sample of self-reported unauthorized Hispanics (N = 140) completed questionnaires assessing perceived ethnic discrimination, ethnic/racial group identity centrality, psychological well-being, and life satisfaction. RESULTS: Discrimination negatively predicted psychological well-being and life satisfaction, and ethnic/racial group identity centrality moderated these relationships. High ethnic/racial group identity centrality reduced the association of discrimination with psychological well-being and life satisfaction. Ethnic/racial identity centrality lent psychological protection for those who reported higher levels of discrimination. CONCLUSION: Ethnic discrimination is a salient stressor for unauthorized Hispanic immigrants. Yet high ethnic/racial group identity centrality may protect these individuals from the negative effects of discrimination by providing a sense of belonging, acceptance, and social support in the face of rejection. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Yes we can!: prejudice reduction through seeing (inequality) and believing (in social change).

We investigated the effect of differential perceived efficacy to reduce racial inequality (in the context of increased awareness of illegitimate in-group advantages) on White Americans' intergroup attitudes and antidiscrimination behavior. White American university students read a passage describing the underrepresentation of African Americans in their university's faculty and then wrote letters to the university administration in support of appointing more African Americans to the faculty. We experimentally varied feedback concerning efficacy to change institutional racism. Before writing their letters, participants were told that there was a low, moderate, or high chance that their efforts would be effective. Later in the experiment, participants' perceived efficacy to influence their university system was measured. Intergroup attitudes improved and antidiscrimination actions increased among participants with higher perceived efficacy in comparison with participants with low perceived efficacy. Collective guilt partially mediated the effects of efficacy beliefs on antidiscrimination actions and fully mediated the effects of efficacy beliefs on intergroup attitudes.

The glass cliff: when and why women are selected as leaders in crisis contexts.

The glass cliff refers to women being more likely to rise to positions of organizational leadership in times of crisis than in times of success, and men being more likely to achieve those positions in prosperous times. We examine the role that (a) a gendered history of leadership and (b) stereotypes about gender and leadership play in creating the glass cliff. In Expt 1, participants who read about a company with a male history of leadership selected a male future leader for a successful organization, but chose a female future leader in times of crisis. This interaction--between company performance and gender of the preferred future leader--was eliminated for a counter-stereotypic history of female leadership. In Expt 2, stereotypically male attributes were most predictive of leader selection in a successful organization, while stereotypically female attributes were most predictive in times of crisis. Differences in the endorsement of these stereotypes, in particular with regard to the ascription of lower stereotypically female attributes to the male candidate mediated the glass cliff effect. Overall, results suggest that stereotypes about male leadership may be more important for the glass cliff effect than stereotypes about women and leadership.

Maintaining the system with tokenism: bolstering individual mobility beliefs and identification with a discriminatory organization.

Two experiments examined the effects of gender-based token hiring practices in organizational settings. In Expt 1, women were exposed to organizational hiring practices that were open, token, or closed. Token practices served to perpetuate inequality by maintaining individual mobility beliefs and organizational identification. In Expt 2, both men and women imagined working for a corporation that planned to implement open, token, or closed hiring practices. Although women reported experiencing negative emotions in the closed and token conditions compared to the open condition, token practices maintained positive perceptions of the organization and individual mobility beliefs compared to the closed condition. Men endorsed more individual mobility beliefs as well as positive emotions in the token and closed conditions compared to the open condition. Token practices distort perceptions of fairness in both women and men. For women, token practices make group boundaries seem more negotiable than they actually are, while for men token practices legitimize their group's dominance.

Inclusivity of past collective trauma and its implications for current intractable conflict: The mediating role of moral lessons.

How are perceptions of past collective trauma related to moral lessons derived, and how are those in turn associated with conflict-related policy preferences of those presently involved in intractable conflict? We hypothesized that inclusive conceptions of past trauma will be positively associated with moral obligations and negatively with moral entitlement, and that moral obligations will be positively associated with humanitarian policies and negatively with militaristic policies, while moral entitlement will be positively associated with militaristic policies and negatively with humanitarian policies. In a cross-sectional study with a representative sample of Jewish Israelis (N = 504), moral obligations mediated the association between higher inclusivity of past collective trauma and humanitarian policy support, while moral entitlement mediated between lower inclusivity and increased militant policy support. Inclusive perceptions of past trauma and its moral lessons may play a critical role in advancing conflict resolution in intractable conflicts settings unrelated to the initial trauma.

Justice Agents: Discriminated Group Members Are Perceived to be Highly Committed to Social Justice.

We propose that because members of discriminated (vs. advantaged) groups have a history of dealing with injustice, majority group members expect them to be more committed to social justice. By commitment to social justice, we mean supporting, and caring for, the basic rights of virtually any marginalized group. Studies 1a (N = 145) and 1b (N = 120) revealed that members of discriminated (vs. relatively advantaged) groups were seen as having a stronger commitment to social justice. This was explained by participants' perception of discriminated groups as having a tradition of fighting injustice (Study 2; N = 174). Demonstrating implications of these perceptions, discriminated (relative to advantaged) group members were assigned more justice-related roles in the workplace (Study 3a: N = 120; Study 3b: N = 126; Study 4: N = 133), and their justice-related initiatives were rated more negatively (Study 5: N = 259). Theoretical and practical implications regarding minority-majority relations and minorities' ability to advance in workplace hierarchies are discussed.

Perceptual harmony in judgments of group prototypicality and intragroup respect.

We test common sense psychology of intragroup relations whereby people assume that intragroup respect and ingroup prototypicality are positively related. In Study 1a, participants rated a group member as more prototypical if they learned that group member was highly respected rather than disrespected. In Study 1b, participants rated a group member as more respected by other group members if they learned that group member was prototypical rather than unprototypical. As a commonsense psychology of groups, we reasoned that the perceived relationship between prototypicality and intragroup respect would be stronger for cohesive groups compared to incohesive groups. The effect of intragroup respect on perceptions of prototypicality (Study 2a & 2c) and the effect of prototypicality on perceptions of intragroup respect (Study 2b) were generally stronger for participants considering cohesive groups relative to incohesive groups. However, the interaction effect of prototypicality and group cohesion on intragroup respect did fail to replicate in Study 2d. In Studies 3, 4a, and 4b we manipulated the relationship between prototypicality and intragroup respect and found that when these variables were in perceptual harmony participants perceived groups as more cohesive. The results of eight out of nine studies conducted are consistent with the prediction that people make inferences about intragroup respect, prototypicality, and group cohesion in a manner that maintains perceptual harmony.

Social psychological research on prejudice as collective action supporting emergent ingroup members.

Why does social psychological research on prejudice change across time? We argue that scientific change is not simply a result of empirical evidence, technological developments, or social controversies, but rather emerges out of social change-driven shifts in how researchers categorize themselves and others within their larger societies. As mainstream researchers increasingly recategorize former outgroup members as part of a novel ingroup, prejudice research shifts in support of emergent ingroup members against their emergent outgroup opponents. Although social change-driven science results in valuable opportunities for researchers, it also results in significant risks for research - collective, scientific biases in the inclusion and exclusion of social groups in prejudice research that are not readily detected or managed by traditional controls. We present the Emergent Ingroup Model (EIM) to encourage reflection on shared biases, as well as to spark a broader conversation on how to strengthen our field for a rapidly changing and increasingly global world.

Prosocial perceptions of taxation predict support for taxes.

Many people report disliking taxes despite the fact that tax funds are used to provide essential services for the taxpayer and fellow citizens. In light of past research demonstrating that people are more likely to engage in prosocial action when they recognize how their assistance positively impacts the recipient, we examine whether recognition of how one's tax contributions help other citizens-perceived prosocial taxation-predicts more supportive views of taxation and greater engagement. We conducted three correlational studies using North American samples (N = 902, including a nationally representative sample of over 500 US residents) in which we find that perceived prosocial taxation is associated with greater enjoyment paying taxes, willingness to continue paying taxes, and larger financial contributions in a tax-like payment. Findings hold when controlling for several demographic variables, participants' general prosocial orientation, and the perception that tax dollars are being put to good use. In addition, we examined data from six waves of the World Values Survey (N > 474,000 across 107 countries). We find that people expressing trust in their government and civil service-thereby indicating some confidence that their taxes will be used in prosocial ways-are significantly more likely to state that it is never justifiable to cheat on taxes. Together, these studies offer a new and optimistic perspective on taxation; people may hold more positive views and be more willing to contribute if they believe their contribution benefits others.

Toward a Positive Psychology of Immigrants.

The vast majority of immigration-focused research in psychology is rooted in deficit models that center on negative health outcomes (e.g., depression, acculturative stress, anxiety, substance use), resulting in a widely held assumption that immigrants are at greater risk for pathology and poor well-being compared with native-born individuals. Moreover, current political discourse often portrays immigrants as more prone to crime compared with native-born individuals. From a positive-psychology perspective, we argue that, despite numerous migration-related challenges, many immigrant populations report positive patterns of psychological health. We also provide evidence that immigrants are, in fact, less prone to crime than their native-born counterparts. We conclude by discussing several contributing factors that account for positive immigrant well-being across the range of destination countries. Ultimately, the field should address questions regarding (a) immigrants' strategies for coping with the challenges involved in adapting to new homelands and (b) asset-based factors that help immigrants to thrive during difficult life challenges.

Remembering historical victimization: collective guilt for current ingroup transgressions.

The authors examined the consequences of remembering historical victimization for emotional reactions to a current adversary. In Experiment 1, Jewish Canadians who were reminded of the Holocaust accepted less collective guilt for their group's harmful actions toward the Palestinians than those not reminded of their ingroup's past victimization. The extent to which the conflict was perceived to be due to Palestinian terrorism mediated this effect. Experiment 2 illustrated that reminding Jewish people, but not non-Jewish people, of the Holocaust decreased collective guilt for current harm doing compared with when the reminder concerned genocide committed against another group (i.e., Cambodians). In Experiments 3 and 4, Americans experienced less collective guilt for their group's harm doing in Iraq following reminders of either the attacks on September 11th, 2001 or the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor compared with a historical victimization reminder that was irrelevant to the ingroup. The authors discuss why remembering the ingroup's past affects responses to outgroups in the present.

The social identity approach to disability: Bridging disability studies and psychological science.

Although mainstream psychology has received numerous critiques for its traditional approaches to disability-related research, proposals for alternative theory that can encompass the social, cultural, political, and historical features of disability are lacking. The social identity approach (SIA) offers a rich framework from which to ask research questions about the experience of disability in accordance with the critical insights found in disability studies (DS), the source for many of the most compelling critiques of disability psychology research. We review existing research considering the complementary social identity (Tajfel & Turner, 1979) and self-categorization (Turner, Hogg, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987) theories to support our contention that the disability social category is a significant driving force in the psychological experience of disability and to demonstrate the theoretical utility of the SIA. We suggest that a bridge between the critical epistemological perspectives found in disability studies and the methodological rigor and theoretical breadth and parsimony of a social identity approach is essential for examining the social psychological experience of disability in the 21st century. To conclude we explore the emergent possibilities for research in psychological science that can follow from a social identity approach to disability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

The social complexities of disability: Discrimination, belonging and life satisfaction among Canadian youth.

Although disability has been on the psychological agenda for some time, there is limited empirical evidence on the life satisfaction of youth with a disability, especially the effect of discrimination and factors that might mitigate it. We address this critical gap by examining the complex social experiences of youth with a disability and the culminating effect on life satisfaction. We ask three questions: (1) Is having a disability associated with lower life satisfaction? (2) Do youth with a disability experience discrimination and, if so, how does this affect life satisfaction? (3) Can a sense of belonging mitigate the negative effect of discrimination? We address these questions using microdata from the Canadian Community Health Survey, which is nationally representative. Our sample consists of 11,997 adolescents, of whom 2193 have a disability. We find that life satisfaction is lower among youth with a disability. Moreover, many experience disability-related discrimination, which has a negative effect on life satisfaction. However, this is mitigated by a sense of belonging to the community. Specifically, youth with a disability do not report lower life satisfaction when high belonging is present, even if they experience discrimination. This is true for boys and girls. We conclude that belonging, even if it is not disability-related, is protective of well-being. This has important implications for policy whereby organizations that cultivate a sense of belonging may alleviate the harm sustained by youth who experience discrimination as a result of their disability.

Culture, gender, and the self: variations and impact of social comparison processes.

Psychological differences between women and men, far from being invariant as a biological explanation would suggest, fluctuate in magnitude across cultures. Moreover, contrary to the implications of some theoretical perspectives, gender differences in personality, values, and emotions are not smaller, but larger, in American and European cultures, in which greater progress has been made toward gender equality. This research on gender differences in self-construals involving 950 participants from 5 nations/cultures (France, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United States, and Malaysia) illustrates how variations in social comparison processes across cultures can explain why gender differences are stronger in Western cultures. Gender differences in the self are a product of self-stereotyping, which occurs when between-gender social comparisons are made. These social comparisons are more likely, and exert a greater impact, in Western nations. Both correlational and experimental evidence supports this explanation.

Forgiveness and collective guilt assignment to historical perpetrator groups depend on level of social category inclusiveness.

The authors examined how categorization influences victimized group members' responses to contemporary members of a historical perpetrator group. Specifically, the authors tested whether increasing category inclusiveness--from the intergroup level to the maximally inclusive human level--leads to greater forgiveness of a historical perpetrator group and decreased collective guilt assignment for its harmdoing. Among Jewish North Americans (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) and Native Canadians (Experiment 3) human-level categorization resulted in more positive responses toward Germans and White Canadians, respectively, by decreasing the uniqueness of their past harmful actions toward the in-group. Increasing the inclusiveness of categorization led to greater forgiveness and lessened expectations that former out-group members should experience collective guilt compared with when categorization was at the intergroup level. Discussion focuses on obstacles that are likely to be encountered on the road to reconciliation between groups that have a history of conflictual relations.

Inequality as ingroup privilege or outgroup disadvantage: the impact of group focus on collective guilt and interracial attitudes.

Among members of privileged groups, social inequality is often thought of in terms of the disadvantages associated with outgroup membership. Yet inequality also can be validly framed in terms of ingroup privilege. These different framings have important psychological and social implications. In Experiment 1 (N = 110), White American participants assessed 24 statements about racial inequality framed as either White privileges or Black disadvantages. In Experiment 2 (N = 122), White participants generated examples of White privileges or Black disadvantages. In both experiments, a White privilege framing resulted in greater collective guilt and lower racism compared to a Black disadvantage framing. Collective guilt mediated the manipulation's effect on racism. In addition, in Experiment 2, a White privilege framing decreased White racial identification compared to a Black disadvantage framing. These findings suggest that representing inequality in terms of outgroup disadvantage allows privileged group members to avoid the negative psychological implications of inequality and supports prejudicial attitudes.

Perceivers' responses to in-group and out-group members who blame a negative outcome on discrimination.

The authors extend recent research concerning the social costs of claiming discrimination by examining men's and women's responses to in-group and out-group targets who either blamed a failing grade on discrimination or answer quality. Although participants generally responded more negatively to targets who blamed discrimination, rather than answer quality, dislike was greatest and gender group identification was lowest when participants evaluated an in-group target. Moreover, an in-group target who claimed discrimination was perceived as avoiding personal responsibility for outcomes to a greater extent than was a similar out-group target. Perceptions that the target avoided outcome responsibility by claiming discrimination were shown to mediate the relationship between attribution type and dislike of the in-group target. The authors discuss their results in terms of intragroup processes and suggest that social costs may especially accrue for in-group members when claiming discrimination has implications for the in-group's social identity.

Opposition to redistributive employment policies for women: the role of policy experience and group interest.

We examined whether group interest affected ideological beliefs and attitudes towards redistributive policies among men and women. We found that group interest influenced meritocratic and neo-sexist beliefs and support for gender-based affirmative action and comparable worth policies. Men and women differed in their ideological beliefs and support for the redistributive policies only when they had conscious experience with these policies. Those with policy experience expressed policy attitudes that corresponded with their gender group's interests, while those lacking such experience did not. We also noted group interest effects within each gender: men who had conscious experience with the policies expressed more opposition and greater neo-sexism and meritocratic beliefs than did men who were not consciously experienced with these policies. In contrast, consciously experienced women expressed more policy support than did their not consciously experienced counterparts. Overall, our findings indicate that group interest is an important determinant of policy attitudes and related ideological beliefs.