Disillusionment: a prototype analysis.

Disillusionment is acknowledged to be a painful process with important personal and social consequences. However, scientific conceptualisations of the experience are inconsistent. Across four studies, we examined whether lay conceptions of disillusionment produce a consistent pattern of features. In Study 1 (N = 204), we extracted 19 features of disillusionment from open-ended participant definitions. In Study 2 (N = 131), participants rated the centrality of these features and indicated that features such as discovery, disappointment, and loss, were highly representative, while features such as hopelessness, orientation, and truth, were more peripheral. In two further studies, we used experimental designs to test the diagnosticity of these features. In Study 3 (N = 155), participants rated vignettes descriptions as more disillusioning when they were based on more, rather than less, prototypical disillusionment features. Given that disappointment is a feature of disillusionment, we conducted Study 4 (N = 60) to test whether the extracted features effectively distinguish disillusionment from disappointment. Overall, we found evidence to suggest that disillusionment contains a consistent set of features, and represents a state of negative epistemic affect associated with the violation of core assumptions. These results create avenues for research on disillusionment, its antecedents and its consequences.

The likes that bind: Even novel opinion sharing can induce opinion-based identification.

Research has found that psychological groups based on opinion congruence are an important group type. Previous research constructed such groups around opinions potentially connected to pre-existing identities. We strip away the socio-structural context by using novel opinions to determine whether opinion congruence alone can be a category cue which can foster identification and whether such group identification mediates the relationship between opinion exposure and opinion polarization. We assess this across two pre-registered online interactive experiments. Study 1 (N = 1168) demonstrate that opinion congruence fostered stronger identity than minimal groups. Study 2 (N = 505) demonstrate that opinion congruence fostered stronger identification than non-opinion congruence. The relationship between opinion exposure and opinion polarization occurs through group identification in both. Results demonstrate that (novel) opinions can be self-categorization cues informing identification and influencing opinion polarization.

Pandemic threat and group cohesion: national identification in the wake of COVID-19 is associated with authoritarianism.

Authoritarianism emerges in times of societal threat, in part driven by desires for group-based security. As such, we propose that the threat caused by the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with increased authoritarian tendencies and that this can be partially explained by increased national identification. We tested this hypothesis by collecting cross-sectional data from three different countries in April 2020. In Study 1, data from Ireland (N = 1276) showed that pandemic threat predicted increased national identification, which in turn predicted authoritarianism. In Study 2, we replicated this indirect effect in a representative UK sample (N = 506). In Study 3, we used an alternative measure of authoritarianism and conceptually replicated this effect among USA citizens (N = 429). In this US sample, the association between threat and authoritarian tendencies was stronger among progressives compared to conservatives. Findings are discussed and linked to group-based models of authoritarianism.

Sharing is caring: How sharing opinions online can connect people into groups and foster identification.

Computer mediated communication has marked differences from the face-to-face context. One major difference is that, in the online context, we often have explicit access to others' opinions and these opinions are often the only informational cues available. We investigate if awareness of opinion congruence, in the absence of any other reference categories, may be sufficient to foster social identification. In a pre-registered experiment (N = 681), we manipulated exposure to opinions, and measured levels of ingroup identification, opinion-based identification and their social influence on activism intentions. Our results demonstrate exposure to others' opinions in an otherwise anonymous context fosters ingroup and opinion-based identification. There was no effect on opinion-based group activism intentions. We conclude that computer mediated contexts have consequences for identification - opinion (in)congruence is becoming more relevant as a source of social categorization. While we did not find this identification had a social influence on activism, we discuss avenues for future research to disentangle the features of opinion-based groups necessary to foster activism.

Moral Identity Predicts Adherence to COVID-19 Mitigation Procedures Depending on Political Ideology: A Comparison Between the USA and New Zealand.

Reducing the spread of infectious viruses (e.g., COVID-19) can depend on societal compliance with effective mitigations. Identifying factors that influence adherence can inform public policy. In many cases, public health messaging has become highly moralized, focusing on the need to act for the greater good. In such contexts, a person's moral identity may influence behavior and serve to increase compliance through different mechanisms: if a person sees compliance as the right thing to do (internalization) and/or if a person perceives compliance as something others will notice as the right thing to do (symbolization). We argue that in societies that are more politically polarized, people's political ideology may interact with their moral identity to predict compliance. We hypothesized that where polarization is high (e.g., USA), moral identity should positively predict compliance for liberals to a greater extent than for conservatives. However, this effect would not occur where polarization is low (e.g., New Zealand). Moral identity, political ideology, and support for three different COVID-19 mitigation measures were assessed in both nations (N = 1,980). Results show that while moral identity can influence compliance, the political context of the nation must also be taken into account.

Mapping public health responses with attitude networks: the emergence of opinion-based groups in the UK's early COVID-19 response phase.

Partisan patterns of compliance with public health measures are a feature of early COVID-19 responses. In many cases, these differences in behaviour relate to pre-existing group identities. However, in times of rapid societal change, novel opinion-based groups can emerge and provide a new basis for partisan identification and divergent collective behaviour. Here, we use network methods to map the emergence of opposing opinion-based groups and assess their implications for public health behaviour. In a longitudinal study, we tracked public health attitudes and self-reported behaviour in a sample of UK participants over four time points. Network visualisation reveal a rift in attitudinal alignment over time and the genesis of two distinct groups characterised by trust, or distrust, in science (Study 1a; N = 253). These groups also diverge in public health behaviour. In a brief follow-up study (N = 206), we find that this opinion polarization partially reflects underlying societal divides. We discuss implications for opinion-based group research and public health campaigns.

Agreement threshold on Axelrod's model of cultural dissemination.

Shared opinions are an important feature in the formation of social groups. In this paper, we use the Axelrod model of cultural dissemination to represent opinion-based groups. In the Axelrod model, each agent has a set of features which each holds one of a set of nominally related traits. Survey data has a similar structure, where each participant answers each of a set of items with responses from a fixed list. We present an alternative method of displaying the Axelrod model by representing it as a bipartite graph, i.e., participants and their responses as separate nodes. This allows us to see which feature-trait combinations are selected in the final state. This visualisation is particularly useful when representing survey data as it illustrates the co-evolution of attitudes and opinion-based groups in Axelrod's model of cultural diffusion. We also present a modification to the Axelrod model. A standard finding of the Axelrod model with many features is for all agents to fully agree in one cluster. We introduce an agreement threshold and allow nodes to interact only with those neighbours who are within this threshold (i.e., those with similar opinions) rather than those with any opinion. This method reliably yields a large number of clusters for small agreement thresholds and, importantly, does not limit to single cluster when the number of features grows large. This potentially provides a method for modelling opinion-based groups where as opinions are added, the number of clusters increase.

Lost in Multidimensional Space: Epistemic Motivations Define and Distinguish Negative Affect.

People's knowledge of the world is limited and frequently imprecise. Thus, epistemic challenges are commonplace and much research in psychology has investigated their consequences. However, research has not systematically investigated how states of negative affect correspond to the desire for understanding and meaning in life. We investigated the role of epistemic motivations (e.g., meaning search) as features that distinguish forms of negative affect from one another. In three studies, we used multidimensional scaling to model the perceived similarity of negative affect states and then examined to what extent people differentiate these states based on their association with epistemic motivations. These studies revealed that negative states are reliably differentiated through their relation to epistemic pursuits. These findings were verified in a fourth study in which we experimentally induced epistemic affect. Overall, these results indicate that epistemic concerns characterize states of negative affect to a substantial degree.

Bored like Hell: Religiosity reduces boredom and tempers the quest for meaning.

Boredom involves a lack meaning. Conversely, religiosity offers people a sense of meaning. Accordingly, we proposed that by imbuing a sense of meaningfulness, religiosity leads people to experience less boredom. Furthermore, we hypothesized and tested that by reducing boredom, religiosity indirectly inhibits the search for meaningful engagement. In Study 1, following boring tasks, religious people experienced lower levels of boredom and were less motivated to search for meaning than nonreligious people. We found in Study 2 that religious (vs. non- or less religious) people reported higher perceived meaning in life, which was associated with a reduced tendency to feel bored, and with a reduced need to search for meaning in life. Study 3 confirmed that the meaning in life associated with religiosity was associated with reduced state boredom. Religious participants were again less inclined to search for meaning, which was explained by the relatively low levels of boredom that religious (vs. nonreligious) participants experienced. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).