Social Psychology of and for World-Making.

ACADEMIC ABSTRACT: Social psychology's disconnect from the vital and urgent questions of people's lived experiences reveals limitations in the current paradigm. We draw on a related perspective in social psychology1-the sociocultural approach-and argue how this perspective can be elaborated to consider not only social psychology as a historical science but also social psychology of and for world-making. This conceptualization can make sense of key theoretical and methodological challenges faced by contemporary social psychology. As such, we describe the ontology, epistemology, ethics, and methods of social psychology of and for world-making. We illustrate our framework with concrete examples from social psychology. We argue that reconceptualizing social psychology in terms of world-making can make it more humble yet also more relevant, reconnecting it with the pressing issues of our time. PUBLIC ABSTRACT: We propose that social psychology should focus on "world-making" in two senses. First, people are future-oriented and often are guided more by what could be than what is. Second, social psychology can contribute to this future orientation by supporting people's world-making and also critically reflecting on the role of social psychological research in world-making. We unpack the philosophical assumptions, methodological procedures, and ethical considerations that underpin a social psychology of and for world-making. Social psychological research, whether it is intended or not, contributes to the societies and cultures in which we live, and thus it cannot be a passive bystander of world-making. By embracing social psychology of and for world-making and facing up to the contemporary societal challenges upon which our collective future depends will make social psychology more humble but also more relevant.

Proximal and distal honor fit and subjective well-being in the Mediterranean region.

OBJECTIVE: People's psychological tendencies are attuned to their sociocultural context and culture-specific ways of being, feeling, and thinking are believed to assist individuals in successfully navigating their environment. Supporting this idea, a stronger "fit" with one's cultural environment has often been linked to positive psychological outcomes. The current research expands the cultural, conceptual, and methodological space of cultural fit research by exploring the link between well-being and honor, a central driver of social behavior in the Mediterranean region. METHOD: Drawing on a multi-national sample from eight countries circum-Mediterranean (N = 2257), we examined the relationship between cultural fit in honor and well-being at the distal level (fit with one's perceived society) using response surface analysis (RSA) and at the proximal level (fit with one's university gender group) using profile analysis. RESULTS: We found positive links between fit and well-being in both distal (for some, but not all, honor facets) and proximal fit analyses (across all honor facets). Furthermore, most fit effects in the RSA were complemented with positive level effects of the predictors, with higher average honor levels predicting higher well-being. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings highlight the interplay between individual and environmental factors in honor as well as the important role honor plays in well-being in the Mediterranean region.

Young generations' hopelessness perpetuates long-term conflicts.

Transforming long-term conflicts into peaceful intergroup relations is one of the most difficult challenges for humanity. Such meaningful social changes are often driven by young people. But do young people living in contexts of long-term conflicts believe that change is even possible? In a series of six studies (Ntotal = 119,671) over two decades and across two unrelated intractable conflicts in Israel/Palestine and Cyprus, we found that younger (compared to older) generations from both respective rival groups have less hope for peace, and consequently less conciliatory attitudes. We also show that this gradual improvement of peace-promoting emotions and attitudes with increasing age can be experimentally accelerated in young people through a virtual reality-based aging simulation. These findings provide a new perspective on the fundamental question of why long-term conflicts are so difficult to resolve and highlight the importance of instilling hope in young generations to advance peace processes.

Neither Eastern nor Western: Patterns of independence and interdependence in Mediterranean societies.

Social science research has highlighted "honor" as a central value driving social behavior in Mediterranean societies, which requires individuals to develop and protect a sense of their personal self-worth and their social reputation, through assertiveness, competitiveness, and retaliation in the face of threats. We predicted that members of Mediterranean societies may exhibit a distinctive combination of independent and interdependent social orientation, self-construal, and cognitive style, compared to more commonly studied East Asian and Anglo-Western cultural groups. We compared participants from eight Mediterranean societies (Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus [Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities], Lebanon, Egypt) to participants from East Asian (Korea, Japan) and Anglo-Western (the United Kingdom, the United States) societies, using six implicit social orientation indicators, an eight-dimensional self-construal scale, and four cognitive style indicators. Compared with both East Asian and Anglo-Western samples, samples from Mediterranean societies distinctively emphasized several forms of independence (relative intensity of disengaging [vs. engaging] emotions, happiness based on disengaging [vs. engaging] emotions, dispositional [vs. situational] attribution style, self-construal as different from others, self-directed, self-reliant, self-expressive, and consistent) and interdependence (closeness to in-group [vs. out-group] members, self-construal as connected and committed to close others). Our findings extend previous insights into patterns of cultural orientation beyond commonly examined East-West comparisons to an understudied world region. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The constructive role of gender asymmetry in social interaction: further evidence.

Two hundred and sixty-four children aged 6.5-7.5 years (first graders) took part in a pre-test, interaction, and post-test experiment working on a spatial transformation task known as the 'village task'. Cognitive progress was assessed by pre- to post-test gains in both an immediate and delayed post-test in dyads and individual participants as a control. The results indicate clear links between particular pair types with both communication processes and with learning and cognitive developmental outcomes. The present study demonstrates that gender can act as a source of status asymmetry in peer interaction to influence communication, learning, and cognitive development in same- and mixed-sex dyads.

Secondary transfer effects of intergroup contact: Alternative accounts and underlying processes.

Although intergroup contact is one of the most prominent interventions to reduce prejudice, the generalization of contact effects is still a contentious issue. This research further examined the rarely studied secondary transfer effect (STE; Pettigrew, 2009), by which contact with a primary outgroup reduces prejudice toward secondary groups that are not directly involved in the contact. Across 3 cross-sectional studies conducted in Cyprus (N = 1,653), Northern Ireland (N = 1,973), and Texas (N = 275) and 1 longitudinal study conducted in Northern Ireland (N = 411), the present research sought to systematically rule out alternative accounts of the STE and to investigate 2 potential mediating mechanisms (ingroup reappraisal and attitude generalization). Results indicated that, consistent with the STE, contact with a primary outgroup predicts attitudes toward secondary outgroups, over and above contact with the secondary outgroup, socially desirable responding, and prior attitudes. Mediation analyses found strong evidence for attitude generalization but only limited evidence for ingroup reappraisal as an underlying process. Two out of 3 tests of a reverse model, where contact with the secondary outgroup predicts attitudes toward the primary outgroup, provide further evidence for an indirect effect through attitude generalization. Theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed, and directions for future research are identified.

International collaboration as construction of knowledge and its constraints.

In this paper I draw on Piaget and Habermas to underline the importance of the theoretical distinction between social relations of constraint and social relations of cooperation for reflecting upon inter-institutional projects. I argue that the socio-cultural approach to collaboration has some important limitations that restrict ideological critic and emancipatory research. The limitations of this approach can be located in its epistemological assumptions, a homogenized notion of culture and a weakness in articulating the intrapersonal, inter-personal, inter-group/positional and social representational/ideological levels of analysis. As an empirical example of this I discuss the Sloan centres for family research.