Testing the Moderating Effect of Anti-Prejudice Motivation and Peer Attitudes on the Effectiveness of a School-Based Vicarious Contact Intervention.

Vicarious contact has often been used for studying prejudice-reduction in school contexts due to its relatively accessible application through written or audiovisual portrayals of positive intergroup contact. However, these interventions may sometimes prove ineffective, thus restricting their ecological validity and independent use in education. To contribute to the understanding of factors that might facilitate or mitigate the efficacy of vicarious contact in reducing ethnic prejudice among adolescents, the present study tested for the moderating effect of anti-prejudice motivation and friends' outgroup attitudes. Participants were Finnish secondary school students (N = 334; M = 13.38 years, SD = 0.53; 48% female; 19% ethnic minority) allocated into cluster-randomized intervention (N = 149) and control (N = 185) groups. Participants in the intervention group took part in 4 × 45-min teacher-led intervention sessions. A pretest-posttest design was employed to assess the outgroup attitudes three weeks before the intervention and the follow-up two weeks after. The results showed that adolescents' intrinsic, but not extrinsic, anti-prejudice motivation and the pre-intervention attitudes of their reciprocal classroom friends positively predicted post-intervention attitudes towards people from different ethnic and cultural groups. However, only extrinsic motivation moderated the intervention effect as the results indicated the intervention to have a detrimental effect on outgroup attitudes among adolescents with less motivation to be non-prejudiced in order to gain social acceptance. This attitudinal backlash among adolescents less susceptible to the social influence of others implies that motivational aspects should not be overlooked when developing school-based intervention programs, especially when social norms are used as a mechanism of attitude change.

Mental health profiles of Finnish adolescents before and after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has had implications for adolescents' interpersonal relationships, communication patterns, education, recreational activities and well-being. An understanding of the impact of the pandemic on their mental health is crucial in measures to promote the post-pandemic recovery. Using a person-centered approach, the current study aimed to identify mental health profiles in two cross-sectional samples of Finnish adolescents before and after the peak of the pandemic, and to examine how socio-demographic and psychosocial factors, academic expectations, health literacy, and self-rated health are associated with the emerging profiles. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Survey data from the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study conducted in Finland in 2018 (N = 3498, age M = 13.44) and 2022 (N = 3838, age M = 13.21) were analyzed. A four-profile model using cluster analysis was selected for both samples. In Sample 1, the identified profiles were (1) "Good mental health", (2) "Mixed psychosocial health", (3) "Somatically challenged", and (4) "Poor mental health". In Sample 2, the identified profiles were (1) "Good mental health", (2) "Mixed psychosomatic health", (3) "Poor mental health and low loneliness", and (4) "Poor mental health and high loneliness". The results of the mixed effect multinomial logistic regression analysis showed that in both samples, being a girl and reporting lower maternal monitoring; lower family, peer, and teacher support; higher intensity of online communication; a less positive home atmosphere and school climate; and poor self-rated health were most strongly linked to belonging to a poorer mental health profile. In addition, in Sample 2, low subjective health literacy was a key factor associated with poorer mental health profiles, and teacher support was more important than before COVID. CONCLUSIONS: The current study stresses the importance of identifying those vulnerable to developing poor mental health. To maximize post-pandemic recovery, the role of schools, especially teacher support and health literacy, along with the factors that remained important over time should be taken into account in public health and health promotion interventions.

The use of virtual reality in studying prejudice and its reduction: A systematic review.

This systematic review provides an up-to-date analysis of existing literature about Virtual Reality (VR) and prejudice. How has VR been used in studying intergroup attitudes, bias and prejudice, are VR interventions effective at reducing prejudice, and what methodological advantages and limitations does VR provide compared to traditional methods are the questions we aim to answer. The included studies had to use VR to create an interaction with one or more avatars belonging to an outgroup, and/or embodiment in an outgroup member; furthermore, they had to be quantitative and peer-reviewed. The review of the 64 included studies shows the potential of VR contact to improve intergroup relations. Nevertheless, the results suggest that under certain circumstances VR contact can increase prejudice as well. We discuss these results in relation to the intergroup perspective (i.e., minority or majority) and target minority groups used in the studies. An analysis of potential mediators and moderators is also carried out. We then identify and address the most pressing theoretical and methodological issues concerning VR as a method to reduce prejudice.

Disentangling national and religious identification as predictors of support for religious minority rights among Christian majority groups.

It is often assumed that, in Western societies, Christian values are embedded in national identities, yet, the association between religious identities and prejudice has seldom been studied in parallel to national identity. According to both the social identity theory approach and integrated threat theory, group identification is important for perceiving threats and expressing corresponding attitudes. Nevertheless, their independent roles on intergroup outcomes have often been ignored, although they are two of the most salient and important identities when considering support for religious minority rights. We address this gap in research by looking at the associations of religious identity with support for religious minority rights in general and Muslims in particular in parallel to national identity through diversity threat. This study was conducted among the members of majority groups in four Western countries: Australia, Finland, Germany, and Norway (N = 1,532), all of which are characterised as traditionally Christian. We found that a higher religious identification was associated with greater support for religious minority rights in general and for those of Muslims in particular, while national identification had no direct association with support for either groups' religious rights. However, both group identifications were also associated with heightened perceived diversity threat, which in turn, predicted reluctance to support religious minority rights. This demonstrates the dual role that religious identities may play in intergroup relations.

Neural basis of in-group bias and prejudices: A systematic meta-analysis.

In-group favoritism and prejudices relate to discriminatory behaviors but, despite decades of research, understanding of their neural correlates has been limited. A systematic coordinate-based meta-analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies (altogether 87 original datasets, n = 2328) was conducted to investigate neural inter-group biases, i.e., responses toward in-group vs. out-group in different contexts. We found inter-group biases in some previously identified brain regions (e.g., the medial prefrontal cortex, insula) but also in many previously non-identified brain regions (e.g., the cerebellum, precentral gyrus). Sub-group analyses indicated that neural correlates of inter-group biases may be mostly context-specific. Regarding different types of group memberships, inter-group bias toward trivial groups was evident only in the cingulate cortex, while inter-group biases toward "real" groups (ethnic, national, or political groups) involved broader sets of brain regions. Additionally, there were heightened neural threat responses toward out-groups' faces and stronger neural empathic responses toward in-groups' suffering. We did not obtain significant publication bias. Overall, the findings provide novel implications for theory and prejudice-reduction interventions.

Social touch experience in different contexts: A review.

Social touch is increasingly utilized in a variety of psychological interventions, ranging from parent-child interventions to psychotherapeutic treatments. Less attention has been paid, however, to findings that exposure to social touch may not necessarily evoke positive or pleasant responses. Social touch can convey different emotions from love and gratitude to harassment and envy, and persons' preferences to touch and be touched do not necessarily match with each other. This review of altogether 99 original studies focuses on how contextual factors modify target person's behavioral and brain responses to social touch. The review shows that experience of social touch is strongly modified by a variety of toucher-related and situational factors: for example, toucher's facial expressions, physical attractiveness, relationship status, group membership, and touched person's psychological distress. At the neural level, contextual factors modify processing of social touch from early perceptual processing to reflective cognitive evaluation. Based on the review, we present implications for using social touch in behavioral and neuroscientific research designs.

Do We Stand Together? The Role of Perceived Personal and Group Threats in Predicting the Majority's (Un)willingness to Confront Injustice on Behalf of a Minority.

Purpose: By utilizing data from Estonia, Finland, and Norway, this study explores how the perceptions of personal and group realistic threats, namely perceived ethnic discrimination and economic insecurity among national majorities, predict their unwillingness to confront injustice on behalf of Russian-speaking minority groups. Background: Previous research on collective action to promote minorities' rights and social standing has focused either on minorities' own actions or factors promoting the willingness of majority group members to engage in collective action on behalf of minorities. In contrast, factors explaining the reluctance of majority group members to engage in collective action on behalf of minority groups have remained less explored. For example, studies have then ignored that the majority members may also feel threatened and may be economically insecure. Furthermore, the possible discrepancy between perceived personal vs. in-group's situation may influence majority group members' (un)willingness to confront injustice on behalf of a minority group. Method: We employed polynomial regression with response surface analysis to analyze data gathered among national majority members in three countries (N = 1,341). Results: Perceived personal and group realistic threats were associated with heightened unwillingness to confront injustice on behalf of the Russian-speaking minority. Furthermore, participants were more unwilling to confront injustice when they perceived more group than personal threat. Conclusion: We found that majority group members' (un)willingness to confront injustice on behalf of the minority is related to how secure they perceive their own and their group status. Our results contribute to previous research by pointing out the important drawbacks of majorities' support for minorities' wish for social change.

Lived Experience Related to the COVID-19 Pandemic among Arabic-, Russian- and Somali-Speaking Migrants in Finland.

Increasing research shows that migrants are disproportionately exposed to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). However, little is known about their lived experience and related meaning-making. This qualitative study maps COVID-19-related experiences among respondents from three migrant groups living in Finland: Somali-, Arabic- and Russian-speakers (N = 209). The data were collected by telephone interviews over four weeks in March and April 2020. Using inductive thematic analysis, we identified seven themes that illustrate respondents' multifaceted lived experiences during the first phase of pandemic. The themes depict respondents' difficulties and fears, but also their resilience and resources to cope, both individually and collectively. Experiences varied greatly between individuals and migrant groups. The main conclusion is that although the COVID-19 pandemic may be an especially stressful experience for migrant populations, it may also provide opportunities to deepen cooperation and trust within migrant communities, and between migrants and their country of settlement. Our analysis suggests that cooperation between local authorities and migrants, trust-building and effective information-sharing can foster positive and functional adaptations to disease-related threats and changing social environments.

Trust predicts COVID-19 prescribed and discretionary behavioral intentions in 23 countries.

The worldwide spread of a new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) since December 2019 has posed a severe threat to individuals' well-being. While the world at large is waiting that the released vaccines immunize most citizens, public health experts suggest that, in the meantime, it is only through behavior change that the spread of COVID-19 can be controlled. Importantly, the required behaviors are aimed not only at safeguarding one's own health. Instead, individuals are asked to adapt their behaviors to protect the community at large. This raises the question of which social concerns and moral principles make people willing to do so. We considered in 23 countries (N = 6948) individuals' willingness to engage in prescribed and discretionary behaviors, as well as country-level and individual-level factors that might drive such behavioral intentions. Results from multilevel multiple regressions, with country as the nesting variable, showed that publicized number of infections were not significantly related to individual intentions to comply with the prescribed measures and intentions to engage in discretionary prosocial behaviors. Instead, psychological differences in terms of trust in government, citizens, and in particular toward science predicted individuals' behavioral intentions across countries. The more people endorsed moral principles of fairness and care (vs. loyalty and authority), the more they were inclined to report trust in science, which, in turn, statistically predicted prescribed and discretionary behavioral intentions. Results have implications for the type of intervention and public communication strategies that should be most effective to induce the behavioral changes that are needed to control the COVID-19 outbreak.

Social Psychological Predictors of Belief in Fake News in the Run-Up to the 2019 Hungarian Elections: The Importance of Conspiracy Mentality Supports the Notion of Ideological Symmetry in Fake News Belief.

Accessing information online is now easier than ever. However, also false information is circulated in increasing quantities. We sought to identify social psychological factors that could explain why some people are more susceptible to false information. Specifically, we investigated whether psychological predispositions (social dominance orientation, right-wing authoritarianism, system justification beliefs (SJB), openness, need for closure, conspiracy mentality), competencies (scientific and political knowledge, interest in politics) or motivated reasoning based on social identity (political orientation) could help explain who believes fake news. Hungarian participants (N = 295) judged political (anti- and pro-government) and non-political news. The Hungarian context-characterized by low trust in media, populist communication by the government and increasing polarization-should be fertile ground for the proliferation of fake news. The context in making this case particularly interesting is that the major political fault line in Hungary runs between pro- and anti-government supporter groups and not, for instance, between conservative and liberal ideology or partisanship. We found clear support for the motivational reasoning explanation as political orientation consistently predicted belief in both fake and real political news when their contents aligned with one's political identity. The belief in pro-government news was also associated with higher SJB among pro-government supporters. Those interested in politics showed better capacity to distinguish real political news from the fake ones. Most importantly, the only psychological predisposition that consistently explained belief in all types of fake news was a conspiracy mentality. This supports the notion of ideological symmetry in fake news belief-where a conspiracy mentality can be found across the political spectrum, and it can make people susceptible to disinformation regardless of group-memberships and other individual differences.

Investigating the Influence of Intergroup Contact in Virtual Reality on Empathy: An Exploratory Study Using AltspaceVR.

Virtual Reality (VR) has often been referred to as an "empathy machine." This is mostly because it can induce empathy through embodiment experiences in outgroup membership. However, the potential of intergroup contact with an outgroup avatar in VR to increase empathy is less studied. Even though intergroup contact literature suggests that less threatening and more prosocial emotions are the key to understanding why intergroup contact is a powerful mean to decrease prejudice, few studies have investigated the effect of intergroup contact on empathy in VR. In this study, we developed a between-participants design to investigate how VR can be used to create a positive intergroup contact with a member of a stigmatized outgroup (ethnic minority) and present the results of the effect of intergroup contact in VR on empathy. Sixty four participants experienced either positive contact (i.e., equal intergroup status, collaborative) with a black (experimenter-controlled) avatar (experimental condition) or no intergroup contact (i.e., ingroup contact with a white avatar; control condition), with situational empathy (personal distress and empathic interest) being measured through a self-report questionnaire up to a week before and right after the VR contact experience. The experiment showed that satisfying degrees of body ownership of participants' own avatar and co-presence with the contacted avatar can be achieved in simple and universally accessible virtual environments such as AltspaceVR. The results indicated that while VR intergroup contact had no significant direct effect on empathy, exploratory analyses indicated that post-intervention empathic interest increased with stronger feelings of co-presence in the intergroup contact condition.

"Our Country Needs a Strong Leader Right Now": Economic Inequality Enhances the Wish for a Strong Leader.

Societal inequality has been found to harm the mental and physical health of its members and undermine overall social cohesion. Here, we tested the hypothesis that economic inequality is associated with a wish for a strong leader in a study involving 28 countries from five continents (Study 1, N = 6,112), a study involving an Australian community sample (Study 2, N = 515), and two experiments (Study 3a, N = 96; Study 3b, N = 296). We found correlational (Studies 1 and 2) and experimental (Studies 3a and 3b) evidence for our prediction that higher inequality enhances the wish for a strong leader. We also found that this relationship is mediated by perceptions of anomie, except in the case of objective inequality in Study 1. This suggests that societal inequality enhances the perception that society is breaking down (anomie) and that a strong leader is needed to restore order (even when that leader is willing to challenge democratic values).

A teacher-led vicarious contact intervention in culturally mixed classrooms with in- and outgroup role models of intergroup friendship.

Existing prejudice-reduction interventions in schools mainly target majority students and are mostly conducted by researchers, which limits their use for anti-discriminatory practices in culturally mixed schools. We tested a teacher-led intervention aiming at prejudice-reduction among both minority and majority adolescents through vicarious contact. The effects of indirect vicarious contact rest on observed ingroup role models of intergroup contact who have positive attitudes towards the outgroup, and vice versa. However, the specific impact of vicarious contact exerted by outgroup role models in comparison with ingroup role models has never been studied in interventions conducted in naturalistic school settings. To fill these gaps, a field experiment was conducted among secondary school students in Finland (Nmajority = 437; Nminority = 146). The experiment consisted of two stages, between which the ethnic status of the role models (majority vs minority) in stories read during the intervention sessions was changed. This was done to explore the impact of the in- and outgroup role models after the first stage, and to test the overall effect of the intervention on out-group attitudes and perceived in- and outgroup norms after participants were presented with both majority and minority storytellers after the second stage. The intervention affected the perceived outgroup norms among the minority participants as they perceived norms prevailing in the majority group to be more positive after the intervention. However, the ethnic status of the role models made no difference for any outcome variable. Ways to implement scientific knowledge into practice by providing research-based tools for multicultural education are discussed.

Unpacking the relationship between religiosity and conspiracy beliefs in Australia.

We examined the interrelation between religiosity, anti-intellectualism, and political mistrust in predicting belief in conspiracy theories. Improving on previous psychological research on the link between religiosity and societal and political attitudes, we assessed the predictive power of religious self-categorization and the importance attached to one's own (non)religious worldview predicting belief in conspiracy theories separately. Applying quota sampling in a study in Australia (N = 515), the sample consisted of 48.9% believers (i.e., those who self-categorized as religious persons) and 51.1% non-believers (i.e., those who self-categorized as non-religious persons). The results showed that believers and non-believers did not differ in the belief in conspiracy theories. Unpacking this further though, we did find that the extent to which religious worldviews were endorsed predicted belief in conspiracy theories. Among believers, the importance attached to their religious worldview was directly associated with higher belief in conspiracy theories and this link was partly mediated by higher anti-intellectualism. Political trust, in turn, served as an inhibitor of the link between religiosity and conspiracy beliefs. Among non-believers, there was no direct association between the importance of non-religious worldview and belief in conspiracy theories. However, we found that higher trust in political institutions accounted for the negative association between non-religious worldview and lower belief in conspiracy theories. The results underline the importance of distinguishing religiosity as a self-categorization and religiosity as a worldview. We find that it is not the self-categorization as religious, but the extent to which religious worldviews are endorsed that could predict people's beliefs in conspiracy theories.

Improving outgroup attitudes in schools: First steps toward a teacher-led vicarious contact intervention.

Despite the urgent need for promoting positive intergroup relations in schools, research on intergroup relations is not systematically translated into prejudice-reduction interventions. Although prejudice-reduction interventions in schools based on indirect contact have been conducted for decades, they have all been carried out by researchers themselves. In a field experiment in Finland in autumn 2015, we tested for the first time a vicarious contact prejudice-reduction intervention for its effectiveness among adolescents (N = 639) when implemented independently by school teachers instead of researchers. In addition, we tested the extent to which the intervention's effect depends on initial outgroup attitudes, previous direct outgroup contact experiences, and gender, hypothesizing that the intervention improves outgroup attitudes particularly among adolescents with more negative prior attitudes and less positive prior direct contact, and more among girls than among boys. We found an unanticipated overall deterioration in the outgroup attitudes during intervention in both the experimental and control groups. However, attitudes seemed to deteriorate somewhat less in the experimental than in the control group, and the intervention had a significant positive effect on outgroup attitudes in one experimental subgroup that needed it most: girls who had negative rather than positive outgroup attitudes at the outset. We discuss our results in light of previous research and contextual particularities.

Ambivalent stereotypes link to peace, conflict, and inequality across 38 nations.

A cross-national study, 49 samples in 38 nations (n = 4,344), investigates whether national peace and conflict reflect ambivalent warmth and competence stereotypes: High-conflict societies (Pakistan) may need clearcut, unambivalent group images distinguishing friends from foes. Highly peaceful countries (Denmark) also may need less ambivalence because most groups occupy the shared national identity, with only a few outcasts. Finally, nations with intermediate conflict (United States) may need ambivalence to justify more complex intergroup-system stability. Using the Global Peace Index to measure conflict, a curvilinear (quadratic) relationship between ambivalence and conflict highlights how both extremely peaceful and extremely conflictual countries display lower stereotype ambivalence, whereas countries intermediate on peace-conflict present higher ambivalence. These data also replicated a linear inequality-ambivalence relationship.

The dynamics of interminority extended contact: The role of affective and cognitive mediators.

OBJECTIVE: Research on intergroup contact and prejudice reduction has dedicated little attention to relations between minority groups. We examined whether interminority extended contact, that is, the knowledge that a member of the minority ingroup has a friend from the minority outgroup, is associated with positive outgroup attitudes. Affective (outgroup empathy and outgroup trust) and cognitive (ingroup norm) mediators were considered. METHOD: Two correlational studies were conducted. Study 1 (N = 640, 50% female, mean age = 44 years) was conducted in Bulgaria among the Bulgarian Turkish and Roma ethnic minorities, while Study 2 (N = 458, 67% female, mean age = 44 years) was conducted in Finland among Estonian and Russian immigrants. RESULTS: Path analyses showed that, over and above the effects of direct contact between the minority groups, interminority extended contact was associated with positive outgroup attitudes in both intergroup settings. These effects occurred through empathy (Study 1), trust, and ingroup norms (Study 2). CONCLUSION: The 2 studies highlight interminority extended contact as a means to promote harmonious interminority relationships and suggest the implementation of interventions based on extended contact to reduce interminority prejudice and to foster solidarity among minorities. (PsycINFO Database Record

Ramifications of positive and negative contact experiences among remigrants from Russia to Finland.

OBJECTIVES: This article focuses on the effects of positive and negative contact with majority Finns on the outgroup attitudes of remigrants from Russia to Finland. We tested (a) whether negative contact leads to negative outgroup attitudes via perceived threats, and (b) whether positive contact leads to positive outgroup attitudes via perceived gains seen to result from contact with majority Finns. We also tested whether the effects of contact with majority members generalized to attitudes toward other immigrant groups living in Finland. METHOD: The study used 2-wave longitudinal panel data on Ingrian-Finnish remigrants (NT1 = 133, mean age 46.4 years, 73% females; NT2 = 85, mean age 49.3 years, 73% females). RESULTS: The results attested the effects of positive contact experiences on attitudes toward both majority and other minority group members, via perceived gains. As regards negative contact, it was associated with more negative attitudes toward the majority via perceived threats, but no evidence of secondary transfer effect on attitudes toward other immigrants was found. CONCLUSIONS: The results highlight the importance of simultaneous examination of positive and negative contact. Especially positive contact and gains perceived to result from it can be powerful tools in promoting positive outgroup attitudes also among minority group members. The results also show the role of majority group members in defining interminority attitudes.

National identification and attitudes towards Russian immigrants in Finland: Investigating the role of perceived threats and gains.

In this cross-sectional study, we examined the relationship between national identification of majority Finns (nation-wide probability sample, N = 335) and their attitudes towards Russian immigrants living in Finland. As previous research indicates both possibilities, we tested whether this relationship was moderated or mediated by threats and gains perceived to result from immigration. The results supported the mediation hypothesis; those individuals who identified stronger with their national ingroup perceived more threats than gains related to increased immigration and these perceptions, in turn, were associated with more negative attitudes towards immigrants. The role of realistic as opposed to symbolic threats and gains was particularly pronounced. The implications of the results are discussed in terms of their theoretical relevance and practical means to improve intergroup relations, with a particular focus on the relations between Finns and Russian immigrants in Finland.

Perceived ethnic superiority and immigrants' attitudes towards multiculturalism and the national majority.

Despite the recent multidimensional conceptualisations of social identities, previous research on the relationship between ingroup identification and outgroup attitudes has approached the former mainly through the strength of cognitive-emotional identification. In our study among Russian-speaking immigrants living in Finland (N = 312), we focused on the direct and interactive effects of the strength of ethnic identification and perceived ethnic superiority on immigrants' support for multiculturalism and outgroup attitudes towards national majority. First, we found perceived ethnic superiority to be directly and negatively associated with outgroup attitudes. Second, we found a positive relationship between ethnic identification and support for multiculturalism only when ethnic superiority was not perceived. The results highlight the different ramifications of high ethnic identification and perceived superiority and speak for the destructive attitudinal effects of the latter.