The intent and extent of collective threats: A data-driven conceptualization of collective threats and their relation to political preferences.

The purpose of the present article is to systematically investigate how people perceive collective threat and how such threat perceptions relate to political preferences. Existing threat taxonomies are mostly derived from top-down analyses and little attempt has been made to examine bottom-up how people spontaneously perceive threats. One area where this is of central importance is the relationship between political preferences and threat perception. Prevailing theories in social psychology primarily study security and stability threats and conclude that conservatives are more sensitive to threats than liberals. Other perspectives, however, have criticized this position and maintain that the relationship between threat and political preferences depends on how both constructs are defined. To resolve this issue, we carried out a systematic, data-driven investigation of how collective threats are perceived. In five preregistered, data-driven studies, carried out on representative cross-cultural samples (aggregate N = 24,341), we show that people tend to categorize collective threats along two dimensions-their intent (omission/commission) and extent (local/global). We show that whereas liberals are more concerned than conservatives by omission-based and global threats, conservatives are more concerned than liberals by commission-based and local threats. These results suggest that collective threat is a multidimensional construct and that political leftists and rightists do not necessarily differ in the extent to which they perceive threats, but rather in the way they prioritize different threats facing society. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

For the Sake of the Eternal Group: Perceiving the Group as Trans-Generational and Endurance of Ingroup Suffering.

We introduce the distinction between perceiving the group as Intra-Generational (IG; including only the present generation of group members) and Trans-Generational (TG; including all past, present, and future generations of the group). In four studies ( N = 1,265) administered to Jewish Israeli, Palestinian Israeli, American, and Swedish samples, we demonstrate that a tendency to perceive the group as TG is related to willingness to endure ingroup suffering and that this relationship is mediated by the degree to which the interest of the group as a whole is given primacy over the interest of the group as a collection of group members (Primacy of Interest). Furthermore, experimentally raising the salience of the group as TG leads to increased willingness to endure ingroup suffering as compared with raising the salience of the group as IG, and the effect of the TG salience manipulation is mediated by Primacy of Interest.

The relationship between sensory processing, childhood rituals and obsessive-compulsive symptoms.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Studies of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and research in occupational therapy suggest a link between sensory hypersensitivity and excessive use of rituals. The present research constitutes an initial attempt to examine this potential link. METHODS: In Study 1, parents of 4-6-year old children (N = 61) completed the Childhood Routine Inventory, the Sensory Profile and the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders. In Study 2 we administered an adapted version of the sensory profile to an internet sample of adult participants (N = 314) together with the Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory-Revised, the anxiety subscale of the International Personality Item Pool - NEO and items measuring participants' recollection of their childhood oral and tactile hypersensitivity. RESULTS: Strong reactions to everyday sensory events were highly correlated with childhood ritualism, even after controlling for anxiety. In the adult sample, current and recollected oral and tactile hypersensitivity were significantly related to OCD symptoms. LIMITATIONS: In Study 1, children's sensory sensitivity was not tested directly, but rather through parental report. The scale was developed ad hoc based on face validity and relationship with ritualism. The studies were cross-sectional in design. Study 2 partially relied on recollection of childhood behavior. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest a strong relationship between sensory sensitivity, childhood ritualism and adult OCD symptoms. Oral and tactile hypersensitivity in childhood may be one pathway to adult OCD.