Investigating How High Perceived Economic Inequality Exacerbates Intergroup Competition, Zero-Sum Beliefs, and Perceived Intergroup Prejudice.

Rising economic inequality is associated with more prejudice. Little empirical data, however, investigate how inequality affects individuals' psychological processing and, in turn, exacerbates perceptions of prejudice in people's geographic area. We hypothesized that higher perceived economic inequality triggers beliefs that unequal economies are zero-sum and leads to beliefs that people are in competition for limited resources, which may ultimately exacerbate perceived prejudice. Through nine experiments (Studies 1-5 in the manuscript and three additional studies in the Supplement), we provide evidence that higher perceived inequality increases perceived prejudice against a wide range of outgroups. Furthermore, zero-sum beliefs and perceived competition serially mediate this relationship (Studies 2 and 3). In Study 4, we investigate nuance in this hypothesized model by testing whether higher perceived economic inequality exacerbates perceived racial/ethnic prejudice among a large, diverse sample and find a similar pattern of results. Finally (Study 5), we demonstrate that assuaging competition beliefs mitigates perceived prejudice.

Perceptions of Falling Behind "Most White People": Within-Group Status Comparisons Predict Fewer Positive Emotions and Worse Health Over Time Among White (but Not Black) Americans.

Despite the persistence of anti-Black racism, White Americans report feeling worse off than Black Americans. We suggest that some White Americans may report low well-being despite high group-level status because of perceptions that they are falling behind their in-group. Using census-based quota sampling, we measured status comparisons and health among Black (N = 452, Wave 1) and White (N = 439, Wave 1) American adults over a period of 6 to 7 weeks. We found that Black and White Americans tended to make status comparisons within their own racial groups and that most Black participants felt better off than their racial group, whereas most White participants felt worse off than their racial group. Moreover, we found that White Americans' perceptions of falling behind "most White people" predicted fewer positive emotions at a subsequent time, which predicted worse sleep quality and depressive symptoms in the future. Subjective within-group status did not have the same consequences among Black participants.

Cascading Influences of Caregiver Experiences of Discrimination and Adolescent Antisocial Behavior.

OBJECTIVE: Although a growing body of work has found that parents' experiences of racial and socioeconomic (SES) based discrimination are directly related to their children's behavior problems , more work is needed to understand possible pathways by which these factors are related and to identify potential targets for prevention and/or intervention. METHOD: Using a large (N = 572), longitudinal sample of low-income families from diverse racial backgrounds, the current study explored whether caregivers' experiences of racial and SES discrimination during their children's middle childhood (i.e. ages 7.5-9.5) predicted youth-reported antisocial behavior during adolescence and potential factors mediating these associations (e.g. caregiver depressive symptoms and positive parenting practices). RESULTS: We found that higher levels of caregiver experiences of discrimination at child ages 7.5-9.5 predicted higher levels of caregiver depressive symptoms at child age 10.5, which were related to lower levels of caregiver endorsement of positive parenting practices at child age 14.5, which in turn, predicted higher levels of youth-reported antisocial behavior at age 16. CONCLUSION: The findings highlight the adverse effects of racism and discrimination in American society. Second, the findings underscore the need to develop interventions which mitigate racism and discrimination among perpetrators and alleviate depressive symptoms among caregivers.

From virility to virtue: the psychology of apology in honor cultures.

In honor cultures, relatively minor disputes can escalate, making numerous forms of aggression widespread. We find evidence that honor cultures' focus on virility impedes a key conflict de-escalation strategy-apology-that can be successfully promoted through a shift in mindset. Across five studies using mixed methods (text analysis of congressional speeches, a cross-cultural comparison, surveys, and experiments), people from honor societies (e.g., Turkey and US honor states), people who endorse honor values, and people who imagine living in a society with strong honor norms are less willing to apologize for their transgressions (studies 1-4). This apology reluctance is driven by concerns about reputation in honor cultures. Notably, honor is achieved not only by upholding strength and reputation (virility) but also through moral integrity (virtue). The dual focus of honor suggests a potential mechanism for promoting apologies: shifting the focus of honor from reputation to moral integrity. Indeed, we find that such a shift led people in honor cultures to perceive apologizing more positively and apologize more (study 5). By identifying a barrier to apologizing in honor cultures and illustrating ways to overcome it, our research provides insights for deploying culturally intelligent conflict-management strategies in such contexts.

The new science of religious change.

Humans have believed in gods and spirits since the earliest days of the Holocene, and many people still believe in them today. Although the existence of religious belief has been a human constant, the nature and prevalence of religion has changed dramatically throughout human history. Here we describe the emerging science of religious change. We first outline a multilevel framework for studying religious change drawn from theories of socioecological psychology and cultural evolution. We illustrate this framework with four case studies featuring two ancient religious changes (the rise of punitive religions and doctrinal rituals) and two modern religious changes (the rise of atheism and nontraditional religions). We then review useful methods for examining religious change, including ethnographic coding, agent-based modeling, and time-series analysis. Next, we explore future directions, highlighting the need for predictive forecasts, nonlinear models, and non-Western samples. We also outline ten key questions that need to be answered for a fuller understanding of religious change. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Tight cultures and vengeful gods: How culture shapes religious belief.

Billions of people from around the world believe in vengeful gods who punish immoral behavior. These punitive religious beliefs may foster prosociality and contribute to large-scale cooperation, but little is known about how these beliefs emerge and why people adopt them in the first place. We present a cultural-psychological model suggesting that cultural tightness-the strictness of cultural norms and normative punishment-helps to catalyze punitive religious beliefs by increasing people's motivation to punish norm violators. Our model also suggests that tightness mediates the impact of ecological threat on punitive belief, explaining why punitive religious beliefs are most common in regions with high levels of ecological threat. Five multimethod studies support these predictions. Studies 1-3 focus on the effect of cultural tightness on punitive religious beliefs. Historical increases in cultural tightness precede and predict historical increases in punitive beliefs (Study 1), and both manipulating people's support for tightness (Study 2) and placing people in a simulated tight society (Study 3) increase punitive religious beliefs via the personal motivation to punish norm violators. Studies 4-5 focus on whether cultural tightness mediates the link between ecological threat and punitive religious beliefs. Cultural tightness helps explain why U.S. states with high ecological threat (e.g., natural hazards, scarcity) have the highest levels of punitive religious beliefs (Study 4) and why experimental manipulations of threat increase punitive religious beliefs (Study 5). Past research has shown how religion impacts culture, but our studies show how culture can shape religion. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The cultural evolutionary trade-off of ritualistic synchrony.

From Australia to the Arctic, human groups engage in synchronous behaviour during communal rituals. Because ritualistic synchrony is widespread, many argue that it is functional for human groups, encouraging large-scale cooperation and group cohesion. Here, we offer a more nuanced perspective on synchrony's function. We review research on synchrony's prosocial effects, but also discuss synchrony's antisocial effects such as encouraging group conflict, decreasing group creativity and increasing harmful obedience. We further argue that a tightness-looseness (TL) framework helps to explain this trade-off and generates new predictions for how ritualistic synchrony should evolve over time, where it should be most prevalent, and how it should affect group well-being. We close by arguing that synthesizing the literature on TL with the literature on synchrony has promise for understanding synchrony's role in a broader cultural evolutionary framework. This article is part of the theme issue 'Ritual renaissance: new insights into the most human of behaviours'.

Conflict Changes How People View God.

Religion shapes the nature of intergroup conflict, but conflict may also shape religion. Here, we report four multimethod studies that reveal the impact of conflict on religious belief: The threat of warfare and intergroup tensions increase the psychological need for order and obedience to rules, which leads people to view God as more punitive. Studies 1 (N = 372) and 2 (N = 911) showed that people's concern about conflict correlates with belief in a punitive God. Study 3 (N = 1,065) found that experimentally increasing the salience of conflict increases people's perceptions of the importance of a punitive God, and this effect is mediated by people's support for a tightly regulated society. Study 4 showed that the severity of warfare predicted and preceded worldwide fluctuations in punitive-God belief between 1800 CE and 2000 CE. Our findings illustrate how conflict can change the nature of religious belief and add to a growing literature showing how cultural ecologies shape psychology.