Defend, Deny, Distance, and Dismantle: A New Measure of Advantaged Identity Management.

The experience of privilege can trigger psychological conflict among advantaged group members. Nonetheless, little work has explored strategies that advantaged group members use to manage their identities as privileged actors. Building on Knowles et al.'s framework and theories of intergroup relations, we address the conceptualization and measurement of advantaged group identity-management strategies. We aim to refine theorizing and validate a measure of these strategies across three contexts (U.S.'s White-Black relations, Israel's Jewish-Arab/Palestinian relations, and U.S.'s gender relations). This process yielded two novel conceptual and empirical contributions. First, we add a strategy-defend-in which advantaged-group members overtly justify inequality. Second, we discover that distancing has two facets (distancing from inequality and from identity). Across six studies, we find support for our proposed factor structure, measurement invariance, and construct validity. We discuss how advantaged groups contend with privilege and offer a tool for studying these strategies across domains and contexts.

When Are Social Protests Effective?

Around the world, people engage in social protests aimed at addressing major societal problems. Certain protests have led to significant progress, yet other protests have resulted in little demonstrable change. We introduce a framework for evaluating the effectiveness of social protest made up of three components: (i) what types of action are being considered; (ii) what target audience is being affected; and (iii) what outcomes are being evaluated? We then review relevant research to suggest how the framework can help synthesize conflicting findings in the literature. This synthesis points to two key conclusions: that nonviolent protests are effective at mobilizing sympathizers to support the cause, whereas more disruptive protests can motivate support for policy change among resistant individuals.

How our ideological out-group shapes our emotional response to our shared socio-political reality.

What shapes our emotional responses to socio-political events? Following the social identity approach, we suggest that individuals adjust their emotional responses to socio-political stimuli based on their ideological out-group's responses, in a manner that preserves the comparative and normative fit of ideological in-group-out-group categories. In Study 1 and Study 2 (pre-registered), Jewish-Israeli leftists and rightists were exposed to their ideological out-group's alleged emotional response to a stimulus associated with Israeli-Palestinian relations, which was either stereotypical (leftists expressing low anger and rightists expressing high anger) or non-stereotypical (leftists expressing high anger and rightists expressing low anger). Across studies, participants reported more positive affect towards their ideological out-group when its response to the stimulus was non-stereotypical versus stereotypical, yet their own response to the stimulus became more "extreme" (towards the low end of the anger scale for leftists, and towards the high end of the anger scale for rightists), shifting farther away from their ideological out-group norm. Our findings suggest that in highly polarized contexts, where "leftist" and "rightist" identities are largely defined in comparison to one another, the "positioning" of ideological groups relative to one another plays a role in shaping their responses to their shared socio-political reality.

Ingroup love, outgroup hate, and the gateway group effect: Comparing the direct and indirect impact of dual versus single identification.

Decades of research in social identity have shown that people instinctively hold positive attitudes towards ingroup members and negative attitudes towards outgroup members. However, it remains unclear how people respond to individuals explicitly identified with both one's ingroup and outgroup. We propose that when people are exposed to dual-identified individuals and groups (e.g., Muslim-Americans explicitly identifying with both their Muslim and American identities), intergroup attitudes will improve, driven more by the ingroup component (American), despite the presence of the outgroup component (Muslim). Moreover, we suggest exposure to dual-identification can also improve attitudes toward the broader outgroup (Muslims more generally), a phenomenon called the gateway-group effect. To test these hypotheses, we created a new measure of dual-identification and conducted three studies involving both Muslim-Americans and Mexican-Americans. Results confirmed that exposure to explicitly dual-identified groups improved attitudes towards the dual-identified group (e.g., Mexican-Americans) as well as toward the respective outgroup (e.g., Mexicans).

The mother of violations: Motherhood as the primary expectation of women.

Recent conservative political rhetoric support women having careers but emphasize that this should not be an obstacle to having children. We propose that this sentiment reflects the hierarchy of gender norms in today's society whereby motherhood is the ultimate role that women are expected to fulfil and denying such role evokes social penalties, above and beyond other prescribed gender norms. Across five experiments (N = 738), we predicted and found that voluntarily childless women elicit more negative reactions than mothers, and importantly, also more than women violating other gender norms in the realm of occupation (Study 1), power (Study 2) or sexual orientation (Study 3). We demonstrate that these patterns cannot be explained merely by a perceived lack of communal qualities of the non-mothers (Study 4) and also show that involuntary childless women do not receive the same negativity (Study 5). We discuss this, often neglected, gender bias and its resistance to social change.

The aversive bystander effect whereby egalitarian bystanders overestimate the confrontation of prejudice.

Everyday expression of prejudice continues to pose a social challenge across societies. We tend to assume that to the extent people are egalitarian, they are more likely to confront prejudice-but this might not necessarily be the case. We tested this assumption in two countries (US and Hungary) among majority members of society, using a behavioral paradigm for measuring confronting. Prejudice was directed at various outgroup minority individuals (African Americans, Muslims and Latinos in the US, and Roma in Hungary). Across four experiments (N = 1116), we predicted and found that egalitarian (anti-prejudiced) values were only associated with hypothetical confronting intentions, but not with actual confronting, and stronger egalitarians were more likely to overestimate their confronting than weaker egalitarians-to the point that while intentions differed, the actual confronting rate of stronger and weaker egalitarians were similar. We also predicted and found that such overestimation was associated with internal (and not external) motivation to respond without prejudice. We also identified behavioral uncertainty (being uncertain how to intervene) as a potential explanation for egalitarians' overestimation. The implications of these findings for egalitarians' self-reflection, intergroup interventions, and research are discussed.

The Role of Witnesses in Humiliation: Why Does the Presence of an Audience Facilitate Humiliation Among Victims of Devaluation?

We examined the role that witnesses play in triggering humiliation. We hypothesized that witnesses trigger humiliation because they intensify the two core appraisals underlying humiliation: unfairness and internalization of a devaluation of the self. However, we further propose that witnesses are not a defining characteristic of humiliating situations. Results of a preliminary study using an event-recall method confirmed that witnesses were as characteristic of humiliating episodes as of those that elicited shame or anger. In Experiments 1 and 2, we manipulated the presence (vs. absence) of witnesses when a professor devalued participants and the hostile tone of this devaluation. As hypothesized, in both experiments, witnesses indirectly increased humiliation via the appraisal of unfairness. Results of Experiment 2 revealed that the presence of witnesses also interacted with hostility, enhancing humiliation. As expected, this moderating effect occurred via the other key appraisal of humiliation (i.e., internalization).

Protest movements involving limited violence can sometimes be effective: Evidence from the 2020 BlackLivesMatter protests.

SignificanceThe effects of recent protests for racial equality, particularly when they included violence, are currently of public and academic interest. To better understand these effects, we combine a dataset of all 2020 BlackLivesMatter protests with survey data containing measures of prejudice and support for police reform. Protests were not associated with reductions in prejudice, but were associated with increases in support for police reform. Specifically, a mix of nonviolent and violent protests was associated with an increase in police-reform support among conservatives living in liberal areas. This study highlights the importance of considering multiple measures of protest effectiveness and suggests that mass protest (including when it mixes nonviolence and violence) can be effective at advancing the movement's goals.

The gender-binary cycle: the perpetual relations between a biological-essentialist view of gender, gender ideology, and gender-labelling and sorting.

Gender inequality is one of the most pressing issues of our time. A core factor that feeds gender inequality is people's gender ideology-a set of beliefs about the proper order of society in terms of the roles women and men should fill. We argue that gender ideology is shaped, in large parts, by the way people make sense of gender differences. Specifically, people often think of gender differences as expressions of a predetermined biology, and of men and women as different 'kinds'. We describe work suggesting that thinking of gender differences in this biological-essentialist way perpetuates a non-egalitarian gender ideology. We then review research that refutes the hypothesis that men and women are different 'kinds' in terms of brain function, hormone levels and personality characteristics. Next, we describe how the organization of the environment in a gender-binary manner, together with cognitive processes of categorization drive a biological-essentialist view of gender differences. We then describe the self-perpetuating relations, which we term the gender-binary cycle, between a biological-essentialist view of gender differences, a non-egalitarian gender ideology and a binary organization of the environment along gender lines. Finally, we consider means of intervention at different points in this cycle. This article is part of the theme issue 'The political brain: neurocognitive and computational mechanisms'.

Disrupting the system constructively: Testing the effectiveness of nonnormative nonviolent collective action.

Collective action research tends to focus on motivations of the disadvantaged group, rather than on which tactics are effective at driving the advantaged group to make concessions to the disadvantaged. We focused on the potential of nonnormative nonviolent action as a tactic to generate support for concessions among advantaged group members who are resistant to social change. We propose that this tactic, relative to normative nonviolent and to violent action, is particularly effective because it reflects constructive disruption: a delicate balance between disruption (which can put pressure on the advantaged group to respond) and perceived constructive intentions (which can help ensure that the response to action is a conciliatory one). We test these hypotheses across 4 contexts (total N = 3650). Studies 1-3 demonstrate that nonnormative nonviolent action (compared with inaction, normative nonviolent action, and violent action) is uniquely effective at increasing support for concessions to the disadvantaged among resistant advantaged group members (compared with advantaged group members more open to social change). Study 3 shows that constructive disruption mediates this effect. Study 4 shows that perceiving a real-world ongoing protest as constructively disruptive predicts support for the disadvantaged, whereas Study 5 examines these processes longitudinally over 2 months in the context of an ongoing social movement. Taken together, we show that nonnormative nonviolent action can be an effective tactic for generating support for concessions to the disadvantaged among those who are most resistant because it generates constructive disruption. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

With or without you: The paradoxical role of identification in predicting joint and ingroup collective action in intergroup conflict.

While we have a rich understanding of the motivations of disadvantaged group members to act collectively with their group, especially the important role played by identification, we know less about the disadvantaged's motivations to engage in joint action with the advantaged. This research examines the role of identification in predicting joint and ingroup collective action in intergroup conflicts. Since joint action inherently diffuses the perception of "us versus them", we propose that identification predicts ingroup action, but not joint action. We also examine conflict intensity as a moderator, and examine how changing identification is linked to change in support for joint action. We test these hypotheses in a three-wave longitudinal study in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Results support our hypotheses, demonstrating that identification positively predicts ingroup action but not necessarily joint action, and that when conflict intensifies, changes in identification are negatively related to joint action with outgroup members.

Measurement invariance of the moral vitalism scale across 28 cultural groups.

Moral vitalism refers to a tendency to view good and evil as actual forces that can influence people and events. The Moral Vitalism Scale had been designed to assess moral vitalism in a brief survey form. Previous studies established the reliability and validity of the scale in US-American and Australian samples. In this study, the cross-cultural comparability of the scale was tested across 28 different cultural groups worldwide through measurement invariance tests. A series of exact invariance tests marginally supported partial metric invariance, however, an approximate invariance approach provided evidence of partial scalar invariance for a 5-item measure. The established level of measurement invariance allows for comparisons of latent means across cultures. We conclude that the brief measure of moral vitalism is invariant across 28 cultures and can be used to estimate levels of moral vitalism with the same precision across very different cultural settings.

Justice Agents: Discriminated Group Members Are Perceived to be Highly Committed to Social Justice.

We propose that because members of discriminated (vs. advantaged) groups have a history of dealing with injustice, majority group members expect them to be more committed to social justice. By commitment to social justice, we mean supporting, and caring for, the basic rights of virtually any marginalized group. Studies 1a (N = 145) and 1b (N = 120) revealed that members of discriminated (vs. relatively advantaged) groups were seen as having a stronger commitment to social justice. This was explained by participants' perception of discriminated groups as having a tradition of fighting injustice (Study 2; N = 174). Demonstrating implications of these perceptions, discriminated (relative to advantaged) group members were assigned more justice-related roles in the workplace (Study 3a: N = 120; Study 3b: N = 126; Study 4: N = 133), and their justice-related initiatives were rated more negatively (Study 5: N = 259). Theoretical and practical implications regarding minority-majority relations and minorities' ability to advance in workplace hierarchies are discussed.

Explaining illness with evil: pathogen prevalence fosters moral vitalism.

Pathogens represent a significant threat to human health leading to the emergence of strategies designed to help manage their negative impact. We examined how spiritual beliefs developed to explain and predict the devastating effects of pathogens and spread of infectious disease. Analysis of existing data in studies 1 and 2 suggests that moral vitalism (beliefs about spiritual forces of evil) is higher in geographical regions characterized by historical higher levels of pathogens. Furthermore, drawing on a sample of 3140 participants from 28 countries in study 3, we found that historical higher levels of pathogens were associated with stronger endorsement of moral vitalistic beliefs. Furthermore, endorsement of moral vitalistic beliefs statistically mediated the previously reported relationship between pathogen prevalence and conservative ideologies, suggesting these beliefs reinforce behavioural strategies which function to prevent infection. We conclude that moral vitalism may be adaptive: by emphasizing concerns over contagion, it provided an explanatory model that enabled human groups to reduce rates of contagious disease.

A Darker Side of Hope: Harmony-Focused Hope Decreases Collective Action Intentions Among the Disadvantaged.

Hope is viewed as a positive emotion associated with the motivation to change existing conditions. As such, it is highly relevant for social change, particularly when considering disadvantaged groups. We propose that, in the context of unequal intergroup relations, hope may actually undermine motivation for change among disadvantaged group members. Specifically, we distinguish between hope targeted at harmony with the outgroup and hope targeted at social equality between groups. Drawing on insights regarding the consequences of positive intergroup interactions, we predict that hope for harmony with the outgroup can undermine the constructive tension that motivates the disadvantaged toward equality. Across four studies, involving different intergroup contexts, hope for harmony was negatively associated with disadvantaged group members' motivation for collective action. We further found that high identifiers from the disadvantaged group were immune to this effect. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for the role of hope in social change.

Promoting intergroup openness and support for equality in a new cultural context: Replicating the effects of internal criticism.

Exposure to an outgroup member voicing criticism of his or her own group fosters greater openness to the outgroup's perspective. Research suggests that this effect owes its influence to a serial process in which participants' perception of the risk involved in voicing internal criticism leads to an increase in the perceived credibility of the speaker. The credibility makes it possible for the speaker to be viewed as open-minded, which subsequently inspires greater hope. This process culminates in an increased openness to the outgroup. These findings have been restricted to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but here we examine their generalizability to racial conflict in the United States. Results reveal that White Americans exposed to internal criticism expressed by a Black authority figure express greater openness to African-American perspectives on race relations and are more willing to support policies of racial equality. Replicating past research, this effect is serially mediated by risk, credibility, and hope.

Threat to the Group's Image Can Motivate High Identifiers to Take Action Against In-group Transgressions.

When transgressions are committed by a group, those highly identified with the group are often least likely to recognize the transgressions, feel collective guilt, and engage in action to address them. We hypothesized that especially among high identifiers, demonstrating that in-group transgressions threaten the group's image can induce normative conflict and thus collective guilt and action. In the first study, we demonstrate that high (vs. low) image threat increases normative conflict among high identifiers. In Study 2, we show that inducing normative conflict through image threat leads to increased collective guilt and collective action among high identifiers. In Study 3, we replicate this effect with the addition of a control condition to demonstrate increased normative conflict and collective guilt relative to both a low threat and baseline conditions. In Study 4, we again replicate these effects with a modified manipulation that more precisely manipulated image threat. Together, these studies indicate that image threat can be an effective motivator for high identifiers to address in-group transgressions.

Stereotype Deduction About Bisexual Women.

Bisexuals are an invisible sexual minority. However, at the same time, bisexuals are stereotypically associated with confusion and promiscuity. Stereotype learning theories suggest that individuals who are unfamiliar with a social group are less likely to have stereotypical beliefs about its members. In contrast, it has been recently hypothesized that stereotypes about bisexuality are not necessarily learned but rather deduced based on common conceptualizations of sexuality. Because stereotypes are suppressed only if they are recognized as offensive, lack of knowledge regarding bisexual stereotypes should actually enhance their adoption. To assess the strength of the two competing accounts, we examined the relationship between explicit knowledge of bisexual stereotypes and stereotypical evaluation of bisexual individuals. Heterosexual participants (N = 261) read a description of two characters on a date and evaluated one of them. Bisexual women were evaluated as more confused and promiscuous relative to nonbisexual women. Moreover, the stereotypical evaluations of bisexual women were inversely related to knowledge about these stereotypes. The findings support the notion that bisexual stereotypes are not learned but rather deduced from shared assumptions about sexuality. Consequently, public invisibility not only exists alongside bisexual stereotypes but might also exacerbate their uninhibited adoption.

Bias against research on gender bias.

The bias against women in academia is a documented phenomenon that has had detrimental consequences, not only for women, but also for the quality of science. First, gender bias in academia affects female scientists, resulting in their underrepresentation in academic institutions, particularly in higher ranks. The second type of gender bias in science relates to some findings applying only to male participants, which produces biased knowledge. Here, we identify a third potentially powerful source of gender bias in academia: the bias against research on gender bias. In a bibliometric investigation covering a broad range of social sciences, we analyzed published articles on gender bias and race bias and established that articles on gender bias are funded less often and published in journals with a lower Impact Factor than articles on comparable instances of social discrimination. This result suggests the possibility of an underappreciation of the phenomenon of gender bias and related research within the academic community. Addressing this meta-bias is crucial for the further examination of gender inequality, which severely affects many women across the world.

Outgroup members' internal criticism promotes intergroup openness: The role of perceived risk.

Research suggests that hearing an outgroup member voice internal criticism increases individuals' openness to the outgroup's perspective. We replicate and extend these findings in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israeli participants exposed to a Palestinian official voicing internal criticism reported more openness to the Palestinian narrative of the conflict, an effect that was mediated by an increase in participants' perception that Palestinians are open-minded and a subsequent increase in their hope for more positive relations between the two groups. In our extension of these findings, we examined a complementary mechanism contributing to the effectiveness of the criticism manipulation, specifically the extent to which participants perceive that the Palestinian official took a risk voicing criticism of Palestinians. Positive messages from a hostile outgroup may be received with suspicion, but if they are articulated under great risk to the speaker, greater credibility may be granted. Across two studies, we demonstrate that the criticism conveys risk to the speaker and that this risk is predictive of the perceived credibility of the speaker, and participants' subsequent openness to the outgroup's perspective.