Antecedents and Consequences of System Justification among Iranian Migrants in Western Europe

Social decision makin

Social creativity: reviving a social identity approach to social stability

Social Identity Theory (SIT) is commonly applied to explain social change. We aim to revive interest in the concept of social creativity in order to provide a SIT perspective on bolstering and challenging social stability. Social creativity allows people to maintain or achieve a positive social identity through re-interpreting intergroup relations. Despite this crucial role in shaping intergroup comparisons, the causes and effects of social creativity are largely unknown. To understand how social creativity can contribute to social stability, we argue for a return to SIT's dynamic nature of constantly renegotiating intergroup relations, involving both higher- and lower-status groups. Within these dynamics, we propose that social creativity can play the roles of coping with, promoting, and questioning social stability. Additionally, we outline a research agenda for future research on social creativity and discuss the impact that social stability can have in societies.Social decision makin

Acting Proactively to Manage Job Insecurity: How Worrying About the Future of One’s Job May Obstruct Future-Focused Thinking and Behavior

An increasing number of people experience insecurity about the future of their job, making it more important than ever to manage this insecurity. While previous research suggests that proactive coping is a promising way to alleviate job insecurity, we suggest that, paradoxically, it may be particularly difficult to act proactively when feeling emotionally distressed about the future of one’s job. Drawing on the principle of resource scarcity and the Conservation of Resources theory, we propose that affective job insecurity ignites a scarcity mindset that inhibits workers’ future focus and cognitive functioning, thereby undermining proactive career behavior. Additionally, we examine whether income adequacy can compensate for these negative consequences of job insecurity. Results of a three-wave survey study among 108 self-employed professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic showed that initial affective job insecurity was negatively related to cognitive functioning but unrelated to future focus. Yet, the latter relationship was moderated by income adequacy: affective job insecurity was positively related to future focus when participants reported high income adequacy. In turn, future focus was positively related to proactive career behavior, which was subsequently related to lower cognitive job insecurity. Thus, while replicating the finding that workers can proactively manage their cognitive job insecurity, we also showed that initial affective job insecurity may obstruct people’s cognitive functioning. We discuss how our results signal a Matthew effect, in which job insecure people with sufficient means are able to look ahead and proactively build resources to change their career, while job insecure people with insufficient means may fall behind

The Role and Impact of Iranian Migrants in Western Europe

In light of increasing migration in Europe, the aim of the current study is to gather a better understanding of the societal position, societal and political participation, and embeddedness of migrants in Western European countries. The Iranian migrant community is used as a case study. The research used an online questionnaire which was distributed in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. 935 participants completed the questionnaire which was advertised through different online media channels. The questionnaire was translated and available in Persian, French, German, English, Swedish and Dutch