Social norms (not threat) mediate willingness to sacrifice in individuals fused with the nation : Insights from the COVID-19 pandemic

Acord transformatiu CRUE-CSICIdentity fusion with the community has been previously found to mediate altruism in post-disaster settings. However, whether this altruistic response is specifically triggered by ingroup threat, or whether it can also be triggered by global threats remains unclear. We evaluated willingness to sacrifice in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic across three survey waves. Against expectations, participants fused with the nation (vs. non-fused) did not differentially respond to a national versus global threat condition. Conversely, social norms decisively influenced willingness to sacrifice in this sample, with fused individuals with stronger norms about social distancing reporting the highest altruistic response during the first weeks of the pandemic. Longitudinally, after an initial peak in the altruistic response, deteriorating social norms mediated decreases in willingness to sacrifice in individuals fused with the nation (vs. non-fused). Implications of these results for the development of interventions aimed to address global challenges are discussed

The Psychology of Hate: Moral Concerns Differentiate Hate from Dislike

We investigated whether any differences in the psychological conceptualization of hate and dislike were simply a matter of degree of negativity (i.e., hate falls on the end of the continuum of dislike) or also morality (i.e., hate is imbued with distinct moral components that distinguish it from dislike). In three lab studies in Canada and the United States, participants reported disliked and hated attitude objects and rated each on dimensions including valence, attitude strength, morality, and emotional content. Quantitative and qualitative measures revealed that hated attitude objects were more negative than disliked attitude objects and associated with moral beliefs and emotions, even after adjusting for differences in negativity. In Study 4, we analysed the rhetoric on real hate sites and complaint forums and found that the language used on prominent hate websites contained more words related to morality, but not negativity, relative to complaint forums

Addressing climate change with behavioral science:A global intervention tournament in 63 countries

Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interventions' effectiveness was small, largely limited to nonclimate skeptics, and differed across outcomes: Beliefs were strengthened mostly by decreasing psychological distance (by 2.3%), policy support by writing a letter to a future-generation member (2.6%), information sharing by negative emotion induction (12.1%), and no intervention increased the more effortful behavior-several interventions even reduced tree planting. Last, the effects of each intervention differed depending on people's initial climate beliefs. These findings suggest that the impact of behavioral climate interventions varies across audiences and target behaviors.</p

Addressing climate change with behavioral science: a global intervention tournament in 63 countries

Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interventions’ effectiveness was small, largely limited to nonclimate skeptics, and differed across outcomes: Beliefs were strengthened mostly by decreasing psychological distance (by 2.3%), policy support by writing a letter to a future-generation member (2.6%), information sharing by negative emotion induction (12.1%), and no intervention increased the more effortful behavior—several interventions even reduced tree planting. Last, the effects of each intervention differed depending on people’s initial climate beliefs. These findings suggest that the impact of behavioral climate interventions varies across audiences and target behaviors

Addressing climate change with behavioral science:A global intervention tournament in 63 countries

Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interventions' effectiveness was small, largely limited to nonclimate skeptics, and differed across outcomes: Beliefs were strengthened mostly by decreasing psychological distance (by 2.3%), policy support by writing a letter to a future-generation member (2.6%), information sharing by negative emotion induction (12.1%), and no intervention increased the more effortful behavior-several interventions even reduced tree planting. Last, the effects of each intervention differed depending on people's initial climate beliefs. These findings suggest that the impact of behavioral climate interventions varies across audiences and target behaviors.</p

Neural mechanisms of willingness to fight and die for sacred values in the context of intercultural conflict

Los conflictos interculturales a menudo se propagan y se mantienen en base a una defensa apasionada de puntos de vista opuestos, tanto de tipo religioso como nacionalista, por parte de miembros de una comunidad moral dispuestos a defenderlos a costa incluso de su propia vida. El conocimiento que se tiene del sustrato neurobiológico de estos “valores sagrados” o “creencias sobrevaloradas” que definen el grupo de pertenencia es bastante pobre. Hasta la fecha, no se ha publicado ningún estudio de neuroimagen realizado en el contexto de un conflicto intercultural real. Este es el primer estudio de neuroimagen que tiene como objetivo identificar los mecanismos neurales subyacentes a la disposición a luchar y morir (WFD) en defensa de valores sagrados (SVs). Por otra parte, también es el primero en estudiar valores sagrados en una población con valor “ecológico”, al incluir una muestra de varones musulmanes de origen paquistaní reclutados en el área de Barcelona (España) que expresaron puntos de vista políticos radicalizados con respecto al conflicto de Cachemira. Se empleó un paradigma de resonancia magnética funcional para evaluar tanto la actividad neuronal asociada con la WFD por sus valores sagrados como el efecto de la influencia social en la misma medida, evaluando sus reacciones de indignación moral y las posibles diferencias en su puntuación en WFD inducidas por la manipulación social. Como resultado, la WFD por SVs suscitó mayor actividad neuronal en áreas asociadas con el pensamiento deóntico, la valoración afectiva de contenido auto-relevante y la propia agencia (vmPFC / vACC), así como una disminución de la actividad en los nodos neuronales asociadas con el razonamiento utilitarista, la deliberación y la introspección (dmPFC, dlPFC, IFG). A su vez, el feedback social conflictivo suscitó respuestas de ultraje moral, medida que predijo la actividad neuronal en el opérculo parietal, asociada con el dolor y la repugnancia. Sin embargo, las puntuaciones en WFD se mostraron sensibles a la influencia social, cambiando en la dirección establecida por la norma social. Estos resultados sugieren que la WFD por SVs está impulsada principalmente por una búsqueda de auto-exaltación con alta carga emocional que podría responder a expectativas sociales, apuntando a los actos de altruismo extremo como posibles herramientas de validación social que confieren una sensación de empoderamiento personal. Las implicaciones para diferentes estrategias de des-radicalización se discuten al final.Intercultural conflict is often propagated and sustained through an avid defense of opposing cultural views, both religious and nationalistic, that moral community members are ready to defend even at the cost of their own lives. Such group-defining sacred values or extremely overvalued beliefs are only poorly understood in terms of their neurobiological substrate, with no neuroimaging studies conducted in the context of real intercultural conflict. This is the first neuroimaging study aimed to identify the neural mechanisms underlying willingness to fight and die (WFD) in defense of sacred values (SVs). Moreover, it is the first to assess sacred values in a real-world sample of Muslim Pakistani males recruited in the area of Barcelona (Spain), who expressed radicalized political views with respect to the Kashmiri conflict. A functional magnetic resonance paradigm was employed to evaluate both the neural activity associated with WFD for sacred values and the effect of social influence on the same measure, thus assessing post-manipulation moral outrage reactions and possible induced differences in WFD ratings. As a result, WFD for SVs elicited neural activity in areas associated with deontic thinking, affective appraisal of self-relevant content and self-agency (vmPFC/vACC), and decreased activity in neural nodes associated with utilitarian reasoning, deliberation and introspection (dmPFC, dlPFC, IFG). In turn, conflicting social feedback elicited moral outrage responses, which predicted activity in the parietal operculum, associated with pain and disgust. However, WFD ratings were sensitive to social influence, changing in the direction established by the norm. These results suggest that WFD for SVs is primarily driven by affective-laden self-enhancing motives that presumably respond to social expectations, pointing at acts of extreme altruism as social validation tools conferring feelings of personal empowerment. Support for different de-radicalization approaches is discussed in the end

Neural mechanisms of willingness to fight and die for sacred values in the context of intercultural conflict

Los conflictos interculturales a menudo se propagan y se mantienen en base a una defensa apasionada de puntos de vista opuestos, tanto de tipo religioso como nacionalista, por parte de miembros de una comunidad moral dispuestos a defenderlos a costa incluso de su propia vida. El conocimiento que se tiene del sustrato neurobiológico de estos “valores sagrados” o “creencias sobrevaloradas” que definen el grupo de pertenencia es bastante pobre. Hasta la fecha, no se ha publicado ningún estudio de neuroimagen realizado en el contexto de un conflicto intercultural real. Este es el primer estudio de neuroimagen que tiene como objetivo identificar los mecanismos neurales subyacentes a la disposición a luchar y morir (WFD) en defensa de valores sagrados (SVs). Por otra parte, también es el primero en estudiar valores sagrados en una población con valor “ecológico”, al incluir una muestra de varones musulmanes de origen paquistaní reclutados en el área de Barcelona (España) que expresaron puntos de vista políticos radicalizados con respecto al conflicto de Cachemira. Se empleó un paradigma de resonancia magnética funcional para evaluar tanto la actividad neuronal asociada con la WFD por sus valores sagrados como el efecto de la influencia social en la misma medida, evaluando sus reacciones de indignación moral y las posibles diferencias en su puntuación en WFD inducidas por la manipulación social. Como resultado, la WFD por SVs suscitó mayor actividad neuronal en áreas asociadas con el pensamiento deóntico, la valoración afectiva de contenido auto-relevante y la propia agencia (vmPFC / vACC), así como una disminución de la actividad en los nodos neuronales asociadas con el razonamiento utilitarista, la deliberación y la introspección (dmPFC, dlPFC, IFG). A su vez, el feedback social conflictivo suscitó respuestas de ultraje moral, medida que predijo la actividad neuronal en el opérculo parietal, asociada con el dolor y la repugnancia. Sin embargo, las puntuaciones en WFD se mostraron sensibles a la influencia social, cambiando en la dirección establecida por la norma social. Estos resultados sugieren que la WFD por SVs está impulsada principalmente por una búsqueda de auto-exaltación con alta carga emocional que podría responder a expectativas sociales, apuntando a los actos de altruismo extremo como posibles herramientas de validación social que confieren una sensación de empoderamiento personal. Las implicaciones para diferentes estrategias de des-radicalización se discuten al final.Intercultural conflict is often propagated and sustained through an avid defense of opposing cultural views, both religious and nationalistic, that moral community members are ready to defend even at the cost of their own lives. Such group-defining sacred values or extremely overvalued beliefs are only poorly understood in terms of their neurobiological substrate, with no neuroimaging studies conducted in the context of real intercultural conflict. This is the first neuroimaging study aimed to identify the neural mechanisms underlying willingness to fight and die (WFD) in defense of sacred values (SVs). Moreover, it is the first to assess sacred values in a real-world sample of Muslim Pakistani males recruited in the area of Barcelona (Spain), who expressed radicalized political views with respect to the Kashmiri conflict. A functional magnetic resonance paradigm was employed to evaluate both the neural activity associated with WFD for sacred values and the effect of social influence on the same measure, thus assessing post-manipulation moral outrage reactions and possible induced differences in WFD ratings. As a result, WFD for SVs elicited neural activity in areas associated with deontic thinking, affective appraisal of self-relevant content and self-agency (vmPFC/vACC), and decreased activity in neural nodes associated with utilitarian reasoning, deliberation and introspection (dmPFC, dlPFC, IFG). In turn, conflicting social feedback elicited moral outrage responses, which predicted activity in the parietal operculum, associated with pain and disgust. However, WFD ratings were sensitive to social influence, changing in the direction established by the norm. These results suggest that WFD for SVs is primarily driven by affective-laden self-enhancing motives that presumably respond to social expectations, pointing at acts of extreme altruism as social validation tools conferring feelings of personal empowerment. Support for different de-radicalization approaches is discussed in the end

Social norms (not threat) mediate willingness to sacrifice in individuals fused with the nation

Identity fusion with the community has been previously found to mediate altruism in post-disaster settings. However, whether this altruistic response is specifically triggered by ingroup threat, or whether it can also be triggered by global threats remains unclear. We evaluated willingness to sacrifice in the context of the covid-19 pandemic across three surveys waves. Against expectations, participants fused with the nation (vs. non-fused) did not differentially respond to a national vs. global threat condition. Conversely, social norms decisively influenced willingness to sacrifice in this sample, with fused individuals with stronger norms about social distancing reporting the highest altruistic response during the first weeks of the pandemic. Longitudinally, after an initial peak in the altruistic response, deteriorating social norms mediated decreases in willingness to sacrifice in individuals fused with the nation (versus non-fused). Implications of these results for the development of interventions aimed to address global challenges are discussed

Social norms (not threat) mediate willingness to sacrifice in individuals fused with the nation

We measured disposition to sacrifice for others, social norms, social distancing and identity fusion with the nation, the EU and region at three timepoints during the Covid-19 pandemic in a large representative sample in Spain