Minority versus Majority : a New Paradigm of Intergroup Conflict

Living in an ethnically and culturally heterogeneous social setting has been a prime subject for a variety of social science disciplines. This dissertation adds to the discussion by addressing the dynamics of conflict between minorities and majorities from a novel theoretical perspective. More precisely, it tackles the question of majorities discriminating against minorities by situating the question in the Structural Goal/Expectation Theory (sGET) approach. Rather than rely on identity or attitude, sGET argues for an evolutionary view of human intergroup behaviour in which, crucially, the incentive structures inherent to the situation and the interpersonal interaction between the actors can be directly linked to behaviour. To test this approach, four studies have been conducted and are presented in this work. These studies show that the dilemma which comes with managing common resources, is a crucial component to understanding minority discrimination in heterogeneous societies

Preemptive strike: An experimental study of fear-based aggression

AbstractThe mere presence of a potential threat of attack was found to be sufficient to lead a significant proportion of participants to engage in preemptive attacks toward potential threats; this response occurred even without an incentive for either party to attack the other. We developed a new experimental game—the preemptive strike game (PSG)—to demonstrate this tendency for defensive aggression. We also found that the rate at which participants attacked an individual representing a potential threat was not influenced by their minimal group membership; participants were no less likely to preemptively attack a member of their own minimal group and no more likely to use aggression against members of another minimal group. These findings indicate a need to further examine the role that fear-based defensive aggression, rather than anger-based spiteful aggression, plays in inter-individual and inter-group conflict

Us and ours : anti-immigrant sentiment as a function of common resource management

In this work, we investigate how parochial concerns for common resources, such as tax-funded goods, relate to prejudice against immigrants. Previous experimental work showed majority groups assume minorities will exploit common resources without contributing toward their maintenance. We relate predictions about, and support for, various types of common resources to prejudice against immigrants in two correlational studies. Prejudice against immigrants was negatively associated with support for universal, but positively with security-related resources. Participants' prediction that minority groups would contribute less to the management of communally shared resources was reflected in the degree of negative attitudes they expressed against immigrants in particular. We discuss these results in view of political narratives about immigrants and common resource management policies

Minderheit versus Mehrheit : ein neues Paradigma des Intergruppenkonfliktes

Living in an ethnically and culturally heterogeneous social setting has been a prime subject for a variety of social science disciplines. This dissertation adds to the discussion by addressing the dynamics of conflict between minorities and majorities from a novel theoretical perspective. More precisely, it tackles the question of majorities discriminating against minorities by situating the question in the Structural Goal/Expectation Theory (sGET) approach. Rather than rely on identity or attitude, sGET argues for an evolutionary view of human intergroup behaviour in which, crucially, the incentive structures inherent to the situation and the interpersonal interaction between the actors can be directly linked to behaviour. To test this approach, four studies have been conducted and are presented in this work. These studies show that the dilemma which comes with managing common resources, is a crucial component to understanding minority discrimination in heterogeneous societies

“More” or “enough”? Rural-urban differences in maximizing: The case of India

The present study aims to understand rural-urban differences in India as determined by market regimes, as well as by cultural and prosperity factors. The study focuses on people's maximizing as opposed to satisficing decision preferences. Maximizing stands for people's preference to continuously strive for better options, whereas satisficing means choosing a ‘good enough’ option. It was predicted that corporate employees in an urban metropolitan region would maximize more than the rural farmers due to socio-cultural and economic factors being more market-conducive in the urban region. Individualism-collectivism, achievement motivation, neoliberalism, as well as various classical socioeconomic indicators were taken into account as cultural and economic factors. The study was conducted utilizing field surveys in two Hindi-speaking rural and urban regions in Northern India by using established scales translated to Hindi. Middle-income farmers were recruited in the rural region, while corporate employees were recruited in the urban region. Overall, data were collected for 417 participants in both regions (rural, n = 195/urban, n = 222). Results show that urban participants maximize significantly more than the rural participants. This difference was fully mediated by stronger neoliberal beliefs in the urban region. Higher maximizing tendencies in the metropolitan region can be attributed to more competitive neoliberal–capitalist–market orientation rooted in urban rather than rural India. The findings contribute to the understanding of ecological differences in terms of culture and economy and their effects on people's decision making, especially in low and middle-income countries

Helping the ingroup versus harming the outgroup : Evidence from morality-based groups

The discrepancy between ingroup favoritism and outgroup hostility is well established in social psychology. Under which conditions does “ingroup love” turn into “outgroup hate”? Studies with natural groups suggest that when group membership is based on (dis)similarity of moral beliefs, people are willing to not only help the ingroup, but also harm the outgroup. The key limitation of these studies is that the use of natural groups confounds the effects of shared morality with the history of intergroup relations. We tested the effect of morality-based group membership on intergroup behavior using artificial groups that help disentangling these effects. We used the recently developed Intergroup Parochial and Universal Cooperation (IPUC) game which differentiates between behavioral options of weak parochialism (helping the ingroup), strong parochialism (harming the outgroup), universal cooperation (helping both groups), and egoism (profiting individually). In three preregistered experiments, we find that morality-based groups exhibit less egoism and more universal cooperation than non-morality-based groups. We also find some evidence of stronger ingroup favoritism in morality-based groups, but no evidence of stronger outgroup hostility. Stronger ingroup favoritism in morality-based groups is driven by expectations from the ingroup, but not the outgroup. These findings contradict earlier evidence from natural groups and suggest that (dis)similarity of moral beliefs is not sufficient to cross the boundary between “ingroup love” and “outgroup hate”

An international survey of perceptions of the 2014 FIFA World Cup: National levels of corruption as a context for perceptions of institutional corruption

International audienceWe conducted a survey about the 2014 FIFA World Cup that measured attitudes about FIFA, players, and officials in 18 languages with 4600 respondents from 29 countries. Sixty percent of respondents perceived FIFA officials as being dishonest, and people from countries with less institutional corruption and stronger rule of law perceived FIFA officials as being more corrupt and less competent running the tournament than people from countries with more corruption and weaker rule of law. In contrast, respondents evaluated players as skilled and honest and match officials as competent and honest. We discuss the implications of our findings for perceptions of corruption in general