How is the COVID19 Pandemic Affecting Europeans' Lives?

The coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented health crisis. Nearly a third of the global population is undergoing some form of curfew, isolation, or are being placed under restrictive measures (Kaplan, Frias & McFall-Johnsen, 2020). Therefore, it is not surprising that the spread of COVID-19 could soon turn into a serious psychological, social and political emergency. The COVIDiSTRESS global survey was designed by an international group of social scientists from more than fifty universities to measure the psychological correlates and implications of the current crisis. The study has so far involved more than 150,000 individual respondents from over than 50 different countries, sharing their experience of the human consequences of the crisis. The report below describes a series of chosen variables. It focuses on the 75,570 respondents from the 27 countries composing the European Union (EU) who answered the survey between March 30th and April 20th

That is how we do it around here: Levels of identification, masculine honor, and social activism against organized crime in the south of Italy

Masculine honor is an important cultural code in the south of Italy. Italian criminal organizations (COs) manipulate and exploit this code to maintain legitimacy among local populations and exert social control in the territory where they operate. This research tested the hypothesis that different levels of identification—the region and the nation—would have opposite associations with male honor-related values and, indirectly, with intentions to oppose COs collectively. Results from a sample of young southern Italians (N?=?170) showed that regional identification positively predicted endorsement of male honor-related values, which in turn were associated with lowered intentions to oppose COs. In contrast, national identification negatively predicted male honor-related values, associated in turn with stronger intentions to oppose COs. These results also held when perceived risk and social dominance orientation were taken into account. Directions for future research are discussed

Social Representations of Protest and Police after the Genoa G8 Summit: A Qualitative Analysis of Activist Accounts of Events

The Genoa G8 Summit was marred by violence and conflicts between police and activists. Afterwards, these different groups constructed clashing discourses about the events. In turn, these discourses sustained different types of social representations about the nature of the conflict. Earlier analyses of hegemonic social representation examining the Italian press suggested that non-violent activists were subject to processes of delegitimisation and that they were identified with black bloc activists (Cristante, 2003; Juris, 2005; Zamperini & Botticini, 2006). Conversely, in this study we analyze activists\u2019 accounts of the protest and of the violent police repression. We examine a collection of published texts (N= 223) posted on a \u201ccyber-wall\u201d online as part of a collaborative project from three Italian media outlets: Il Manifesto, Radio Popolare, Carta. These texts represent a form of \u201ccounter-narrative\u201d produced by a stigmatized group to contest the dominant discourse, creating a tripartite of relations between non-violent activists, police and the black bloc . The analysis of these texts shows that activists represent the protest as a battle between two groups. Activists describe police as coercive, incompetent, and as the enemy. While the black bloc was perceived to have damaged the protest they were not depicted as the enemy. Cognitive, emotive and behavioral factors associated with these representations are highlighted and discussed, together with the implications for future intergroup relations between activists and the police

How criminal organisations exert secret power over communities: An intracultural appropriation theory of cultural values and norms

Criminal organisations have the ability to exert secret power – governance over the community and inhibition of opposition (omertà). Traditionally, omertà has been attributed to fear or passivity. Here, a model grounded in different premises, Intracultural Appropriation Theory (ICAT), stresses the central role of culture in sustaining relations of domination between groups. Specifically, ICAT contends that non-state agents achieve legitimacy among people by claiming to embody cultural values shared within the community. In the case of Italian organised crime, criminal organisations’ adherence to values of masculine honour bestows legitimacy on their actions, enabling them to exert secret power. We report evidence in support of this proposition, and derive a new formulation of omertà focussing on social identity, emotions and social change beliefs. We suggest that the theory contributes to a new perspective for the analysis of culture, political action, and honour, and that it should generalise in other contexts and countries

‘If They Don’t Listen to Us, they Deserve It’: The Effect of External Efficacy and Anger on the Perceived Legitimacy of Hacking

We conducted two studies examining the factors underlying individuals’ legitimization of hackers (digital actors operating on the internet). Drawing on the social banditry framework, and research on political action, we focused on the mediating role of anger in the association between external political efficacy and perceived legitimization of hackers’ actions. Specifically, we manipulated whether the system was responsive to participants’ demands following unfair treatment in a university (Study 1) and in an online work platform (Study 2) context. In Study 1 (N = 259) British undergraduate students read about unfair ‘grading’ practices. They were then informed that the management was either willing (high external political efficacy) or unwilling (low external political efficacy) to investigate the matter. In Study 2 (N = 222), British participants were recruited via Prolific Academic and were presented with a scenario describing an unfair rejection of their work. They were then informed that the platform admin was either willing or not willing to investigate their case. Across studies, participants were informed that hackers had attacked the website. Supporting the social banditry framework, results indicated that individuals who perceive the system as unresponsive to their demands tended to legitimize hackers’ actions via stronger perceived anger against the system. Implications of the results, and future directions are discussed

The Meaning of Contention

Contention is everywhere nowadays, permeating the fabric of society and constituting an important element of many different social relationships. It is also a central topic across a wide range of social scientific disciplines. Following the most contentious decade in over a century, scholarship on the topic of “contention” is booming. Nonetheless, we still lack a conceptual approach to “contention” as a general academic term beyond the bounds of the study of “contentious politics.” What is the meaning of contention? Drawing on a decade of editorial and research work on contention, this article surveys the profound breadth and variety of academic research on the topic, ranging from politics, psychology, and so- ciology to material culture, criminology, and beyond. We outline the common conceptual thread across these various areas, where “contention” generally indicates conflictual collective contests con- cerning competing claims

Honor Values as Identity Content: Evidence From a Three-Wave Longitudinal Study

Reputation refers to the set of judgments a community makes about its members. In cultures of honor, reputation constitutes one of the most pressing concerns of individuals. Reputational concerns are intimately intertwined with people’s social identities. However, research has yet to address the question of how honor-related reputational concerns are structured at the within-person level vis-à-vis individuals’ identification with relevant group memberships. The present longitudinal study investigated the association between social identification and reputational concerns in southern Italy (N1st-wave = 1,173), a little-studied culture of honor. Specifically, using a random intercept cross-lagged panel model, we tested whether reputational concerns predict, are predicted by, or are bidirectionally linked to individuals’ identification with their region, a group membership relevant for the endorsement of honor. Findings revealed a positive association at the within-person level between group identification and subsequent honor-related concerns. Longitudinal paths from reputational concerns to identification were not significant. Implications of the findings and directions for future research are discussed

The dangers of distrustful complacency: Low concern and low political trust combine to undermine compliance with governmental restrictions in the emerging Covid-19 pandemic

People comply with governmental restrictions for different motives, notably because they are concerned about the issue at hand or because they trust their government to enact appropriate regulations. The present study focuses on the role of concern and political trust in people’s willingness to comply with governmental restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic. We conducted a survey amongst Italian and French participants (N = 372) in March 2020 while both countries had imposed full lockdown. Moreover, a subsample of participants reported on their actual levels of compliance one week later (N = 130). We hypothesised that either concern or trust should be sufficient to sustain participants’ willingness to comply and actual behaviour, but that the absence of both (distrustful complacency) would reduce compliance significantly. Results supported this hypothesis. We discuss implications of the interaction between concern and trust for public behaviour strategies as the pandemic progresses

Aversion amplification in the emerging COVID-19 pandemic: The impact of political trust and subjective uncertainty on perceived threat

Health psychology shows that responses to risk and threat depend on perceptions as much as objective factors. The present study focuses on precursors of perceived threat of COVID-19. We use the aversion amplification hypothesis from political and social psychology to propose that subjective uncertainty and political trust should interactively impact perceived threat. We conducted a cross-sectional survey amongst the general population of Scotland (N = 188) in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. We hypothesised that high political trust should ameliorate the threat-elevating impact of uncertainty, thereby reducing perceived threat from high to moderate level. This hypothesis was supported, even after accounting for demographic differences. The discussion addresses the implications of the interactive role of trust and uncertainty for strategies to manage public behaviour as the pandemic progresses

Collective deviance: Scaling up subjective group dynamics to superordinate categories reveals a deviant ingroup protection effect

Six experiments examined responses to groups whose attitudes deviated from wider social norms about asylum and immigration (in the United Kingdom), or taxation levels (in the U.S.). Subjective group dynamics (SGD) theory states that people derogate in-group individuals who deviate from prescriptive in-group norms. This enables members to sustain the subjective validity of those norms and, hence, a positive social identity. Research also shows that in-group deviants who accentuate the difference between the in-group and out-group norm (e.g. extremists) are derogated less than deviants who attenuate that difference (e.g. a member who veers toward the outgroup’s norm; Abrams et al., 2000). We hypothesized that these effects and the associated group dynamics should scale up when people evaluate deviant groups that are part of larger in-categories. Consistent with SGD theory, participants in Experiments 1, 2, and 3 derogated an in-category attenuating deviant group and upgraded an out-category attenuating deviant group relative to groups that consolidated or accentuated the respective norms of those categories – thereby reinforcing in-category norms relative to out-category norms. Across all experiments, this pattern of differential evaluation was associated with greater subjective validity of the in-category norm. We also hypothesized a novel Deviant Ingroup Protection (DIP) effect, wherein people should curtail derogation of an in-category deviant group when that group is their own. Consistent with this hypothesis, , participants in Experiments 4, 5 and 6 evaluated an accentuating in-group (Experiments 4 and 6), or an attenuating in-group (Experiments 5 and 6) equally to or more positively than other in-category groups. Implications for political and organizational entrenchment are discussed