Religion, prejudice, and authoritarianism : Is RWA a boon or bane to the psychology of religion?

In research on religiosity and prejudice, right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) has been studied alongside variables such as fundamentalism and orthodoxy. Four concerns regarding research on the relationship between RWA and religiosity are identified: (1) the overlap of religiosity and prejudice within the RWA scale; (2) the inflation of relationships by correlating part-whole measures; (3) covariation in the extremes of the construct hiding the possible independence of components within RWA; and (4) statistical artifacts arising in multiple regression from the combination of these factors. We elaborate these four issues and then demonstrate how they can lead to different interpretations of some previously published data. The article concludes with suggestions for the management and resolution of these issues that may allow RWA to continue to be used in religiosity and prejudice research and how it might evolve to become the boon to researchers that they seek.PostprintPeer reviewe

Renewed Promise for Positive Cross-group Contact: The Role of Supportive Contact in Empowering Collective Action

Positive cross-group contact can undermine disadvantaged group members\u27 collective action engagement. However, we hypothesized that positive cross-group contact in which an advantaged group member explicitly communicates opposition to inequality between groups ( supportive contact ) would not undermine collective action and would be empowering for disadvantaged group members. Study 1 focused on cross-group contact between international students and domestic students at an Australian university. Study 2 focused on immigrants to Canada, and provided an opportunity for a cross-group contact with a Canadian-born individual. The results revealed that supportive contact heightened collective action engagement relative to a number of comparison conditions involving other forms of positive cross-group contact. Increased perceptions of injustice emerged as the key mediator of the relationship between supportive contact and increased collective action engagement

National identification, perceived threat, and dehumanization as antecedents of negative attitudes toward immigrants in Australia and Canada

The interplay of nationalistic threat perceptions, dehumanizing beliefs and intergroup emotions, and anti-immigrant sentiment is analyzed in a cross-national context with Australian (N=124) and Canadian (N=126) samples. National identification was linked to negative attitudes toward immigrants indirectly, via perceptions of immigrants as being in threatening zero-sum relationships with citizens. In turn, perceived zero-sum threat was associated with dehumanizing beliefs and emotions about immigrants. Significant baseline differences in hostility were observed across the samples, but the relationships among the variables were not moderated by participants' nationality. The study contributes to the literature examining how negative emotions and attitudes may serve to legitimize intergroup competition

Insights From fMRI Studies Into Ingroup Bias

Intergroup biases can manifest themselves between a wide variety of different groups such as people from different races, nations, ethnicities, political or religious beliefs, opposing sport teams or even arbitrary groups. In this review we provide a neuroscientific overview of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies that have revealed how group dynamics impact on various cognitive and emotional systems at different levels of information processing. We first describe how people can perceive the faces, words and actions of ingroup and outgroup members in a biased way. Second, we focus on how activity in brain areas involved in empathizing with the pain of others, such as the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) and anterior insula (AI), are influenced by group membership. Third, we describe how group membership influences activity in brain areas involved in mentalizing such as the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and temporoparietal junction (TPJ). Fourth, we discuss the involvement of the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (lOFC) in increased moral sensitivity for outgroup threats. Finally, we discuss how brain areas involved in the reward system such as the striatum and medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC), are more active when experiencing schadenfreude for outgroup harm and when rewarding ingroup (versus outgroup) members. The value of these neuroscientific insights to better understand ingroup bias are discussed, as well as limitations and future research directions

Normative Influence and Rational Conflict Decisions: Group Norms and Cost-Benefit Analyses for Intergroup Behavior

The present paper articulates a model in which ingroup and outgroup norms inform ‘rational’ decision-making (cost-benefit analysis) for conflict behaviors. Norms influence perceptions of the consequences of the behavior, and individuals may thus strategically conform to or violate norms in order to acquire benefits and avoid costs. Two studies demonstrate these processes in the context of conflict in Québec. In the first study, Anglophones’ perceptions of Francophone and Anglophone norms for pro-English behaviors predicted evaluations of the benefits and costs of the behaviors, and these cost-benefit evaluations in turn mediated the norm-intention links for both group norms. In the second study, a manipulated focus on supportive versus hostile ingroup and outgroup norms also predicted cost-benefit evaluations, which mediated the norm-intention relationships. The studies support a model of strategic conflict choices in which group norms inform, rather than suppress, rational expectancy-value processes. Implications for theories of decision-making and normative influence are discussed

Acting in Solidarity: Cross-group Contact Between Disadvantaged Group Members and Advantaged Group Allies

The actions of advantaged group activists (sometimes called “allies”) are admirable, and they likely make meaningful contributions to the movements they support. However, a nuanced understanding of the role of advantaged group allies must also consider the potential challenges of their participation. Both in their everyday lives and during their activist work, advantaged group allies are especially likely to have direct contact with disadvantaged group members. This paper considers when such contact may harm rather than help resistance movements by disadvantaged groups. We also suggest that to avoid these undermining effects, advantaged group allies must effectively communicate support for social change, understand the implications of their own privilege, offer autonomy-oriented support, and resist the urge to increase their own feelings of inclusion by co-opting relevant marginalized social identities

Predicting facebook users online privacy protection: Risk, trust, norm focus theory, and the theory of planned behavior

Journal ArticleThis is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in The Journal of Social Psychology on 21 April 2014, available online: http://wwww.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00224545.2014.914881The present research adopts an extended theory of the planned behavior model that included descriptive norms, risk, and trust to investigate online privacy protection in Facebook users. Facebook users (N = 119) completed a questionnaire assessing their attitude, subjective injunctive norm, subjective descriptive norm, perceived behavioral control, implicit perceived risk, trust of other Facebook users, and intentions toward protecting their privacy online. Behavior was measured indirectly 2 weeks after the study. The data show partial support for the theory of planned behavior and strong support for the independence of subjective injunctive and descriptive norms. Risk also uniquely predicted intentions over and above the theory of planned behavior, but there were no unique effects of trust on intentions, nor of risk or trust on behavior. Implications are discussed. © Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

Religious norms, norm conflict, and religious identification

The present research sought to understand how religious identification is associated with normative practices and with norm conflict (the perception that people within the religious group are not all enacting the same standards or rules for behaviour). Using a multi-faith sample (N=400) we replicate positive associations of religious identification with engaging in normative practices such as prayer, and the associations of both identification and normative practices with stronger well-being. Religious norm conflict was associated with lower identification and lower well-being, however. Three coping strategies were examined: 1) engaging in normative ritual practices was protective of identification and well-being; 2) affirming that the conflict occurs on less important (vs core) religious norms was associated with higher well-being, but not with identification; and 3) challenging the religious norm was associated with lower well-being, but did not alter religious identification

The pathway to accepting derogatory ingroup norms: the roles of compartmentalization and legitimacy

Objectives: The current experiment was conducted among ice hockey fans, and brings together theories of intergroup relations and self and identity literature. It investigated if perceiving strong norms in favor of derogating against fans of outgroup teams, and engaging in these behaviors oneself, leads to an increased compartmentalization of these behaviors (i.e., such that they are restricted to a particular compartment within the self). This association was expected to be especially strong, when derogatory behaviors are portrayed as illegitimate. We also explored whether this compartmentalization then flows on to vitality as a well-being indicator

Individual differences in local gray matter density are associated with differences in affective and cognitive empathy

The understanding of empathy from a neuroscientific perspective has recently developed quickly, with numerous functional MRI studies associating different brain regions with different components of empathy. A recent meta-analysis across 40 fMRI studies revealed that affective empathy is most often associated with increased activity in the insula, whereas cognitive empathy is most often associated with activity in the midcingulate cortex and adjacent dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (MCC/dmPFC). To date, however, it remains unclear whether individual differences in brain morphometry in these regions underlie different dispositions in affective and cognitive empathy. In order to test this hypothesis, voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was used to examine the extent to which gray matter density predicts scores from an established empathy measure (Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy; QCAE). One hundred and seventy-six participants completed the QCAE and underwent MRI in order to acquire a high-resolution, three-dimensional T1-weighted structural scans. A factor analysis of the questionnaire scores revealed two distinct factors of empathy, affective and cognitive, which confirmed the validity of the QCAE. VBM results revealed gray matter density differences associated with the distinct components of empathy. Higher scores on affective empathy were associated with greater gray matter density in the insula cortex and higher scores of cognitive empathy were associated with greater gray matter density in the MCC/dmPFC. Taken together, these results provide validation for empathy being a multi-component construct, suggesting that affective and cognitive empathy are differentially represented in brain morphometry as well as providing convergent evidence for empathy being represented by different neural and structural correlates