The Difficulty of Making Reparations Affects the Intensity of Collective Guilt

We examined how the difficulty of making reparations for the harm done to another group affects the intensity of collective guilt. Men were confronted with information documenting male privilege and were told that they would have a chance to help women and reduce patriarchy by collecting signatures on a petition. We manipulated the difficulty of making reparations by asking participants to collect 5, 50, or 100 signatures. As predicted by Brehm's (1999) theory of emotional intensity, collective guilt was a non-monotonic function of the difficulty of making reparations. Men in the moderate difficulty (50 signatures) condition expressed greater collective guilt than participants in the low (5) or high (100) difficulty conditions. Results are discussed in terms of the implications for the theory of emotional intensity, collective guilt, and collective emotions more generally

Perceptual harmony in judgments of group prototypicality and intragroup respect

We test common sense psychology of intragroup relations whereby people assume that intragroup respect and ingroup prototypicality are positively related. In Study 1a, participants rated a group member as more prototypical if they learned that group member was highly respected rather than disrespected. In Study 1b, participants rated a group member as more respected by other group members if they learned that group member was prototypical rather than unprototypical. As a commonsense psychology of groups, we reasoned that the perceived relationship between prototypicality and intragroup respect would be stronger for cohesive groups compared to incohesive groups. The effect of intragroup respect on perceptions of prototypicality (Study 2a & 2c) and the effect of prototypicality on perceptions of intragroup respect (Study 2b) were generally stronger for participants considering cohesive groups relative to incohesive groups. However, the interaction effect of prototypicality and group cohesion on intragroup respect did fail to replicate in Study 2d. In Studies 3, 4a, and 4b we manipulated the relationship between prototypicality and intragroup respect and found that when these variables were in perceptual harmony participants perceived groups as more cohesive. The results of eight out of nine studies conducted are consistent with the prediction that people make inferences about intragroup respect, prototypicality, and group cohesion in a manner that maintains perceptual harmony

The internal and external causal loci of attributions to prejudice

Portions of this research were presented at the May 2000 meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, IL, and at the June 2000 meeting of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, Minneapolis, MN. We express our sincere thanks to Howard Baumgartel for the Peace and Justice Research Award that supported the first author, and to Mark Alicke and Paul Silvia for their very helpful suggestions on an earlier draft of the manuscript.In two studies, the authors examined the causal loci of attributions to prejudice. Participants were asked to consider a situation in which they were rejected. Whether the rejection was attributable to an exclusively external cause or attributable to bias against one's gender group was manipulated. In contrast to the existing view that attributions to prejudice are external, results from both studies supported the prediction that attributions to prejudice also have a substantial internal component. In Study 2, the authors examined the affective consequences of attributions for rejection and found that for women, attributions to prejudice were more harmful than an exclusively external attribution. For men, however, attributions to prejudice were less harmful than an exclusively external attribution.. Results are discussed in terms of the ways in which attributions to prejudice differ from purely external attributions

“For God and Country”: Religion and the Endorsement of National Self-Stereotypes

Portions of this paper were presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Montreal, Canada, November 1998.To assess the relationship between personal religious motivation and spontaneous thoughts about one's nation, Canadian and American undergraduates completed a measure of religious orientation, and both listed and rated the importance of self-generated thoughts about their respective countries. Among Americans, intrinsic orientation predicted greater ascribed importance to the national heritage (e.g., freedom, equal opportunity, tradition, and family) and to official national symbols such as the flag. Among Canadians, intrinsic orientation predicted greater ascribed importance to multiculturalism but was unrelated to the enshrining of national symbols. Thus, in both cases, intrinsic religion was associated with the endorsement of ideological components of the nation's dominant self-stereotype

Perceiving discrimination against one's gender group has different implications for well-being in women and men

Using structural equation modeling, the authors tested theoretical predictions concerning the effects of perceived discrimination against ones gender on psychological well-being in women and men. Results were highly supportive of the Rejection-Identification Model, with perceptions of discrimination harming psychological well-being among women but not among men. The results also support the Rejection-Identification Model's prediction that women partially cope with the negative well-being consequences of perceived discrimination by increasing identification with women as a group, In contrast, perceived discrimination was unrelated to group identification among men. The authors found no support for the hypothesis that perceptions of discrimination have self-protective properties among the disadvantaged. Results are consistent with the contention that the differential effects of perceived discrimination among women and men are due to differences in the groups' relative positions within the social structure.This research was supported by a General Research Fund grant from the University of Kansas to the second author. We thank Carol Miller and several anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions

Correction: Having a Lot of a Good Thing: Multiple Important Group Memberships as a Source of Self-Esteem

This is the final version of the article. Available from Public Library of Science via the DOI in this record.This is the correction to Jetten J, Branscombe NR, Haslam SA, Haslam C, Cruwys T, Jones JM, et al. (2015) Having a Lot of a Good Thing: Multiple Important Group Memberships as a Source of Self-Esteem. PLoS ONE 10(5): e0124609. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0124609The original article for which this is the correction is in ORE at http://hdl.handle.net/10871/26622

Intergroup helping in response to separatism

Despite its prevalence and widespread media coverage, separatism as a phenomenon is barely covered in psychological investigations, and the majority's response to separatism has been completely ignored. We present two studies in which we investigated the notion that separatist movements threaten the continuation of the national identity, as well as the nation's economic position. Moreover, we hypothesized and found that members of the majority group respond to continuation threat by supporting government measures to help the separatist group. Javanese students who were induced to believe that existing separatist movements in West Papua (Study 1, N = 322) or Aceh (Study 2, N = 180) were currently increasing their efforts to gain independence were more willing to support these groups than participants who believed these movements were dormant. Moreover, this effect was mediated by continuation threat but not economic threat. These results demonstrate the possibility of a peaceful response to separatism threat. © 2013 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc

Having a lot of a good thing: multiple important group memberships as a source of self-esteem.

Copyright: © 2015 Jetten et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are creditedMembership in important social groups can promote a positive identity. We propose and test an identity resource model in which personal self-esteem is boosted by membership in additional important social groups. Belonging to multiple important group memberships predicts personal self-esteem in children (Study 1a), older adults (Study 1b), and former residents of a homeless shelter (Study 1c). Study 2 shows that the effects of multiple important group memberships on personal self-esteem are not reducible to number of interpersonal ties. Studies 3a and 3b provide longitudinal evidence that multiple important group memberships predict personal self-esteem over time. Studies 4 and 5 show that collective self-esteem mediates this effect, suggesting that membership in multiple important groups boosts personal self-esteem because people take pride in, and derive meaning from, important group memberships. Discussion focuses on when and why important group memberships act as a social resource that fuels personal self-esteem.This study was supported by 1. Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (FT110100238) awarded to Jolanda Jetten (see http://www.arc.gov.au) 2. Australian Research Council Linkage Grant (LP110200437) to Jolanda Jetten and Genevieve Dingle (see http://www.arc.gov.au) 3. support from the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Social Interactions, Identity and Well-Being Program to Nyla Branscombe, S. Alexander Haslam, and Catherine Haslam (see http://www.cifar.ca)

Group evaluations as self-group distancing:Ingroup typicality moderates evaluative intergroup bias in stigmatized groups

Outgroup favoritism among members of stigmatized groups can be seen as a form of self-group distancing. We examined how intergroup evaluations in stigmatized groups vary as a function of ingroup typicality. In Studies 1 and 2, Black participants (N = 125,915;N = 766) more strongly preferred light-skinned or White relative to dark-skinned or Black individuals the lighter their own skin tone. In Study 3, overweight participants (N = 147,540) more strongly preferred normal-weight relative to overweight individuals the lower their own body weight. In Study 4, participants with disabilities (N = 35,058) more strongly preferred non-disabled relative to disabled individuals the less visible they judged their own disability. Relationships between ingroup typicality and intergroup evaluations were at least partially mediated by ingroup identification (Studies 2 and 3). A meta-analysis across studies yielded an average effect size ofr= .12. Furthermore, higher ingroup typicality was related to both ingroup and outgroup evaluations. We discuss ingroup typicality as an individual constraint to self-group distancing among stigmatized group members and its relation to intergroup evaluations

Identity threat and identity multiplicity among minority youth: Longitudinal relations of perceived discrimination with ethnic, religious, and national identification in Germany

The notion that ethnic and religious minority identities are inherently incompatible with the national identities of European immigrant‐receiving societies is popular in public discourse. Although findings documenting such negative associations seemingly support this claim, other research shows that the intergroup context matters for the extent to which minorities’ ethnic and religious identities are conflicting (i.e., negatively associated) or compatible (i.e., positively associated) with European national identities. However, previous research relied on cross‐sectional data and therefore could not capture the dynamic process through which minority youth come to develop compatible or conflicting identification patterns. We extend this work with a longitudinal approach by capturing developmental trajectories of identity multiplicity among ethnic minority early adolescents in Germany over three waves with 9‐month intervals. At each measurement point, participants reported their ethnic, religious, and (German) national identification and their experiences with discriminatory treatment. We estimate a cross‐lagged panel model to study how identification relates to perceived discrimination and how this affects (changes in) associations between ethnic, religious, and national identification of minority youth. Our results show prevalent positive associations between ethnic, religious, and national identification across minority youth in the sample. Those who report more frequent discrimination, however, lower their (German) national identification over time, which in turn predicts increased minority identification. We conclude that identity threat indeed triggers a development of more conflicting identification patterns