Warmth and competence as distinct dimensions of value in social emotions

Gervais & Fessler's analysis collapses across two orthogonal dimensions of social value to explain contempt: relational value, predicted by cooperation, and agentic value, predicted by status. These dimensions interact to potentiate specific social emotions and behaviors in intergroup contexts. By neglecting the unique roles of these dimensions – and their associated attributes: warmth and competence – the sentiment framework cedes predictive precision.Psycholog

Pleasure in response to out-group pain as a motivator of intergroup aggression

If humans are innately good, cooperative, fair, and averse to harming one another, why does widespread intergroup violence continue to afflict society? Several factors contribute to fomenting aggression between groups; here I focus on the role of pleasure in response to out-group pain.Psycholog

Parochial Empathy Predicts Reduced Altruism and the Endorsement of Passive Harm

Empathic failures are common in hostile intergroup contexts; repairing empathy is therefore a major focus of peacebuilding efforts. However, it is unclear which aspect of empathy is most relevant to intergroup conflict. Although trait empathic concern predicts prosociality in interpersonal settings, we hypothesized that the best predictor of meaningful intergroup attitudes and behaviors might not be the general capacity for empathy (i.e., trait empathy), but the difference in empathy felt for the in-group versus the out-group, or “parochial empathy.” Specifically, we predicted that out-group empathy would inhibit intergroup harm and promote intergroup helping, whereas in-group empathy would have the opposite effect. In three intergroup contexts—Americans regarding Arabs, Hungarians regarding refugees, Greeks regarding Germans—we found support for this hypothesis. In all samples, in-group and out-group empathy had independent, significant, and opposite effects on intergroup outcomes, controlling for trait empathic concern

The Neuroscience of Intergroup Relations

We review emerging research on the psychological and biological factors that underlie social group formation, cooperation, and conflict in humans. Our aim is to integrate the intergroup neuroscience literature with classic theories of group processes and intergroup relations in an effort to move beyond merely describing the effects of specific social out-groups on the brain and behavior. Instead, we emphasize the underlying psychological processes that govern intergroup interactions more generally: forming and updating our representations of “us” and “them” via social identification and functional relations between groups. This approach highlights the dynamic nature of social identity and the context-dependent nature of intergroup relations. We argue that this theoretical integration can help reconcile seemingly discrepant findings in the literature, provide organizational principles for understanding the core elements of intergroup dynamics, and highlight several exciting directions for future research at the interface of intergroup relations and neuroscience.Psycholog

Minding the Gap: Narrative Descriptions about Mental States Attenuate Parochial Empathy

In three experiments, we examine parochial empathy (feeling more empathy for in-group than out-group members) across novel group boundaries, and test whether we can mitigate parochial empathy with brief narrative descriptions. In the absence of individuating information, participants consistently report more empathy for members of their own assigned group than a competitive out-group. However, individualized descriptions of in-group and out-group targets significantly reduce parochial empathy by interfering with encoding of targets’ group membership. Finally, the descriptions that most effectively decrease parochial empathy are those that describe targets’ mental states. These results support the role of individuating information in ameliorating parochial empathy, suggest a mechanism for their action, and show that descriptions emphasizing targets’ mental states are particularly effective

From agents to objects: Sexist attitudes and neural responses to sexualized targets.

Abstract ■ Agency attribution is a hallmark of mind perception; thus, diminished attributions of agency may disrupt social-cognition processes typically elicited by human targets. The current studies examine the effect of perceiversʼ sexist attitudes on associations of agency with, and neural responses to, images of sexualized and clothed men and women. In Study 1, male ( but not female) participants with higher hostile sexism scores more quickly associated sexualized women with first-person action verbs ("handle") and clothed women with third-person action verbs ("handles") than the inverse, as compared to their less sexist peers. In Study 2, hostile sexism correlated negatively with activation of regions associated with mental state attribution-medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate, temporal poles-but only when viewing sexualized women. Heterosexual men best recognized images of sexualized female bodies (but not faces), as compared with other targetsʼ bodies; however, neither face nor body recognition was related to hostile sexism, suggesting that the fMRI findings are not explained by more or less attention to sexualized female targets. Diminished mental state attribution is not unique to targets that people prefer to avoid, as in dehumanization of stigmatized people. The current studies demonstrate that appetitive social targets may elicit a similar response depending on perceiversʼ attitudes toward them.

Their pain gives us pleasure: How intergroup dynamics shape empathic failures and counter-empathic responses

Despite its early origins and adaptive functions, empathy is not inevitable; people routinely fail to empathize with others, especially members of different social or cultural groups. In five experiments, we systematically explore how social identity, functional relations between groups, competitive threat, and perceived entitativity contribute to intergroup empathy bias: the tendency not only to empathize less with out-group relative to in-group members,but also to feel pleasure in response to their pain (and pain in response to their pleasure). When teams are set in direct competition, affective responses to competition-irrelevant events are characterized not only by less empathy toward out-group relative to in-groupmembers, but also by increased counter-empathic responses: Schadenfreude and Glückschmerz (Experiment 1). Comparing responses to in-group and out-group targets against responses to unaffiliated targets in this competitive context suggests that intergroup empathy bias may be better characterized by out-group antipathy rather than extraordinary in-group empathy (Experiment 2). We also find that intergroup empathy bias is robust to changes in relative group standing—feedback indicating that the out-group has fallen behind (Experiment 3a) or is no longer a competitive threat (Experiment 3b) does not reduce the bias. However, reducing perceived in-group and out-group entitativity can significantly attenuate intergroup empathy bias (Experiment 4). This research establishes the boundary conditions of intergroup empathy bias and provides initial support for a more integrative framework of group-based empathy.Psycholog

Deliberation erodes cooperative behavior — Even towards competitive out-groups, even when using a control condition, and even when eliminating selection bias

By many accounts cooperation appears to be a default strategy in social interaction. There are, however, several documented instances in which reflexive responding favors aggressive behaviors: for example, interactions with out-group members. We conduct a rigorous test of potential boundary conditions of intuitive prosociality by looking at whether intuition favors cooperation even towards competitive out-group members, and even in losses frames. Moreover, we address three major methodological limitations of previous research in this area: a lack of an unconstrained control condition; non-compliance with time manipulations leading to high rates of exclusions and thus a selection bias; and non-comprehension of the structure of the game. Even after eliminating participant selection bias and non-comprehension, we find that deliberation decreases cooperation: even in competitive contexts towards out-groups and even in a losses frame, though the differences in cooperation between groups was consistent across conditions. People may be intuitive cooperators, but they are not in- tuitively impartial

Cutting Gordian Knots: Reducing Prejudice Through Attachment Security

The positive role of secure attachment in reducing intergroup biases has been suggested in prior studies. We extend this work by testing the effects of secure attachment primes on negative emotions and aggressive behaviors toward outgroup members across four experiments. Results from Studies 1A and 1B reveal that secure attachment prime, relative to neutral, can reduce negative outgroup emotions. In addition, Studies 1B and 3 results rule out positive mood increase as an alternative explanation for the observed effects. Results from Studies 2 and 3 reveal that secure attachment primes can reduce aggressive behavior toward an outgroup member. The effect of secure attachment primes on outgroup harm was found to be fully mediated by negative emotions in Studies 2 and 3. An interaction between secure attachment primes and ingroup identification in Study 2 indicated that the positive effects of secure attachment in reducing outgroup harm may be especially beneficial for highly identified ingroup members