Journal of Social and Political Psychology

Attitudes Toward Politics, Participation and Citizenship Competencies: A Study of Students From Commercially-Oriented Private Universities in Chile

2026-03-26T01:36:36+00:00

Research on the relationship between attitudes towards politics, student participation, and citizenship competencies remains scarce in Latin America, with most studies focused on primary and secondary education, and even fewer conducted in public or private universities. This study examines that relationship, as well as the mediating role of student participation between attitudes towards politics and citizenship competencies. The sample consisted in undergraduate students (n = 489; mean age = 21.20 years; SD = 3.47) from commercially oriented private universities in Chile, which are characterized by low levels of student participation. Three separate questionnaires were administered to measure each variable. Using descriptive analyses and structural equation modelling (SEM), the associations among the variables were analyzed. Results showed that attitudes towards politics do not directly predict citizenship competencies, but are indirectly associated through student participation, which itself was found to be acceptably related to both constructs in a direct and independent manner. The findings suggest that engagement in academic university activities can function as a formative space that connects student’s attitudes towards politics with the emergence of the competencies required for active citizenship. This research highlights the importance of fostering participatory environments within these types of institutions to strengthen democratic capacities, while also suggesting the inclusion of personal variables and diverse university contexts in future studies.

Responses to Belief-Conflicting Information: Justification of Support for Donald Trump

2026-03-26T01:36:35+00:00

These studies take a dissonance theory perspective to understanding why individuals support Donald Trump as president of the United States despite accusations that he has engaged in sexual misconduct and illegal activity. Participants from the US provided open-ended responses to questions that asked why they support Trump and how they justify their support given the allegations against him. Study 1 was conducted in 2019 two months before Trump was impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. In this study, 7 categories of reasons for supporting Trump, and 3 categories of justification despite allegations, were identified. Study 2 was conducted in 2019 two days after a vote to impeach Trump. Study 3 was conducted in 2022 two days after Trump was arraigned for his involvement in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol Building. Results from Studies 2 and 3 replicated the categories of support and justification. Across studies, the reasons given to justify support of Trump despite allegations of wrongdoing were stating that they disbelieved the allegation, claiming that others do similar misdeeds, and stating that they care about his policies, not his personal life. The current results suggest that individuals in a naturalistic context may choose a number of different strategies in response to information that conflicts with their important beliefs, including denying the veracity of information, increasing the importance of consonant information, directing attention to the immoral acts of others, and making cognitions irrelevant to the dissonant relationship. Study 3 provided evidence that some of these processes may be influenced by dissonance discomfort. These results are unlike those of most laboratory research on dissonance theory, in which participants are given only one dissonance reduction opportunity.

Cross-Group Friends and Feeling Empowered in Intergroup Contact Programs: Mediating Pathways and Practical Strategies for Divided Societies

2026-03-26T01:36:34+00:00

Structured intergroup programs provide a unique opportunity for youth in divided societies to come together and engage in shared activities. This research examines what makes such programs effective, drawing on cross-sectional survey findings from youth participants (N = 431) in an initiative that embeds intergroup contact within a sports program facilitated by the same global organization across Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Israel, and South Africa. Our hypotheses focus on the pivotal roles of cross-group friendships and empowerment in shaping intergroup contact intentions, ingroup-oriented reconciliation efforts, and self-efficacy development – outcomes crucial for bridging communities in divided societies. Using structural equation modeling, we find that program duration directly and indirectly predicts self-efficacy, whereas it predicts intergroup contact intentions and reconciliation efforts only indirectly through cross-group friendships and empowerment. Combining survey results with qualitative data, this paper highlights two important mechanisms for the success of structured intergroup contact programs and offers practical strategies for fostering them.

Editorial Report and Acknowledgement of Reviewers, 2025

2026-03-26T01:36:33+00:00

No abstract available.

Exploring Different Types of the Authoritarian Syndrome: A Latent Profile Analysis of the German Population

2025-12-19T00:48:14+00:00

By using Latent Profile Analysis (LPA), we identified eight profiles, each representing different combinations or "alloys" of the authoritarian syndrome and associated sociopolitical attitudes. Our findings reveal that authoritarian dispositions do not uniformly correlate with overt prejudice or resentment; instead, they manifest in complex, socially influenced forms. While some profiles exhibit strong authoritarian aggression and conspiracy beliefs tied to manifest right-wing extremism, others demonstrate more contained or even absent devaluation tendencies. The study also uncovers gender-specific variations in authoritarian processing, with certain profiles being predominantly male or female. These insights emphasize the role of societal conditions in shaping authoritarian dynamics and underscore the persistent threat posed by particular authoritarian profiles.

‘Those Who Before the Partition of Pakistan and India Were Citizens of This Country’: Negotiating Citizenship to Inform Nation-States

2025-12-19T00:16:28+00:00

In much of social psychology, citizenship has been examined and understood in terms of how it proceeds from nationhood and how various versions of nationhood can be mobilised to exclude others. In this paper, we deviate from this line of scholarship to identify and examine practices by which constructions of citizenship are developed to inform nation-formation. We examine how versions of territory, national belonging, and history are intertwined in the construction of citizenship through a discursive and rhetorical examination of debates on Indian citizenship at two momentous occasions for India: the drafting of India’s constitution (1946-50) and the Citizen Amendment Act 2019. Analysis shows that citizenship policies were evaluated in terms of whether they realised the rights and entitlements of Hindus to the territory of India outside of the Indian nation-state. The findings then show that belonging to a territory is a salient resource in negotiating citizenship, and this can in turn work to support or undermine the idea of a nation-state.

“The Whole Thing Is a Juggling Act”: Qualitative Exploration of Goal Systems Among Activists and Nonactivists

2025-12-19T00:20:46+00:00

Drawing on goal systems theory (Kruglanski et al., 2002), this preregistered study explored the relationships between political and non-political goals among individuals with varying levels of political engagement. We conducted 40 semi-structured qualitative interviews with activists, non-activists, and former activists from Poland and Norway. We identify three recurrent relationships between political and other life goals, such as work, relationships, health, and basic psychological needs: (1) suppression, where non-political goals eclipse activism or vice-versa; (2) conflict, experienced as chronic trade-offs that often precipitate burnout; and (3) facilitation, whereby non-political goals enable sustained engagement. These relationships manifest as four distinct goal structures. Activists typically displayed either a “juggling” structure that continuously balances multiple commitments, or a “political-dominant” structure in which the cause overrides alternative goals. Non-activists most often subordinated political aims, whereas former activists described a fluctuating “all-or-nothing” structure—initial single-minded commitment followed by strategic withdrawal when costs outweighed perceived impact. Cross-nationally, Polish participants reported more multi-issue activism and acute work–activism conflicts than Norwegians, potentially reflecting longer working hours and political dissatisfaction. Our findings corroborate goal systems theory by showing how dynamic configurations of goal relations underpin trajectories of engagement, disengagement and re-engagement.

Radical Healing in Communities: A Decolonial Reading

2025-12-19T00:36:38+00:00

The colonial wound signifies the contemporary societal structures which undermine, maim, and destroy the humanity of colonised subjects. In South Africa, the colonial wound manifests in different ways. We see the colonial wound at work in the country’s disproportionately high rates of racialised poverty and State violence, Afrophobia, and ongoing land dispossession. Addressing the colonial wound demands a kind of decolonial healing that transcends bio-psycho-social models. We understand such healing as radical healing. Although several scholarly conceptions of radical healing have been advanced, there have been few attempts to engage with how marginalised communities conceptualise and enact healing in relation to coloniality. As such, relatively few studies have explored the complexities of practicing and conceptualising radical healing within a decolonial framework. The present study aims to speak to this gap. In this study, we engaged with three marginalised South African communities, facilitating six group discussions on radical healing. In bringing the southern African concept of lekgotla (a collective process of deliberation) to bear on critical discourse analysis, we examined the discourses upon which participants drew in the group discussions to construct radical healing. Although several discourses were identified in the data, two were most pertinent to the objectives of this study. The first discourse, Contested Signification, spoke to the inherent variability within radical healing conceptualisations and practices, where the second discourse, Healing Practicalities, evoked the pragmatic struggles inherent to practicing radical healing through a collective and community-led process. In our concluding reflections, we consider what participants’ discursive constructions of radical healing might teach us about the colonial wound and, against this, what it means to take up decolonial radical healing practices in and beyond the discipline of psychology.

“Leftists”, a Distinct and Meaningful Group?

2025-12-19T01:04:52+00:00

This article proposes a comprehensive taxonomy of the diverse types of “leftism”, grounded in historical and materialist analysis, to inform future comparative research on political systems and ideology. More specifically, it discusses (1) the taxonomic confusion over leftism and liberalism, (2) the plausible overlap between the liberal-conservative and left-right metaphors, (3) leftists as a distinct group versus liberals, (4) leftists as different groups from each other, and (5) the implications of the above for political, psychological research, and activism, in the hope of encouraging debate, advancing our understanding of social reality, and improving cooperation and conflict resolution.

Security Psychology: New Perspectives From the COVID-19 Pandemic

2025-12-19T06:30:47+00:00

In 1994, the United Nations human security taxonomy signaled a major shift from security as preservation of the nation-state towards a broader and more recent ‘decagonal’ model of human security (entailing everyday needs for personal, health, food, cyber, community, economic, national, environmental, political and, most recently, global security). Building on those foundations, this paper proposes a psychological theory of human security. The latter we propose is a question of ‘systems fit’ between everyday needs and priorities to official responses during crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. During COVID-19 lockdowns in 2021, across Australia and New Zealand, we asked N = 2,162 Australasians whether they had each type of security, how important each type was to them, and what each of the 10 sub-types of security meant to them. On face value, a pandemic is a primary threat to national public health. In everyday life, however, all 10 dimensions of human security remained salient and interconnected.