Journal of Social and Political Psychology

Editorial Report and Acknowledgement of Reviewers, 2022

J. Christopher Cohrs, Ana Figueiredo, Idhamsyah Eka Putra, Johanna Ray Vollhardt — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0700

No abstract available.

From Primary to Presidency: Fake News, False Memory, and Changing Attitudes in the 2016 Election

Thu, 23 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0700

During a contentious primary campaign, people may argue passionately against a candidate they later support during the general election. How do people reconcile such potentially conflicting attitudes? This study followed 602 United States citizens, recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk, at three points throughout the 2016 presidential election investigating how attitudes and preferences changed over time and how people remembered their past feelings. Across political parties, people’s memory for their past attitudes was strongly influenced by their present attitudes; more specifically, those who had changed their opinion of a candidate remembered their past attitudes as being more like their current attitudes than they actually were. Participants were also susceptible to remembering false news events about both presidential candidates. However, they were largely unaware of their memory biases and rejected the possibility that they may have been susceptible to them. Not remembering their prior attitude may facilitate support of a previously disliked candidate and foster loyalty towards a party nominee during a time of disunity by forgetting they ever used to dislike the candidate.

Social Invisibility and Discrimination of Roma People in Italy and Brazil

Giannino Melotti, Mariana Bonomo, Julia Alves Brasil, Paola Villano — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0700

In everyday debates on topics such as cultural differences, it seems relevant to analyze not only institutional conversations or speeches, but also mass-media communications. The way the media portray social events contributes to the construction of our categories of explanation of the world. The main purpose of this research is to analyze the representations of ‘gypsies’ in news articles published in some of the most important national newspapers in Italy and Brazil. Results show that Italian news focuses on the living conditions of Roma people, stereotypes, crimes suffered or attributed to them, and political and cultural debates on the Roma question in Italian cities. Brazilian news indicated themes associated with Roma in the context of artistic-cultural productions (films, soap operas, songs, dances and opera and theatre plays), mentioned with other Brazilian traditional peoples and communities, as well as the death of gypsies during the Nazi period. The paper discusses the processes of social invisibility and the social production of the (re)presentation of cliché images of Roma as a social problem, marginalized in the sphere of public policies and of their fundamental rights.

Are We Really Going to Get out of COVID-19 Together? Secured Legal Status and Trust Among Refugees and Migrants

Emanuele Politi, Antoine Roblain, Laurent Licata — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Building up on pre-existing vulnerabilities and social exclusions, refugees and migrants are disproportionately suffering from the negative effects of the COVID-19 outbreak. Insecure legal status is an additional stressor that may accentuate social cleavages and ultimately impair their trust in host society and institutions. Based on a diverse sample of refugees and migrants in Belgium (N = 355), the present study investigates direct and indirect effects of legal status—measured as the type of residence permit held by participants—on social and political trust during the COVID-19 outbreak. Secured legal status was positively associated with social and political trust directly, and indirectly via a serial mediation composed by two cumulative stages. First, participants with a more secured legal status experienced less material difficulties to cope with the pandemic (i.e., first material stage). Second, participant who experienced less material difficulties identified more with the host society (i.e., second symbolic stage). In turn, reduced material difficulties and increased identification with the host society were both positively associated with social and political trust. Our findings advocate for securing legal status of refugees and migrants to help societies cope cohesively with the long-lasting effects of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Conspiracy Theory Vulnerability From a Psychodynamic Perspective: Considering Four Epistemologies Related to Four Developmental Existential-Relational Positions

Richard E. Webb, Philip J. Rosenbaum — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Conspiracy theories command much attention these days. However, the reasons why people come to believe in them is elusive. An overlooked perspective is the developmental one. We propose the importance of looking at the ways our early relationships to “otherness,” authority, and agency inform the different epistemologies or world views that we adopt and, therein, relate to our vulnerability to conspiratorial belief. We describe four existential-relational developmental positions and discuss how these can be paired with a collapsed, crippled, or delimited epistemology or one of wondering.

Judging Job Applicants by Their Politics: Effects of Target–Rater Political Dissimilarity on Discrimination, Cooperation, and Stereotyping

Samantha Sinclair, Artur Nilsson, Jens Agerström — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Despite well-known problems associated with political prejudice, research that examines effects of political dissimilarity in organizational contexts is scarce. We present findings from a pre-registered experiment (N = 973, currently employed) which suggest that both Democrats and Republicans negatively stereotype and discriminate against job applicants with a political orientation that is dissimilar to their own. The effects were small for competence perceptions, moderate for hiring judgments, and large for warmth ratings and willingness to cooperate and socialize with the applicant. The effects of political orientation on hiring judgments and willingness to cooperate and socialize were mediated by stereotype content, particularly warmth. Furthermore, for all outcomes except competence judgments, Democrats discriminated and stereotyped applicants to a larger extent than Republicans did. These findings shed light on the consequences of applicants revealing their political orientation and have implications for the promotion of diversity in organizations.

How Do Those Affected by a Disaster Organize to Meet Their Needs for Justice? Campaign Strategies and Partial Victories Following the Grenfell Tower Fire

Selin Tekin, John Drury — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 00:00:00 -0700

Previous research has shown that disasters often involve a sense of injustice among affected communities. But the empowerment process through which ‘disaster communities’ organise strategically to confront such injustices have not been investigated by social psychology. This study addresses this gap by examining how community members impacted by the Grenfell Tower fire self-organized to demand justice in response to government neglect. Thematic analysis of interviews with fifteen campaigners helped us to understand the strategies of those involved in support campaigns following the fire. Campaigners aimed to: overcome injustice against the government inactions in the aftermath of the fire; empower their community against government neglect; create a sense of community for people who experienced injustice. Community members created a petition calling on the government to build trust in the public inquiry; they achieved their goals with the participation of people from wider communities. We found that reaching out to allies from different communities and building shared social identity among supporters were two main ways to achieve campaign goals. The study suggests ways that empowerment and hence organizing for justice can be achieved after a disaster if campaigners adopt strategies for empowering collective action.

Performing Identity Entrepreneurship During the Colonisation of New Zealand: A Rhetorical Construction of ‘Loyal Subjects of the Empire’

Sarah Y. Choi, James H. Liu, Michael Belgrave — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 00:00:00 -0800

A thematic analysis of New Zealand’s historical Speeches from the Throne (10 speeches, from 1860-1899) investigated rhetorical strategies used by Governors during colonisation, to mobilise both settler and indigenous people’s participation in the British Empire. Identity leadership (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001, https://doi.org/10.1111/0162-895X.00246), augmented by critical theories of emotion (Williams, 1977, Marxism and literature. Oxford University Press) under the cultural framework of hierarchical relationalism (Liu, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.12058) was applied to show how unequal but reciprocal relationships were invoked by Governors, as representatives of the Crown and advocates for the general public in New Zealand. Governors attempted to mediate a positive shared identity within the British Empire; but at the same time to isolate those who excluded from subjecthood by their hostility to the Crown. Governors alternated between efforts to mobilise people against indigenous Māori who challenged them, and offers to include Māori who conformed to the conventions required of a hierarchical relationship between Crown and subject. We reflect on how these dynamics of rhetorical performance may still be relevant today, especially in contexts of hierarchy and in the domain of leader-follower relations more broadly.

Market Mindset Reduces Endorsement of Individualizing Moral Foundations, but Not in Liberals

Tomasz Zaleskiewicz, Agata Gasiorowska, Anna Kuzminska — Tue, 20 Dec 2022 00:00:00 -0800

People with a market mindset attend to ratios and rates, and allocate rewards adequately to costs but are less sensitive to feelings. In this project, we demonstrate that activating a market mindset also affects people’s acceptance of free-market principles and their endorsement of individualizing moral dimensions—care/harm and fairness/cheating. Experiment 1 documented that a market mindset positively impacted people’s endorsement of fair market ideology. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that the salience of such a market mindset hampered the importance of individualizing moral dimensions. Importantly, we found that political orientation moderated the negative effect of a market mindset on the endorsement of individualizing moral foundations—this effect held for participants who declared moderate and conservative political orientations, but not for liberals.

“Unavailable, Insecure, and Very Poorly Paid”: Global Difficulties and Inequalities in Conducting Social Psychological Research

Fouad Bou Zeineddine, Rim Saab, Barbara Lášticová, Arin H. Ayanian, Anna Kende — Fri, 16 Dec 2022 00:00:00 -0800

This paper offers an exploration of research production in social psychology as a global endeavor from the point of view of Anglophone social psychologists (N = 232) across 64 countries. We examine social psychologists’ beliefs regarding the difficulties in conducting research in social psychology and the inequalities that they report between the Global North, South and East Europe, and the Global South. Across all regions, we found pervasive critical awareness of obstacles to conducting research – including underinvestment in the field, precarious and counter-productive labor conditions, and excessive and biased disciplinary standards. However, we also found that colleagues outside the Global North reported quantitatively and qualitatively larger obstacles to research. These included well-known historically-rooted inequalities but also contemporary systemic procedural and distributive injustices in material, human, and social-political capital. Non-Northern colleagues in particular critically reflected on how these inequalities and injustices are amplified by Northern hegemonies in social, institutional, disciplinary, economic, and political systems. Discussion focuses on the implications of these results for social psychologists, social psychology as a discipline, and its situation within broader hierarchical systems and their intersectionalities.