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We tested three hypotheses derived from intergroup emotions theory: that group-based emotions, emotions felt as a member of a group, (1) are influenced by group norms, (2) especially for highly identified group members, and (3) are relatively more positive for highly identified members. Hypothesis 4 tested the prediction that these self-categorization, normative influence, and identification processes hold across memberships in exemplars of intimacy, task, and social category groups, which differ from one another in structural and functional characteristics. Two studies using three different samples found strong consistent support for Hypotheses 1 and 3, and only partial support for Hypothesis 2 (high identification increased the power of group norms on group-based emotions about only negative events). These findings held across multiple exemplars of the three group types, regardless of whether group-based emotions were targeted or untargeted, and regardless of whether emotion norms were empirically derived or based on group members' perceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People's emotions toward their ingroups and salient outgroups often change over time as a result of changing circumstances or intentional self-regulation. To investigate such dynamics, two studies assessed participants' perceived past, present, and ideal levels of group-based emotions toward ingroups and outgroups, for several different types of groups. Consistent with predictions, participants ideally wanted to feel more positive and less negative emotions toward the ingroup compared to their present levels. However, contrary to predictions, ideal emotions toward competitive outgroups were more positive than negative. Several effects over time suggested the successful regulation of emotion: Ideal levels of positive ingroup emotion predicted group-related behavioral intentions as well as emotions reported at a later time, over and above present levels. This work puts group-based emotions in a subjective temporal context and opens new directions for theory-driven investigation and new possibilities for interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like early work on human intergroup interaction, previous research on people's willingness to interact with robots has focused mainly on effects of anxiety. However, existing findings suggest that other negative emotions as well as some positive emotions also have effects. This article systematically examines the roles of positive and negative emotions in predicting willingness to interact with robots, using an integrative analysis of data across five studies that use diverse interaction conditions and several types of robots. We hypothesize and find that positive emotions account for more variance than negative emotions. Practically, the findings suggest new strategies for interventions, aimed at increasing positive emotions to increase willingness to engage in intergroup interaction. No existing work has examined whether positive emotions are stronger predictors than negative emotions for willingness for human intergroup interaction, an important topic for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Group-based emotions are experienced as a result of group categorization and group identification. We first review the transformative idea that emotion can occur as a group-level phenomenon driven by group-level processes. We then briefly review the impact of this idea on research about intragroup processes and intergroup relations in the decades since 1998. We conclude by raising some questions whose answers would further extend the reach and predictive power of group-based emotions in both intragroup and intergroup contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People from honor cultures show heightened emotional responses to insults to their social image. The current research investigates whether people from honor cultures also show heightened protection of social identities. We find that honor concerns may be embedded in some social identities but not others, and that those identities associated with honor concerns are defended more than identities not associated with honor. Three experiments investigated participants’ emotional responses to insults to their ethnic or student identity. Results showed that compared with dignity culture (British) participants, participants from an honor culture (Arab) reported stronger anger responses both across and within cultures when their Arab identity, an identity explicitly linked to honor concerns, was insulted. In contrast, responses did not differ between dignity (American) and honor (Arab) cultures when participants received an insult to their student identity, a non-honor-oriented identity. These findings suggest that overarching cultural values are not applied to all identities, and therefore, that cultural variables influence psychological outcomes differently for different identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a new model of social influence, which can occur spontaneously and in the absence of typically assumed motives. We assume that perceivers routinely construct representations of other people’s experiences and responses (beliefs, attitudes, emotions, and behaviors), when observing others’ responses or simulating the responses of unobserved others. Like representations made accessible by priming, these representations may then influence the process that generates perceivers’ own responses, without intention or awareness, especially when there is a strong social connection to the other. We describe evidence for the basic properties and important moderators of this process, which distinguish it from other mechanisms such as informational, normative, or social identity influence. The model offers new perspectives on the role of others’ values in producing cultural differences, the persistence and power of stereotypes, the adaptive reasons for being influenced by others’ responses, and the impact of others’ views about the self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over-time variability characterizes not only individual-level emotions, but also group-level emotions, those that occur when people identify with social groups and appraise events in terms of their implications for those groups. We discuss theory and research regarding the role of emotions in intergroup contexts, focusing on their dynamic nature. We then describe new insights into the causes and consequences of emotional dynamics that flow from conceptualizing emotions as based in group membership, and conclude with research recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although person perception is central to virtually all human social behavior, it is ordinarily studied in isolated individual perceivers. Conceptualizing it as a socially distributed process opens up a variety of novel issues, which have been addressed in scattered literatures mostly outside of social psychology. This article examines some of these issues using a series of multiagent models. Perceivers can use gossip (information from others about social targets) to improve their ability to detect targets who perform rare negative behaviors. The model suggests that they can simultaneously protect themselves against being influenced by malicious gossip intended to defame specific targets. They can balance these potentially conflicting goals by using specific strategies including disregarding gossip that differs from a personally obtained impression. Multiagent modeling demonstrates the outcomes produced by different combinations of assumptions about gossip, and suggests directions for further research and theoretical development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What can motivate members of disadvantaged groups to take action on behalf of their group? This research assessed a model in which measured perceptions of (study 1) and manipulated information about (study 2) other women’s anger influenced female participants’ group-based anger, their subsequent appraisals of instances of possible discrimination, and finally their collective action tendencies. Consistent with Intergroup Emotions Theory, the results suggested that emotional self-stereotyping is one mechanism by which group members can become motivated to respond to possible discrimination, a process supported by group-based anger-driven appraisals about specific discrimination events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a decline which has been seen in the popularity of the concept of cognitive individualism in the fields of psychology and sociology. A discussion of the philosophies that the field of cognitive sociology has about the understanding of cognition, and of the impact that social interaction and social networks have on cognitive individualism, is presented. In the article the authors offer their opinions on the need for additional research which will lead to a better understanding of cognition and the impact that social interaction has on it.

Extending recent investigations into the malleability of implicit ingroup favoritism, three experiments examined the role of indirect activation of equality and loyalty. Results showed that priming equality decreased implicit favoritism, measured through the Implicit Association Test and Go/No-Go Association Task, whereas priming loyalty enhanced it; spontaneous behavior (seating distance) was similarly influenced. A boundary condition was observed, namely change of intergroup setting: the effects of priming equality and loyalty ceased when these were primed after an irrelevant ingroup identity was made salient. In general, implicit favoritism can be reduced or increased after the activation of equality and loyalty respectively, and this underlines the importance of tackling discrimination by both lessening its expression, and removing factors that exacerbate it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intergroup emotions theory (IET) posits that when social categorization is salient, individuals feel the same emotions as others who share their group membership. Extensive research supporting this proposition has relied heavily on self-reports of group-based emotions. In three experiments, the authors provide converging evidence that group-based anger has subtle and less explicitly controlled consequences for information processing, using measures that do not rely on self-reported emotional experience. Specifically, the authors show that intergroup anger involves arousal (Experiment 1), reduces systematic processing of persuasive messages (Experiment 2), is moderated by group identification (Experiment 2, posttest), and compared to intergroup fear, increases risk taking (Experiment 3). These findings provide converging evidence that consistent with IET, emotions triggered by social categorization have psychologically consequential effects and are not evident solely in self-reports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which tackles the implication of social influence and how it is placed in people's social networks and relationships. It provides emphasis on the use of laboratory studies in analyzing and assessing the impact of social influence on the cognitive processes of individuals. In addition, it states that there is a need for researchers to strengthen the methods they are using and integrate new models to focus more on the dimensions underlying social influence.

Social cognition refers to the mental representations and processes that underlie social judgments and behavior—for example, the application of stereotypes to members of social groups. Theories of social cognition have generally assumed that mental representations are abstract and stable and that they are activated and applied by relatively automatic, context-independent processes. Recent evidence is inconsistent with these expectations, however. Social-cognitive processes have been shown to be adaptive to the perceiver's current social goals, communicative contexts, and bodily states. Although these findings can often be given ad hoc explanations within current conceptual frameworks, they invite a fuller integration with the broad intellectual movement emphasizing situated cognition. Such an approach has already been influential in many areas within psychology and beyond, and theories in the field of social cognition would benefit by taking advantage of its insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three studies investigated the role of intergroup satisfaction in intergroup conflict. After reading about real acts of aggression committed by an ingroup, participants reported how those actions made them feel and how much they would support similar aggression in the future. In all three studies, experiencing intergroup satisfaction increased support for similar aggression, whereas experiencing intergroup guilt decreased support for similar aggression. Study 2 showed that ingroup identification increased justification appraisals, which increased satisfaction and decreased guilt, and thus increased support for future aggression. Study 3 provided an experimental test of the model: when justification appraisals were manipulated, emotion and support for further aggression changed accordingly. These findings demonstrate conditions under which intergroup satisfaction can facilitate and sustain intergroup conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents on the implications of agent-based modeling (ABM) as an alternative approach to theory building in social psychology. It states that ABM is a tool to bridge conceptually the micro level of assumptions regarding individual agent behaviors, interagent interactions, and the macro level of the overall patterns which result in the agent population. It is believed that the ABM approach is better able than prevailing approaches in psychological field.

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one that focuses on the intergroup emotion theory and another about intergroup guilt.

The current research investigated participants' reactions to positive and negative comments directed toward them as individuals or as members of a social group. Using both perspective-taking (Studies 1 and 2) and actual interaction methodologies (Study 3), three studies found that participants generally responded negatively to negative comments regardless of the level of identity to which the comment was directed. Positive comments were generally viewed positively, except when the comment was directed at the group and was stereotype relevant. When the latter was the case, participants reported increased anger and desires to attack (and avoid) the speaker. Furthermore, these negative feelings and action tendencies were partially mediated by an attribution to prejudice to the speaker. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discrepancies between people`s ought selves and their actual selves and their ideal selves and actual selves predict the emotions that individuals experience. The authors predicted that internal versus external causal attributions for self-discrepancies should moderate the relationship between self-discrepancies and emotions, resulting in more refined predictions for both agitation- and dejection-related emotions and for two additional types of emotion, namely, anger-related and discontent-related emotions. Results of two studies generally supported the predictions that agitation-related emotions and dejection-related emotions were positively associated with actual-ought discrepancies and actual-ideal discrepancies, respectively, only when causal attributions for the discrepancies were internally based. Anger-related emotions and emotions of discontent were positively associated with actual-ought and actual-ideal discrepancies, respectively, primarily when causal attributions were externally based. Study 2, which addressed group discrepancies and group-based emotions, generally replicated the findings when group identification was high, yielding a more complex model of the link between discrepancies and emotions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two broad distal causes of prejudice are past history of intergroup contact and general political predispositions. Two studies investigate the extent to which these effects are mediated by emotions directed at the outgroup, as proposed by Intergroup Emotions Theory (Smith, 1993). In both studies, past intergroup contact and Social Dominance Orientation predict prejudice, as measured either by a feeling thermometer or the Modern Racism Scale. Furthermore, for both studies these effects are significantly mediated by intergroup emotions, above and beyond measures of stereotypes (stereotype endorsement in Study 1 and stereotype knowledge in Study 2) that were entered as alternative potential mediators. Stereotype endorsement also plays a significant mediational role in one case. Increased attention to the role of emotions in intergroup relations, including in the mediation of such powerful and well-known effects as those of intergroup contact and political predispositions, appears to be warranted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three studies tested the hypotheses that inequality among group members, as well as specific reasons for inequality, would significantly influence strength of group identification and cooperative responses to a social dilemma. In Study 1, participants reacted to scenarios describing a public good social dilemma. For some scenarios there was an equal distribution of initial resources, while in others the distribution was unequal. As predicted, group identification led to more cooperation in the dilemma. Starting with more money tended to reduce group identification for females but to increase it for males. In study 2, participants were faced with an actual one-trial public good social dilemma involving real money. In some conditions, participants began with endowments of different sizes, and the inequality was explained as either random or justified. As predicted, reasons for inequality as well as the fact of inequality had an impact on group identification which, in turn, influenced cooperation in the dilemma. Replicating the results of Study 1, different conditions tended to enhance group identification for women and men. Study 3 was a conceptual replication of Study 2, and resulted in similar findings. Overall, these results may have important implications for real-world dilemmas, where inequality among the parties is almost always a salient feature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Models postulating 2 distinct processing modes have been proposed in several topic areas within social and cognitive psychology. We advance a new conceptual model of the 2 processing modes. The structural basis of the new model is the idea, supported by psychological and neuropsychological evidence, that humans possess 2 memory systems. One system slowly learns general regularities, whereas the other can quickly form representations of unique or novel events. Associative retrieval or pattern completion in the slow-learning system elicited by a salient cue constitutes the effortless processing mode. The second processing mode is more conscious and effortful; it involves the intentional retrieval of explicit, symbolically represented rulesfrom either memory system and their use to guide processing. After presenting our model, we review existing dual-process models in several areas, emphasizing their similar assumptions of a quick, effortless processing mode that rests on well-learned prior associations and a second, more effortful processing mode that involves rule-based inferences and is employed only when people have both cognitive capacity and motivation. New insights and implications of the model for several topic areas are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Discusses a study which suggested that reports on the characteristics of a relationship partner or in-group are facilitated or inhibited by matches or mismatches with the participant's own characteristics. How the study was conducted; Result of the multiple regression analysis on in-group and self; Result of the analysis with the inclusion of other in the self (IOS) scale.

Presents information on a study on perceptions of gender subtypes and the extent to which these perceptions are context sensitive. Role of exemplar information in judgments about in-groups and out-groups; Context effects on group stereotypes; Methodology; Results and discussion.

Public perceptions of sex discrimination and women's economic opportunity, and attitudes toward the implementation of equal opportunity, are analyzed in data from a 1980 national survey. Results are interpreted in the context of previous findings on whites beliefs about blacks' opportunity, in terms of a general perspective on political cognition. The perspective stresses the influence of general stratification beliefs, self-interest, and affective responses on beliefs about specific groups such as women. Though some of these influences lead to similarities between views on women and blacks, others produce differences, such that overall, barriers to opportunity are more widely perceived in the case of women. Discussion focuses on the psychological processes and aspects of intergroup relations that contribute to opportunity-related beliefs and attitudes, and on their implications for future progress toward equality of opportunity for the sexes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduces a framework for organizing conceptualizations of social identity along different dimensions. Perception of the intergroup context; In-group attraction; Interdependency beliefs; Depersonalization; Impact of these dimensions on the consequences attributed to social identity; Theoretical and empirical implications.

Presents a study on the representation of an in-group with respect to the self. Analysis of self-categorization theory; Optimal distinctiveness theory; Egocentric social categorization theory.

Several researchers have called for investigation of the psychometric properties of widely used attributional measures. Models involving multiple indicators of a latent (unmeasured) variable provide a valuable approach to this type of problem. A strategy that gives evidence about the relative merit of several attributional measures is illustrated. In general it appears that the best item of those tested is one asking for ratings of the cause of an event on a scale from dispositional to situational. A question about predicted recurrence of the event serves almost as well, while questions about the actor's freedom in, and responsibility for, the event are substantially less adequate measures of an underlying attributional construct. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A survey of the causal attributions of successful and unsuccessful medical school applicants yields evidence that attribution theories are applicable to impactful events outside the laboratory. Applicants viewed admission decisions based on controllable factors as fairer than those based on external or ascribed factors, and they demonstrated ego-defensive attributional tendencies by rating controllable factors as more important causes of success than of failure. The extension of social-psychological theories outside the laboratory through survey and other techniques is advocated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a description and explanation of the current character of whites' beliefs about blacks' opportunity: perceptions of equality of opportunity, discrimination, "reverse discrimination," and the over-time trend in black opportunity. Data from a recent national survey show that whites tend to perceive widespread reverse discrimination, to see blacks' opportunity as having greatly improved in recent years, and in general to deny structural limits to blacks' opportunity. We propose that these perceptions are, in part, the product of the prevailing beliefs about stratification held by the American public. Empirical analysis shows that whites' beliefs about blacks' opportunity are significantly influenced by persons' perceptions of their own opportunity, by stratification ideology explaining opportunity in general, and by feelings of relative deprivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]