Search

Using self-report questionnaires, a survey among 606 Dutch primary school children aged 10 to 12 years examined relationships among social support, gender, victimization, and depressive feelings. Hierarchical regression analyses confirmed that victims and bully/victims would report more depressive feelings than uninvolved children. There was no evidence that social support moderated the relationship between victimization and depressive feelings. However, social support appeared to influence the depressive feelings of victimized children, that is, pupils who were victimized received very little support and hence suffered depression. This general mediation effect could be observed in boys. In girls, the mediating effects of social support were more diffuse. For girls, the risk factor for the development of depressive feelings did not so much pertain to the type of bullying as to the subsequent lack of social support they experienced. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Two experiments examined the role of threat-related action-state orientation in how observers become psychologically involved with victims of violence. Observing incidents of random, “senseless” violence is uniquely threatening to observers because they violate just world beliefs and appear like they could happen to anyone. Because stronger threat-related state-oriented individuals are less effective in down-regulating such threats to the self, they should perceive stronger self-concerned position identification (i.e., “this could happen to me”) when confronted with random, “senseless” violence. In contrast, no such effects should occur for observers' person identification (i.e., their other-concerned empathy for the victim). The results of two experiments supported these ideas and ruled out potential alternative explanations based on individuals' just world beliefs, need for cognition, and their attribution strategies. We discuss the importance of threat-related self-regulation processes with regard to self- and other-concerned mechanisms through which observers come to care for victims of violence. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A survey (N= 120) examined variables that contribute to the willingness of people to engage in silent marches against violence in the Netherlands. As argued in Sacred Value Protection Model (SVPM) of Tetlock, Kristel, Elson, Green, and Lerner (2000) and moral mandate theory of Skitka, Bauman, and Sargis (2005), moral threats that are triggered by violent incidents, may indeed drive people to protest against such incidents. Our findings indicated dual pathways to such protests, that are all associated with reactive, angry empathic concerns. These concerns involve people's outrageous, punitive reactions towards offenders on behalf of the victims. These concerns are directly or indirectly related to people's participation intentions. That is, they directly influence the participation intention variable, or indirectly, through (re-)establishing the belief in a just-world, or through more fearful, self-directed moral cleansing reactions. These latter reactions aim at reinforcing community-shared moral standards. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The individual – group discontinuity effect entails that in mixed-motive situations, such as the Prisoner's Dilemma game (PDG), intergroup interactions are more competitive than inter-individual interactions. Based on Pruitt and Kimmel's (1977) goal/expectation theory and Axelrod's (1984) cooperation theory, we propose a cautious reciprocation model (CRM), which specifies variables that extinguish or reduce the discontinuity effect by enhancing intergroup cooperation. The model entails that, relative to individuals, the cooperative decisions of the more rational and instrumental group members are more strongly determined by a combination of a concern for long-term greed and a fear of anticipated retaliation, leading them to become more responsive to changes in the PDG task and/or social environment, and to follow an instrumental, cautious reciprocation technique. This technique is measured by increases in the level of cooperation (or competition) shown by groups in reaction to changes in the PDG decisions...

We integrate and extend insights from just world theory (Lerner, 1980), appraisal and attribution theories of emotion (e.g. Scherer, Schorr, & Johnstone, 2001; Weiner, 1995), and the sacred value protection model (Tetlock, Kirstel, Elson, Green, & Lerner, 2000) to explain observers' emotional and behavioural responses to incidents of so-called ‘senseless’ violence. The presence or absence of an opportunity to blame a victim for his or her violent fate resulted in stronger perceptions of ‘senselessness’ of the violence, stronger identification with the victim's suffering (i.e. person identification) and stronger identification with his or her violent fate (i.e. position identification). The presence or absence of an opportunity to blame the victim also influenced observers' feelings of anger and pity, and their willingness to protest and help. Importantly, both types of identification helped explain these emotional and behavioural responses. The results of this experiment suggest dual motivations for how observers come to feel and care for victims of ‘senseless’ violence. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In a laboratory experiment, three-person interactive and three-person nominal groups of college students brainstormed without externally imposed time constraints. All groups were homogeneous with regard to gender. Half of the participants were instructed to continue brainstorming until they ran out of ideas (expectancy stop rule), whereas the other half were instructed to continue until they were satisfied with their performance (satisfaction stop rule). We found that interactive groups were more persistent than nominal groups in both of the stop rule conditions and thereby compensated for their usual productivity loss. We also found, as predicted, that women were more persistent in the satisfaction stop rule condition, whereas men were more persistent in the expectancy stop rule condition. This effect may be due to gender differences in self-evaluations.

Production blocking (group members must take turns expressing their ideas) is an important cause of productivity loss in brainstorming groups. However, it is not yet clear why production blocking has this detrimental effect. We hypothesized that delays between the generation and articulation of ideas, arising when group members wait for their turns, interfere with the cognitive process of generating ideas. In three experiments, production blocking was simulated for individuals working at computer terminals. Production blocking interfered with idea generation in two ways. First, it disrupted the organization of idea generation when delays were relatively long. Second, it reduced the flexibility of idea generation when delays were unpredictable. Implications for group information processing are discussed. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.

The effects of idea sharing on cognitive processes and performance were assessed in an idea exposure paradigm. Participants generated ideas while being exposed to stimulus ideas that were semantically homogeneous or diverse, and were offered in an organized or a random sequence. As compared to a control condition, participants generated more diverse ideas when exposed to ideas from a wide range of semantic categories, and they generated more ideas per category when exposed to many ideas from only a few categories. The semantic organization of ideas was higher when participants were exposed to ideas that were organized in semantic clusters than when participants were exposed to unorganized ideas. Idea exposure had positive effects in general, because it reduced response latencies for category changes. Implications for information processing in groups are discussed.

In their research on individual-group discontinuity using Prisoner’s Dilemma Game (PDG), Schopler, Insko, and associates observed that groups were more competitive than individuals. Alternatively, we propose that this effect can be interpreted as a group-adaptiveness phenomenon. In a 2 (individuals vs. groups)× 2 (low vs. high incentives to cooperate) PDG study, individuals groups played against a cooperative opponent. Individual-group discontiunity was found when incentives to cooperate were low, but not when incentives were high. Results further suggest that the stronger intergroup competition observed in past discontinuity research may have been triggered and perpetuated by between-group violations of cooperative proposals. These findings are consistent with our group adaptiveness perspective, which proposes that groups are not invariably more competitive than individuals, but that they are more likely to adapt their behaviors to variations in the task and/or social environment in an attempt to attain important group goals.

In the Netherlands, two longitudinal fieldstudies (N=202 and N=46) were conducted on the relationship between severity of initiation and group attractiveness. Study 1 represents a severe initiation, Study 2 a more mild one. In these two different field ‘conditions’ we aimed to test the dissonance interpretation of the effects of a severe initiation (Aronson & Mills, 1959) and a positive correlation between severity of treatment of the initiated novices and group attractiveness was expected (hypothesis 1). Further, we expected that feelings of frustration and anger would mediate this relationship (hypothesis 2). On the other hand, our affiliation‐attraction hypothesis either predicted a positive correlation between companionship (Rook, 1987) and group attractiveness, irrespective of severity (hypothesis 3), or that companionship would mediate the severity‐attraction relationship (hypothesis 4). In both studies, LISREL path analyses only supported hypothesis 3. Contrary to hypothesis 1, severity experienced during the early stages of the initiation correlated with feelings of frustration and loneliness (Study 1), or depressive mood (Study 2). These feelings lasted throughout the initiation and lowered the liking for the group. Results are discussed in terms of newcomers’ decisions to leave or to join the group, determined by (i) the exchange and fate control relationship between the leadership and the newcomers; (ii) the severe treatment of newcomers as a selection device and (iii)

Two conflicting approaches to the study of group aggression are compared: the deindividuation theory of Zimbardo (1970) and the emergent norm theory of Turner and Killian (1972). To test these two conflicting hypotheses, the frustration-aggression theory of Brown (1986) is used which assumes that individuals and groups, male or female, will react with angry aggression when important social justice norms are violated. It was hypothesized (i) that groups will be more aggressive than single individuals; (ii) males will be more aggressive than females; and (iii) that more aggression will occur when people can be easily identified than when they remain anonymous to each other. These hypotheses received some support. Unexpected interactions between these variables are discussed in some detail. Generally, more support is found for the emergent norm theory than for deindividuation theory.

Referent Cognitions Theory (RCT) predicts that resentment is highest among persons who combine high referent outcomes (i) with low likelihood of amelioration and (ii) with perceived unfairness of the procedures leading to their actual outcomes. In organizations, resentment can be expressed in decreased commitment and decreased satisfaction with the organization, and with one's work and work situation. Predictions derived from RCT were tested in a field study among employees who, due to the retrenchment strategy adopted by their company, were put into an outplacement and transfer procedure. Results were only partly consistent with RCT predictions. Support for all predictions was found only among employees who successfully went through the transfer program. None of the predictions were supported by the results obtained from employees still in the program. Results suggest some limitations with respect to the validity of RCT.