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Analysis of incidents over the past ten years in Germany reveals that the boundaries between targeted attacks in schools and terrorist attacks are starting to blur. Bockler, Leuschner, Roth, Zick, and Scheithauer (2018) recently presented a set of hypotheses about similarities between the developmental pathways of school attackers and lone actor terrorists. To date there is only a small body of empirical research comparing these two forms of targeted violence in depth. In order to fill this gap, this article presents findings from a qualitative analysis of prosecution files comparing the developmental pathways of German school attackers (N = 7; age range: 13 to 23) and Jihadi attackers (N = 7; age range: 21 to 28 years) who committed their attacks between 2000 and 2013. Using theoretical coding and constant case comparison, the contribution shows that the two phenomena have overlaps in which developmental processes and social mechanisms are similar. Both school attackers and Jihadi attackers frame their act of violence using cultural scripts and perform the attack on a public stage where victims are attacked not on the basis of personal conflicts but because of their symbolic meaning. Taking into account the similarities in the perpetrators' developmental pathways, the authors propose that it might be more fruitful from an operational perspective to discuss severe target school violence and terrorist attacks under a common concept of demonstrative violence than to artificially assign them to exclusive classes of violence.

This article examines so-called secondary transfer effects of intergroup contact, a phenomenon whereby positive intergroup contact experiences can influence attitudes not only toward encountered (primary) outgroups but also toward other (secondary) outgroups that were not initially involved in the intergroup encounter. The current study relies on a unique cross-sectional sample of the general population drawn from eight European countries (N = 7,042) to examine the relationship between intergroup contact with immigrants and attitudes toward primary (immigrants) and secondary (homosexuals and Jews) outgroups. Results showed that intergroup contact was not only directly related with primary outgroup attitudes but also indirectly associated with secondary outgroup attitudes, via attitude generalization. These relationships occurred primarily for individuals low in social dominance orientation. Findings are discussed in terms of their contribution to understanding secondary transfer effects of contact as well as the role of social dominance orientation as a moderator of such effects. (Contains 10 footnotes, 2 tables, and 1 figure.)

While most Germans reacted welcoming toward newly arrived refugees in 2015 and 2016, parallelly overt hateful reactions such as hate crimes, social exclusion, and increasing right‐wing electoral support have been registered all over Germany with several regions emerging as "hot spots" in these regards. Among them was our case, the mid‐sized town of Bautzen in the state of Saxony, where intergroup conflict and violent clashes between locals and refugees caused news headlines. To analyze intergroup conflicts in the ethnically super‐homogenous context of Bautzen, we performed a qualitative interview study. More specifically, we conducted 48 semistructured interviews with residents and members of the victimized outgroup of refugees. Our analysis reveals that the societal basis of intergroup conflict in Bautzen seems to be a distinct climate of exclusion aimed at tagged outgroups. Refugees report facing everyday discriminatory practices and even violence. Further, this specific local climate is facilitated by several Bautzen‐specific characteristics on the macro level, such as low number of foreigners and high levels of right‐wing electoral support. Our findings suggest that limited diversity and widespread stereotypes affect locals' reactions toward and perception of refugees. We discuss our results in light of the intergroup contact hypothesis and encourage more qualitative research on the nexus of intergroup contact and intergroup conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine German participants' assessment of the time of National Socialism. Especially for younger generations, shifts in the culture of remembrance may change their assessments of historical events. We argue that factors such as increased formal education about the topic and decreased personal contact with contemporary witnesses can weaken attributional biases (e.g., ingroup favouritism) in the assessment of the role of the German population during the time of National Socialism. We use data from a German representative sample (N = 1,000) and focus on the links between participants' age and the estimated involvement of the German population under National Socialism as perpetrators, victims, helpers, and "bystanders," as well as the agreement with explanations why the general population did not act against National Socialist crimes. Younger participants estimated the proportions of perpetrators and bystanders within the German population as higher and were less likely to agree that Germans did not know about the systematic killings. Older participants were more likely to agree with situational explanations for the population's inaction (i.e., that Germans did not know or did not have an opportunity to act against the crimes). We find a positive relation between a more critical perspective on the involvement of the population in the past and participants' feelings of responsibility in the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transmission of national history in general and family narratives in particular is prone to censorship and bias, protecting or enhancing social identities. The authors propose that, as has been shown for national groups, families also create and pass on representations about their roles and behaviors through history. In a representative survey, 1000 German respondents estimated the percentages of victims, perpetrators, and those who helped potential victims during the time of National Socialism to be 35%, 34%, and 16%, respectively. For family representations, the percentages shifted toward helping (29%) and away from complicity (20%), while representations of victimhood were as prevalent (36%) as estimates for the general population. Systematic differences suggested an alignment of general social representations of history with family representations. Participants reporting a perpetrator family representation held more positive attitudes toward refugees coming to Germany today than participants who did not report such a representation. This link was mediated through differences in societal representations. The authors discuss family representations as an intermediate, more proximate prescriptive background and points of reference, according to which more general historical representations on a national level may be aligned, and individual present-day political attitudes and behaviors oriented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2015, far right parties drawing heavily on radical anti-refugee rhetoric gained electoral support in Germany while the number of political hate crimes targeting refugees rose. Both phenomena – far right electoral support and prevalence of right-wing hate crimes – have theoretically and empirically been linked with socio-structural and contextual variables. However, systematic empirical research on these links is scattered and scarce at best. We combine official statistics on political hate crimes targeting refugees in Germany and far right electoral support of the far right party "Alternative für Deutschland" (AfD) in the German national elections 2017 with socio-structural variables (proportion of foreigners and unemployment rate) and survey data collected in a representative survey (N = 1,506) in 2016. We aggregate and combine data for all German municipalities except Berlin which were the level of analysis for the current study. In path analyses, we find socio-structural variables to be unrelated with each other but significantly correlated with both criterion variables in a systematic fashion: proportion of foreigners was negatively while unemployment rate was positively linked with far right electoral support. Right-wing crime was linked positively with unemployment rate across Germany and positively with proportion of foreigners only in East Germany while proportion of foreigners was unrelated to right-wing crime in West Germany. When including survey measures into the model, they were linked with socio-structural variables in the predicted fashion – intergroup contact correlated positively with proportion of foreigners, collective deprivation correlated positively with unemployment rates, and both predicted extreme right-wing attitudes. However, their contribution to the explained variance in outcome variables above and beyond socio-structural variables was neglectable. We argue that both far right-wing electoral support and right-wing hate crime can be conceptualized as behavioral forms of political extremism shaped through socio-structural and contextual factors and discuss implications for preventing political extremism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Differentiation' is identified as a key category, and an empirical system of differentiation is developed. The key category is divided into two subcategories, which are further dimensionalized. The analysis finds that highly identified fans differentiate themselves from other fans (both from their own club and from rival clubs) and strive for positive distinction. Violent acts as extreme forms of differentiation are identity-establishing for some of these fans. Confrontations with rival fans are actively sought to extend team competitions concerning the best support into a physical and violent plane and to enforce territorial claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prejudice is more prevalent among members of the working class than among members of the middle or upper class. It is still a matter of discussion whether education works to suppress prejudice among upper class members or, on the contrary, to enhance genuinely tolerant attitudes. We propose that (i) two indicators of social class-income and education-independently predict prejudice toward multiple targets as follows: lower levels of income and education are associated with higher levels of prejudice. (ii) The connection between social class and prejudice is explained by the endorsement of system-legitimating ideological attitudes, namely right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO). We tested these hypotheses in four studies using cross-sectional surveys in Europe (Studies 1 and 2, Ns = 11 330 and 2640) and longitudinal data from Germany and Chile (Studies 3 and 4, Ns = 343 and 388). Results show that education and income exert independent negative effects on prejudice. The effect of education is stronger than the effect of income, which is not stable across countries. The relationships between income and prejudice and education and prejudice are mediated by RWA and SDO. We conclude that people of the working class generally endorse an ideological configuration that is well suited for legitimating the social system. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across cultures studies show that men score higher on social dominance orientation than women. This gender gap is considered invariant, but conflicting explanations are discussed: Some authors refer to evolutionary psychology and perceive the gender gap to be driven by sociobiological factors. Other authors argue that social roles or gender-stereotypical self-construals encouraged by intergroup comparisons are responsible for attitudinal gender difference. In Study 1 we analyzed sex differences in social dominance orientation in three German probability surveys (each n > 2300). Unexpectedly, the analyses yielded an inverse gender gap with higher values for social dominance orientation in women than in men. Interactions with age, education, political conservatism, and perceived inequity indicated that the inverse gender gap can be mainly attributed to older, conservative, (and less educated) respondents, and those who feel they get their deserved share. In Study 2 we replicated the well-known gender gap with men scoring higher than women in social dominance orientation among German students. Results are interpreted on the basis of biocultural interaction, which integrates the sociobiological, social role, and self-construal perspectives. Our unusual findings seem to reflect a struggle for status by members of low-status groups who consider group-based hierarchy the most promising option to improve their status. While younger women take advantage of a relational, feminine self-construal that leads to lower social dominance orientation in young women than in young men, older women are supposed to profit from an agentic self-construal that results in stronger social dominance orientation values. Specific characteristics of the culture in Germany seem to promote this strategy. Here, we discuss the female ideal of the national socialist period and the agentic female social role in the post-war era necessitated by the absence of men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Different types of prejudice are usually treated as separate constructs. We propose that they constitute a syndrome of group-focused enmity (GFE), that is, they are related to each other and share a common core that is strongly predicted by a generalized ideology of inequality. Furthermore, GFE components are supposed to have similar predictors and outcomes. An empirical test is presented using structural equation modeling on the syndrome, its causes, consequences, and structural stability over time. The study relies on three German cross-sectional probability samples (each = 2,700) and a related panel study (2002, 2003, and 2004). The idea of a GFE syndrome is strongly supported. Future research is discussed, as well as alternative approaches of a common prejudice factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the connections between prejudice and specific attitudes toward acculturation in Germany. Results of surveys confirm the hypothesis that prejudice is related to ideologies of assimilation and segregation among majoritygroup members. Moreover, experimental and correlational studies indicate that these attitudes are linked to discriminatory behavior. Further analyses of studies with ethnic minorities prove that prejudice and acculturation are linked within minority groups as well. Additionally it is shown that prejudice is functional in order for minorities to acculturate. These studies confirm the impression that there is a close link between macrosocial and microsocial levels of coping with migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Differentiation' is identified as a key category, and an empirical system of differentiation is developed. The key category is divided into two subcategories, which are further dimensionalized. The analysis finds that highly identified fans differentiate themselves from other fans (both from their own club and from rival clubs) and strive for positive distinction. Violent acts as extreme forms of differentiation are identity-establishing for some of these fans. Confrontations with rival fans are actively sought to extend team competitions concerning the best support into a physical and violent plane and to enforce territorial claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an examination of the structure of Islamophobia across cultures. Our novel measure-the Tripartite Islamophobia Scale (TIS)-embeds three theoretically and statistically grounded subcomponents of Islamophobia: anti-Muslim prejudice, anti-Islamic sentiment, and conspiracy beliefs. Across six samples (i.e., India, Poland, Germany, France, and the United States), preregistered analyses corroborated that these three subcomponents are statistically distinct. Measurement invariance analyses indicated full scalar invariance, suggesting that the tripartite understanding of Islamophobia is generalizable across cultural contexts. Furthermore, the subcomponents were partially dissociated in terms of the intergroup emotions they are predicted by as well as the intergroup outcomes they predict (e.g., dehumanization, ethnic persecution). For example, intergroup anger and disgust underpin Islamophobic attitudes, over and above the impact of fear. Finally, our results show that social dominance orientation (SDO) and ingroup identification moderate intergroup emotions and Islamophobia. We address both theoretical implications for the nature of Islamophobia and practical interventions to reduce it.