The Roles of Group Importance and Anxiety in Predicting Depersonalized Ingroup Trust

In this experiment, we examine depersonalized ingroup trust as a function of group importance and anxiety. We expected that depersonalized ingroup trust would be stronger in more important social groups. We further predicted that anxiety would moderate the relationship between group importance and depersonalized ingroup trust, so that in high-importance social groups, but not within low-importance social groups, anxiety would increase depersonalized ingroup trust. By contrast, for low importance groups, anxiety should not affect depersonalized trust, but should increase interpersonal trust instead. These predictions were supported, even after controlling for baseline levels of general trust in others as well as for the presence of non-anxiety emotion states. The article discusses the theoretical and empirical links between anxiety, uncertainty, and decisions to trust in collective contexts.

The impact of social context on mimicry

Facial mimicry, the tendency to imitate other's facial expressions, has frequently been described as a reflex-like mechanism that function independent of the relationship between expresser and observer. However, there is also evidence suggesting that it is a social cue regulating social interactions and that consequently mimicry varies as a function of social context and the type of emotion expression shown. Two studies were conducted to the assess impact of social group membership and type of expression on facial mimicry. Results suggest that the level of facial mimicry varies as a function of group membership. Moreover, mimicry levels were influenced by the kind of emotion displayed by the expresser. Although participants mimicked happiness displays regardless of the expresser's group membership, negative emotions were either not mimicked or only when shown by an ingroup member.