Asymmetries in Mutual Understanding: People With Low Status, Power, and Self-Esteem Understand Better Than They Are Understood

An experimental study of the process of felt understanding in intergroup relations: Japanese and Chinese relations in Japan

"Felt understanding" is a crucial determinant of positive interpersonal and intergroup relationships. However, the question of why felt understanding shapes intergroup relations has been neglected. In a pre-registered test of the process in intergroup relations with a sample from East Asia, we manipulated felt understanding (understood versus misunderstood by an outgroup) in an experimental study (N = 476). The results supported the expectation that felt understanding would lead to a more positive intergroup orientation and action intention. The results of parallel mediation analyses showed that felt understanding indirectly predicted intergroup outcomes through felt positive regard, intergroup overlap, and outgroup stereotypes. Furthermore, the results of post-hoc sequential mediation analyses indicated that felt understanding indirectly predicted intergroup outcomes sequentially through felt positive regard and intergroup overlap, followed by outgroup stereotypes.

The impacts of patient mistreatment on healthcare workers' role behaviors: a study in Chinese Fangcang shelter hospitals

BACKGROUND

Fangcang shelter hospitals have played an important role in the battle against the COVID-19 epidemic in China. Patients' verbal and physical attacks on medical workforce are prone to occur in such hospitals. This study explored the impacts of patient mistreatment on healthcare workers' role behaviors (service performance and patient-oriented organizational citizenship behavior).

METHODS

We examined the influence of patient mistreatment on service performance and patient-oriented organizational citizenship behavior, as well as the mediating effect of emotional exhaustion and the moderating effect of displaced aggression by patients, using hierarchical linear regression and conditional process analysis.

RESULTS

Patient mistreatment was positively associated with emotional exhaustion among healthcare workers, while emotional exhaustion was negatively associated with service performance and patient-oriented organizational citizenship behavior. Mediation analysis revealed that emotional exhaustion mediated the association between patient mistreatment and both types of role behaviors. Moderated mediation analysis found that the mediation effect was weaker when the displaced aggression by patients was high.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings clarified the relationship among patient mistreatment, emotional exhaustion, service performance, and patient-oriented organizational citizenship behavior. Additional assistance should be provided to healthcare workers dealing with patient mistreatment. Displaced aggression by patients attenuates the positive effects of patient mistreatment on the emotional exhaustion of healthcare workers. Our findings reveal the mechanism and boundary conditions of patient mistreatment affecting healthcare workers' service performance and patient-oriented organizational citizenship behavior.

A truly responsive listener is a self-verifying listener

We propose that accounts of responsiveness and responsive listening are tailored for people with positive self-views (high self-esteem, positive self-concepts). Researchers define responsiveness, in part, as valuing and appreciating a partners' attributes, accomplishments, and worldview. This emphasis on being positively validated overlooks the dangers of feeling overvalued, which are especially salient to those with low self-esteem and negative self-views. Self-verification motives lead people to feel closest to partners who see them as they see themselves. Responsiveness and positive validation may increase closeness among those with positive self-views, but these processes may backfire for those with negative self-views. We describe the challenges such individuals face in eliciting self-verification from partners and suggest ways of improving responsiveness to those with negative self-views.

The implications of listening during political conversations for democracy

There is a dearth of research on listening in the context of political conversation. Yet there is theoretical reason to believe that political listening could be an important pathway toward several democratically important outcomes including increased exposure to difference, mutual understanding, and decreased polarization. Unfortunately, listening in political contexts associated with deeply held moral beliefs and strong social identities may be among the most difficult settings for listening to flourish. On the other hand, listening is reciprocal within dyads and so a foothold of listening could, through subsequent social contagion, have potentially widespread effects. This article will review theory and research on political listening, as well as relevant scholarship on listening outside of the political domain.

Felt understanding in intergroup relations

In this paper, I review recent research on the importance of intergroup felt understanding - the belief that outgroup members understand and accept the perspectives of ingroup members - in intergroup relations. I first discuss felt understanding in conceptual terms in the broader context of research on intergroup meta-perception, before reviewing recent findings on how feeling understood in intergroup terms predicts more positive intergroup outcomes such as trust. In the second part, I consider future possibilities for this work, including (1) how felt understanding relates to other concepts such as 'voice' and feeling empathized with; (2) how felt understanding might be fostered through interventions; and (3) connections between felt understanding - and the more general concept of responsiveness - and intergroup contact.

Freedom and Constraint in Digital Environments: Implications for the Self

We evaluate how features of the digital environment free or constrain the self. Based on the current empirical literature, we argue that modern technological features, such as predictive algorithms and tracking tools, pose four potential obstacles to the freedom of the self: lack of privacy and anonymity, (dis)embodiment and entrenchment of social hierarchy, changes to memory and cognition, and behavioral reinforcement coupled with reduced randomness. Comparing these constraints on the self to the freedom promised by earlier digital environments suggests that digital reality can be designed in more freeing ways. We describe how people reassert personal agency in the face of the digital environment's constraints and provide avenues for future research regarding technology's influence on the self.