Feel like you belong: on the bidirectional link between emotional fit and group identification in task groups

Protecting Police Officers Against Burnout: Overcoming a Fragmented Research Field

This study aims to identify the determinants of burnout in police officers. We considered a wide range of psychosocial risk factors, individual variables that have been previously found to be associated with burnout in police officers (affective and cognitive empathy, self-care), and variables whose unique impact on burnout of police officers needs further clarification (organizational justice and organizational identification). The study was conducted in Portugal, and the sample was constituted by 573 members of the National Republican Guard (GNR-Guarda Nacional Republicana). The participants were invited to answer an online anonymous survey, which included previously validated measures of the following variables: burnout (exhaustion and disengagement), psychosocial risk factors, self-care, empathy (cognitive and affective), organizational justice, and organizational identification. Furthermore, we controlled for the potential impact of demographic variables (age, gender, years of professional experience, religiosity, political orientation, and income). Multiple regression analysis showed that when taken together, only a few of the variables associated with burnout had a unique impact on both exhaustion and disengagement: quantitative demands and affective empathy were burnout risk factors; meaningful work, organizational justice (distributive justice, procedural justice, and interactional justice), and organizational identification were burnout protective factors. Our results highlight the importance of developing theoretical models and planning interventions to prevent burnout in police officers, focusing mainly on the above-mentioned variables.

Show me your friends, I'll tell you your emotions: Emotional fit of immigrant-origin minority youth in cross-cultural friendship networks

The typical emotional responses to certain types of situations differ across cultures. Being reprimanded by your teacher in front of the class may be cause for anger and indignation among pupils in one cultural context, but for anger, shame, and possibly respect for the teacher among pupils in another cultural context. The consequence for immigrant-origin minorities is that they may not fit the emotions of the majority culture. Previous research has found that minorities who have majority contact have higher emotional fit with the majority culture. In the current study, we suggest that friendships with majority peers are particularly important to minorities' emotional fit. Students (945 minority and 1256 majority) from a representative sample of Belgian middle schools completed a sociometric questionnaire on their classroom friendships and rated their emotional experiences in two situations. Multilevel models yielded higher levels of emotional fit for minority youth with many (vs. few) majority friends as well as for minorities whose majority friends are connected (vs. less connected) to each other, or who are well-connected in the majority peer network. Having majority friends predicted emotional fit over and above majority contact in general.

Protected by the Emotions of the Group: Perceived Emotional Fit and Disadvantaged Group Members' Activist Burnout

Psychological processes that hamper activism, such as activist burnout, threaten social change. We suggest that perceived emotional fit (i.e., perceiving to experience similar emotions as other disadvantaged group members) may buffer activist burnout by mitigating the deleterious effects of stressors that are associated with partaking in collective action. We investigated the relation between perceived emotional fit and activist burnout using three-wave longitudinal survey data of Palestinians in the context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. We hypothesized that both higher general tendencies to fit emotionally with the ingroup (general perceived emotional fit) and increases over time in perceived emotional fit (change perceived emotional fit) would relate negatively to activist burnout. Supporting our hypotheses, both aspects of emotional fit were associated with lower activist burnout, even when controlling for classical predictors of collective action. This research highlights perceived emotional fit as an additional dimension to the role of emotions for sustainable collective action.

The Effects of the 2016 Copa América Centenario Victory on Social Trust, Self-Transcendent Aspirations and Evaluated Subjective Well-Being: The Role of Identity With the National Team and Collective Pride in Major Sport Events

Following a neo-Durkheimian perspective, major sporting events such as the World Cup or the America's Cup differ from other collective rituals because they promote interest throughout the nation due to their massiveness and international character. In order to increase the scientific knowledge related to these type of rituals, the aim of this study was to observe the effects that the Chilean victory in the 2016 Copa América Centenario had on social variables such as trust, self-transcendent aspirations, and evaluated subjective well-being (SWB) of both fans and non-fans. In addition, two longitudinal structural equation models (SEMs) were performed to estimate the effect of identity with the national team before the final match on evaluated SWB, trust, and self-transcendent aspirations post-final. A total of 648 Chilean participants (mean age = 38.58; SD = 10.96) answered the questionnaire before the final match. Out of these, 409 completed our measures after the final. The results show that fans presented higher scores in many of the studied variables before and after the final compared to non-fans. Identification with the national team (before the final) prospectively and significantly predicted pride in the national team and pride in the country (after the final). In addition, these two forms of collective pride mediated the relationship between identification with the national team (before the final) and evaluated SWB (after the final). The results are discussed emphasizing the importance of these kinds of specific massive rituals and their effects.

Why We Hate

We offer a functional perspective on hate, showing that hate has a unique pattern of appraisals and action tendencies. Hate is based on perceptions of a stable, negative disposition of persons or groups. We hate persons and groups more because of who they are, than because of what they do. Hate has the goal to eliminate its target. Hate is especially significant at the intergroup level, where it turns already devalued groups into victims of hate. When shared among group members, hate can spread fast in conflict zones where people are exposed to hate-based violence, which further feeds their hate. Hate can be reassuring and self-protective, because its message is simple and helps confirming people’s belief in a just world.

Regional Cultures and the Psychological Geography of Switzerland: Person-Environment-Fit in Personality Predicts Subjective Wellbeing

The present study extended traditional nation-based research on person-culture-fit to the regional level. First, we examined the geographical distribution of Big Five personality traits in Switzerland. Across the 26 Swiss cantons, unique patterns were observed for all traits. For Extraversion and Neuroticism clear language divides emerged between the French- and Italian-speaking South-West vs. the German-speaking North-East. Second, multilevel modeling demonstrated that person-environment-fit in Big Five, composed of elevation (i.e., mean differences between individual profile and cantonal profile), scatter (differences in mean variances) and shape (Pearson correlations between individual and cantonal profiles across all traits; Furr, 2008, 2010), predicted the development of subjective wellbeing (i.e., life satisfaction, satisfaction with personal relationships, positive affect, negative affect) over a period of 4 years. Unexpectedly, while the effects of shape were in line with the person-environment-fit hypothesis (better fit predicted higher subjective wellbeing), the effects of scatter showed the opposite pattern, while null findings were observed for elevation. Across a series of robustness checks, the patterns for shape and elevation were consistently replicated. While that was mostly the case for scatter as well, the effects of scatter appeared to be somewhat less robust and more sensitive to the specific way fit was modeled when predicting certain outcomes (negative affect, positive affect). Distinguishing between supplementary and complementary fit may help to reconcile these findings and future research should explore whether and if so under which conditions these concepts may be applicable to the respective facets of person-culture-fit.