Self-uniqueness increases women's willingness to participate in collective action for gender justice, but not support for sex quotas

Affiliation with certain groups allows to simultaneously satisfy two competing needs: the need to be moderately different from others and the need to belong. We propose that the feminist movement, that has been turning towards individualistic goals based on individual empowerment, may be one of such groups for women. In three studies we examined the relationship between self-uniqueness and women's support for collective action and structural measures (i.e. sex quotas) promoted by the feminist movement. A first correlational study indicated that self-uniqueness need is positively associated with willingness to participate in collective action for gender justice generally, but not with support for sex quotas. Consistently, two experimental studies (Studies 2-3) found that priming self-uniqueness increases collective action intentions, but not quota support. Study 3 also showed that the effect of self-uniqueness on collective action intentions for gender justice may be mediated by greater perceptions of personal discrimination for being a woman and fusion with the feminist movement. These results suggest that appeals to self-uniqueness may attract women to the feminist movement but do not guarantee support for concrete collective measures against gender inequality.

Psychological and actual group formation: Conflict is neither necessary nor sufficient

Conflict is neither necessary nor sufficient for the existence of groups. First, the existence of mutually supporting, rather than antagonistic, interactants is sufficient to constitute a "social group." Second, conflict does not necessarily mark group boundaries but can also exist within an ingroup. Third, psychological representations of social groups do not only trace, but also perpetuate the existence of groups.

The Impact of Mortality Salience on Purchase Intention and Creativity Evaluation on Products During COVID-19 Pandemic

In the environment of COVID-19, people are faced with mortality salience (MS) and socioeconomic crisis. According to the terror management theory, the MS would lead to particular consumption attitudes and behaviors caused by the self-esteem and cultural worldview defense. The creativity as a potential value of products needs to be examined to explore how the MS changed the creativity evaluation of three types of products categorized into normal, renovative, and innovative products, based on the degree of originality (Zhang et al., 2019). Two experiments were conducted to examine (1) the MS effect on the creativity and purchase intention evaluation and (2) both MS and country-of-origin effect on the evaluations. The results show that usefulness and purchase intention are affected by both effects, and the novelty is mainly affected by MS.

The role of heroic doubling in ideologically motivated state and terrorist violence

The psychiatrist Robert Lifton developed his model of 'doubling' to account for the capacity of some human beings to commit atrocities in one compartment of their lives, while continuing to maintain normal social relations in their domestic sphere, a phenomenon which he encountered both in interviews with former Nazi doctors working in concentration camps, and with terrorists belonging to the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo cult. By supplementing this model with a theory of heroization based on existential anthropology and Jung's concept of the Shadow, a composite heuristic explanatory paradigm is formed, 'heroic doubling', which may contribute to the empathetic understanding of acts of extreme violence being carried out by individuals who do not present symptoms of psychiatric disorder and maintain normal existences, yet are prepared to kill and be killed for a cause that confers on their lives a sense of transcendent purpose and sacrality.