The imaginary friends of my friends: Imagined contact interventions which highlight supportive social norms reduce children’s antirefugee bias

Fostering inclusive attitudes among children in host classrooms is key to integrating refugee children. A field experiment tests the prejudice reduction effects of a teacher-led activity integrating imagined intergroup contact and normative influence. To enhance the effectiveness of imagined contact, scenarios include supportive ingroup norms. In 29 classes, 545 children ( Mage = 10.88, SD = 0.96) were randomly assigned to one of five conditions: standard imagined contact, imagined contact encouraged by family, class peers, or religious ingroups, or a control. Children in all norm-framed imagined contact conditions had significantly less antirefugee bias compared with the control. The class-peer norm frame significantly reduced affective and cognitive facets of bias. The family norm frame reduced affective bias, and the religious norm frame reduced cognitive bias. Standard imagined contact did not differ from the control. Potential mediating pathways are explored. These findings illustrate the utility of incorporating norms into imagined contact interventions to reduce antirefugee bias among schoolchildren.

Trust predicts COVID-19 prescribed and discretionary behavioral intentions in 23 countries

The worldwide spread of a new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) since December 2019 has posed a severe threat to individuals' well-being. While the world at large is waiting that the released vaccines immunize most citizens, public health experts suggest that, in the meantime, it is only through behavior change that the spread of COVID-19 can be controlled. Importantly, the required behaviors are aimed not only at safeguarding one's own health. Instead, individuals are asked to adapt their behaviors to protect the community at large. This raises the question of which social concerns and moral principles make people willing to do so. We considered in 23 countries (N = 6948) individuals' willingness to engage in prescribed and discretionary behaviors, as well as country-level and individual-level factors that might drive such behavioral intentions. Results from multilevel multiple regressions, with country as the nesting variable, showed that publicized number of infections were not significantly related to individual intentions to comply with the prescribed measures and intentions to engage in discretionary prosocial behaviors. Instead, psychological differences in terms of trust in government, citizens, and in particular toward science predicted individuals' behavioral intentions across countries. The more people endorsed moral principles of fairness and care (vs. loyalty and authority), the more they were inclined to report trust in science, which, in turn, statistically predicted prescribed and discretionary behavioral intentions. Results have implications for the type of intervention and public communication strategies that should be most effective to induce the behavioral changes that are needed to control the COVID-19 outbreak.

Anti-roma Bias (Stereotypes, Prejudice, Behavioral Tendencies): A Network Approach Toward Attitude Strength

The Roma have been and still are a target of prejudice, marginalization, and social exclusion across Europe, especially in East-Central European countries. This paper focuses on a set of stereotypical, emotional, and behavioral evaluative responses toward Roma people selected as representing the underlying components of anti-Roma bias. Employing network analysis, we investigated if attitude strength is associated with stronger connectivity in the networks of its constituent elements. The findings from representative surveys carried out in Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, France, and Ireland supported our assumption, as high attitude strength toward the Roma resulted in stronger connectivity in all pairs of high- versus low-attitude-strength networks. Our finding yields a solid theoretical framework for targeting the central variables-those with the strongest associations with other variables-as a potentially effective attitude change intervention strategy. Moreover, perceived threat to national identity, sympathy, and empathy were found to be the most central variables in the networks.

The last acceptable prejudice in Europe? Anti-Gypsyism as the obstacle to Roma inclusion

National and European policies aim to facilitate the integration of Roma people into mainstream society. Yet, Europe’s largest ethnic group continues to be severely discriminated. Although prejudice has been identified to be at the core of this failure, social psychological research on anti-Gypsyism remains scarce. We conducted a study in six countries using student and community samples ( N = 2,089; Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Norway, Italy, Spain) to understand how anti-Gypsyism among majority-group members predicts unfavorable acculturation preferences toward Roma people. Openly negative stereotypes predicted acculturation preferences strongly across the countries. However, stereotypes about the Roma receiving undeserved benefits were also relevant to some degree in East-Central Europe, implying that intergroup relations are framed there as realistic conflict. Stereotypes about traditional Roma culture did not play a central role in acculturation preferences. Our findings highlighted that anti-Gypsyism may be an impediment to integration efforts, and efforts should be context-specific rather than pan-national.

'We fight for a better future for our country': Understanding the Ukrainian Euromaidan movement as the emergence of a social competition strategy

The current research seeks to develop an analysis of Ukraine's Euromaidan social movement in psychological terms. Building on the classic understanding of social competition strategies, we argue that Euromaidan protests can be conceived as an attempt of pro-European Union (EU) Ukrainians to realign the boundaries of the Ukrainian national identity by defeating the alternative pro-Russia integration project championed by the government. In particular, building on the encapsulated model of social identity in collective action, we suggest that Euromaidan is an emergent opinion-based group identity, formed in response to injustice through two self-categorical processes - group-level self-investment into the shared entity (i.e., Ukrainian national category) and disidentification from the alternative Russia-led Customs Union. Using a sample of 3,096 participants surveyed during the protests, we tested our hypotheses with structural equation modelling, where the model accounting for the direct and indirect paths of the self-categorical processes was expected to explain collective action intentions to a great extent than models applying the social identity and encapsulation models of collective action. We found evidence consistent with the proposal that Euromaidan was a pro-EU opinion-based group, formed in response to the government's decision to suspend the EU-Ukraine agreement and around individuals' general perception of unfair government authorities.

Political solidarity through action (and inaction): How international relations changed intracultural perceptions in Ukraine

The present research sought to explain the mechanisms behind rival Ukrainian solidarity campaigns advocating protection of the minority Crimean Tatars in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Crimean peninsula. Adapting the social identity model of helping and solidarity we propose that political solidarity is a form of collective action in which allies can align their aspirational identities to the oppressed group’s political loyalties through a process of disidentification from powerful outgroups. We proposed and found supportive evidence ( N = 657) for the notion that both action (facilitation pathway) and inaction (inhibitory pathway) to support the Crimean Tatars were derived from disidentification from the European Union or the Russian-Federation-dominated Customs Union and are mediated by perception of the Crimean Tatars’ loyalties towards Russia and Ukraine. The findings provide initial evidence for a new understanding of political mobilization in support of third parties as a group-level emergent phenomenon in the context of identity threat.

'The More We Stand For - The More We Fight For': Compatibility and Legitimacy in the Effects of Multiple Social Identities

This paper explores the expression of multiple social identities through coordinated collective action. We propose that perceived compatibility between potentially contrasting identities and perceived legitimacy of protest serve as catalysts for collective action. The present paper maps the context of the "Euromaidan" anti-regime protests in Ukraine and reports data (N = 996) collected through an online survey following legislation to ban protests (March-May, 2014). We measured participants' identification with three different groups (the Ukrainian nation, the online protest community, and the street movement), perception of compatibility between online protest and the street movement, perception of the legitimacy of protest, and intentions to take persuasive and confrontational collective action. We found evidence that the more social groups people "stood for," the more they "fought" for their cause and that identifications predicted both forms of collective action to the degree that people saw the protest and the online movement as compatible with each other and believed protest to be legitimate. Collective action can be interpreted as the congruent expression of multiple identities that are rendered ideologically compatible both in online settings and on the street.

Intergroup Conflict in Russia

The group position model ( Blumer 1958 ; Bobo and Tuan 2006 ) assumes that attempting to secure a privileged position for the ingroup is a main determinant of perceived intergroup conflict. This assumption is tested with survey data collected in 1999 and 2000 among eight titular groups in autonomous republics of the Russian Federation. The survey included an experiment that was aimed at disentangling the effects of perceived threat and the fear of outgroup encroachment (growing outgroup influence). The findings indicate that more conflict was perceived when the ingroup was larger (corresponding to stronger entitlement claims to privilege), especially among those who felt more threatened. This association was further strengthened among those whose fear of outgroup encroachment was made salient. This study shows the relevance of the group position model in understanding perceived intergroup conflict among national minority groups with a local privileged status.