The social identity approach to health argues that well-being depends on the psychosocial circumstances of the groups to which individuals belong. However, little is known about how the average level of identification in the group – ‘the identification environment’ – buffers the negative health consequences of stressors. We used multilevel modelling to investigate whether identification environment

Are we ever morally permitted to do what is morally wrong? It seems intuitive that we are, but evidence for dissociations among judgement of permissibility and wrongness is relatively scarce. Across four experiments (N = 1438), we show that people judge that some behaviours can be morally wrong and permissible. The dissociations arise because these judgements track different morally relevant aspects

There are widespread concerns about a decline in young people's mental health. One promising direction to address this issue involves group memberships and social identity processes. Despite progress, there are several issues in current theory and research including (1) whether the number of groups to which an individual belongs is related to more positive well-being, (2) better understanding the relationship

Conspiracy beliefs have been related to aversive emotional experiences often accompanying major world events and have also been linked to maladaptive ways of coping with stress. In this research, we examined how different coping strategies (i.e. self-sufficient, social-support, avoidance and religious) predicted the adoption of COVID-19 conspiracy theories. In two studies (Study 1, n = 1000 and Study

In crowds, to the degree one identifies with other crowd members one likely experiences a sense of common purpose, social connection and mutual support. Such is the psychological significance of these correlates of a shared identity that even others' close physical proximity can be pleasurable. However, such pleasure in others' proximity cannot be assumed: physical crowding can bring practical challenges

In contrast to some non-human primate species, human females do not show overt cues to fertility. Previous research argued that women still show systematic changes in their appearance across their ovulatory cycle to enhance their mating success when fertile. We report five studies investigating whether women's clothing style and grooming behaviour change across the ovulatory cycle. All studies were

Previous literature on conspiracy beliefs has an important gap, as it has almost completely excluded conspiracy beliefs relating to LGBTQ+ people. The purpose of the present research was to develop and validate a specific tool to measure the Gender Ideology and LGBTQ+ Lobby Conspiracies Beliefs: the GILC scale. Two independent data collections (Ntot = 1.908) were run involving both heterosexual and

On January 6th, 2021, Donald Trump's speech during a ‘Save America’ rally was followed by mass violence, with Trump's supporters storming the U.S. Capitol to prevent the certification of Joe Biden's victory in the presidential election. In its wake, there was a great deal of debate around whether the speech contained direct instructions for the subsequent violence. In this paper, we use a social identity

Collaborations may sometimes increase the likelihood of engaging in dishonest behaviour. As yet, it remains unknown what factors contribute to this phenomenon. Here, we investigate whether it matters with whom people are collaborating for the extent to which they are dishonest. We aim to (I) replicate dishonest collaboration effects and (II) examine whether collaborating with an ingroup member (vs

Political apologies have been argued to contribute to reconciliation among groups and nations but their efficacy has also been questioned. This paper examines the acceptance of political apologies, their content and the protagonists in the victim nation, the perpetrator nation and their subgroups. Guided by studies on the structure of apologies, it distinguishes 10 features of apologies, seven of which

Nostalgic reverie (i.e. sentimental longing) has received increased attention as a predictor of health and well-being, but only a handful of reviews have summarized this literature. The available reviews (Dementia: The International Journal of Social Research and Practice, 19, 2020, 330; Intimations of nostalgia: Multidisciplinary explorations of an enduring emotion, Bristol University Press, 2022)

Advantaged group allies can incur costs or rewards as a result of their allyship. The present work investigates whether such costs and rewards affect how marginalised group members perceive these allies. Across four experiments that collectively examine marginalised group members' perceptions of individual and corporate allies in the context of allyship for women's rights, Black Lives Matter and the

Research in the social identity tradition acknowledges the multiplicity of our identities and the implications that identity compatibility has for our health and well-being. However, current measures of multiple group membership have not yet captured the richness and complexity of our social identity networks at the wider sample level, and data regarding the different behaviours typically associated

We examine how Danish politicians articulate views on the ‘parallel society agreement’ (aka, the ‘ghetto-laws’), a controversial legislative intervention aiming to manage urban migration-related diversity. Through nationwide urban redevelopment aimed at facilitating residential ‘mixing’, the goal of the legislation is to eliminate so-called ‘parallel societies’—socio-economically deprived neighbourhoods

In the framework of prevention of social media addiction, persuasive messages can be used to stimulate people to engage in social media self-control behaviours. However, the effects of these messages may be weakened by defensive reactions. In the Working Memory account of Persuasion, these defensive self-regulatory actions in the Working Memory (WM) are activated to lower a given threat. Because the

This paper presents an analysis of identity leadership (Haslam et al., The new psychology of leadership: Identity, influence and power, Routledge, 2020) in the 1988 ‘Candlelight Demonstration’ in Bratislava which was a precursor to the 1989 Velvet Revolution. The analysis is based on interviews with the five remaining leaders of the demonstration and addresses three core issues. First, how leaders

This study examines how news images of refugees in the context of the war in Ukraine mobilize intergroup relations. A visual rhetorical analysis is used to examine the rhetorical strategies employed in news images of Ukrainian refugees in a mainstream Finnish national newspaper from February 25 to May 31, 2022. The data consisted of 465 images. The study constructed four humanizing visual rhetorical

We apply a newly developed attitude network-modelling technique (Response-Item Network, or ResIN) to study attitude–identity relationships in the context of hot–button issues that polarize the current US-American electorate. The properties of the network–method allow us to simultaneously depict differences in the structural organization of attitudes between groups and to explore the relevance of organized

Coalitions among individuals and between groups, which have had critical evolutionary benefits for humans, play an important role in contemporary life. One key element of the processes of assessing potential allies is how they may contribute to the perceived physical formidability – fighting ability or the capacity to inflict costs on others – of the alliance. In three studies, focused for the first

The Enlightenment idea of historical moral progress asserts that civil societies become more moral over time. This is often understood as an expanding moral circle and is argued to be tightly linked with language use, with some suggesting that shifts in how we express concern for others can be considered an important indicator of moral progress. Our research explores these notions by examining historical

The Bethnal Green tube shelter disaster, in which 173 people died, is a significant event in both history and psychology. While notions of ‘panic’ and ‘stampede’ have been discredited in contemporary psychology and disaster research as explanations for crowd crushes, Bethnal Green has been put forward as the exception that proves the rule. Alternative explanations for crushing disasters focus on mismanagement

The present research aimed to examine how perceivers' system-justifying beliefs moderate the way they evaluate high- versus low-status targets on assertiveness and competence. In three experimental studies, we manipulated a target's hierarchical position within his company's organization. Participants rated the target on traits reflecting assertiveness and competence. Their system-justifying beliefs

Do White Americans prefer society to be ‘colour-blind’ by rising above racial identities, or ‘multicultural’ by openly discussing and considering them? We developed an ideology-rationality model to understand support for these diversity perspectives. Specifically, since people endorse a diversity perspective in line with their ideological values, we hypothesized that conservatism is related to a relative

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the world in many ways; for example, evidence from the United Kingdom indicates that higher rates of discriminatory behaviours against immigrants have been recorded during this period. Prior research suggests that political orientation and trust are instrumental in discriminatory beliefs against immigrants. A longitudinal study (six waves and a follow-up) was conducted

Recent conservative political rhetoric support women having careers but emphasize that this should not be an obstacle to having children. We propose that this sentiment reflects the hierarchy of gender norms in today's society whereby motherhood is the ultimate role that women are expected to fulfil and denying such role evokes social penalties, above and beyond other prescribed gender norms. Across

The role of empathy in morality is a subject of ongoing scientific debate due to the lack of systematic reviews and meta-analyses on this topic. To address this gap, we conducted a PRISMA-based systematic quantitative review to investigate the role of empathy in moral judgements, decision-making, and inclinations using trolley problems and variants, which are popular types of moral dilemmas that explore

Vesper, D., König, C. J., Siegel, R., & Friese, M. (2022). Is use of the general system justification scale across countries justified? Testing its measurement equivalence. British Journal of Social Psychology, 61(3), 1032–1049. 10.1111/bjso.12520 Our colleague Lisa Peuckmann was kind enough to point out a misunderstanding in our analyses of Study 1. The effect sizes Δmean are calculated by subtracting

Examining the role of coping with stress strategies in shaping national narcissism, we proposed that this type of defensive national commitment (stemming from psychological shortcomings) should be lowered by adaptive coping strategies. In Study 1 (longitudinal, N = 603), we found that higher adaptive (i.e. self-sufficient) coping attenuated national narcissism. In Study 2 (experimental, N = 337), the

Social psychologists have typically examined leadership and risk-taking behaviours through a social identity lens. However, the rhetorical/ideological aspects of such processes as well as leaders' accountability management practices have not been adequately studied. We address this gap by focusing on leaders of the Church of Greece (CoG), who, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, insisted that their

Despite the relevance of social exclusion and economic inequality for homelessness, empirical studies investigating how these issues relate to homeless people's psychological well-being are scarce. We aimed to fill this gap by conducting two quasi-experimental studies on homeless and non-homeless groups. The first study (N = 200) showed that homeless (vs. non-homeless) people presented higher levels

Conspiracy believers often claim to be critical thinkers their ‘own research’ instead of relying on others' testimony. In two preregistered behavioural studies conducted in the United Kingdom and Pakistan (Nparticipants = 864, Ntrials = 5408), we test whether conspiracy believers have a general tendency to discount social information (in favour of their own opinions and intuitions). We found that conspiracy

Cognitive balance theory posits that a drive for cognitively consistent thoughts modulates interpersonal relations. We extended cognitive balance theory to intergroup relations and tested it in a real-life setting where intergroup relations are under strain: Northern Ireland in the wake of the UK's withdrawal from the EU. We predicted that when the groups of Irish people and British people in Northern

This paper analyzes descriptions of Ukrainian refugees in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Findings of previous research on news media descriptions of refugees point to problematic descriptions of refugees that downgrade their deservingness of refuge and treat refugee status as an inherent feature of fleeing individuals instead of as contingent on external circumstances. However, there

Persistently alive but unaware, vegetative state patients are stuck in the transition between life and death – that is, in a liminal hotspot. This condition raises complex ethical and legal dilemmas concerning end-of-life action. Drawing on social representations (SRs) and the liminality framework, our research investigated how the vegetative state was constructed within the Italian parliamentary debates

The negativity bias favours the cultural diffusion of negative beliefs, yet many common (mis)beliefs—naturopathy works, there's a heaven—are positive. Why? People might share ‘happy thoughts’—beliefs that might make others happy—to display their kindness. Five experiments conducted among Japanese and English-speaking participants (N = 2412) show that: (i) people higher on communion are more likely

Membership of multiple groups and identification with those groups have been found to be positively related to individuals' health and well-being. The present research sought to replicate this finding in two large, representative samples. Moreover, we sought to extend previous work by shedding light on the mechanisms mediating the effects of multiple group membership on positive health outcomes. Specifically

This study aims at casting light on the ways in which spatial aspects of mobility and belonging serve as social-psychological discursive resources used by Intra-European Greek immigrants in order to account for integration. For the purposes of the study, 17 virtual interviews with Greek migrants in European cities were analysed. Interview discussion was facilitated by photographs of participants' meaningful

Generalized trust is an optimistic view of human nature that influences people's attitudes and behaviour. Most studies focus on the positive effects of generalized trust. However, there is evidence suggesting that generalized trust may be associated with both positive and negative outcomes. In the present study, we focus on the ambivalent associations of generalized trust with the Russians' attitudes

Previous studies suggested that social identity switches are rapid and highly effective, raising the question of whether people can intentionally control such switches. In two studies, we tested if participants could exert top-down control to prevent a social identity switch triggered by the experimental context. In Study 1, participants (N = 198) were given a writing task aimed at prompting a switch

Social psychological scholarship has emphasized the importance of effective leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the wider material contexts of these dynamics have often remained understudied. Through a critical discursive lens, this paper investigates differences in the social constructions used by leaders of richer and poorer nations during the COVID-19 pandemic. We identify a sharp

The intersectional invisibility hypothesis (IIH) states that members of multiply marginalized groups experience intersectional invisibility by not being seen as prototypical for either of their constitutive groups due to the influence of heterocentrism and androcentrism. That is, a lesbian woman may not be represented in relation to either the category ‘woman’ or the category ‘homosexual people’. Two

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

This study examines how experiences of racism are talked about during broadcast interviews. Inspired by discursive-psychological and conversation-analytic investigations on experience in interactions, this study approaches experience as a ‘loose term’ and as a participant's issue in the unfolding sequence of talks. The analysis documents a range of interactional moments wherein experiences are invoked

Status anxiety theory posits that higher income inequality leads people to attribute more importance to their socioeconomic status and to worry about the position they occupy on the social ladder. We investigated through two experimental studies (N = 1117) the causal effect of economic inequality on status anxiety and whether expected upward and downward mobility mediates this effect. In Study 1, perceived

Comprehensive apologies are effective strategies to solve interpersonal conflict and promote reconciliation. However, transgressors tend to avoid providing comprehensive apologies because it is more threatening to do so. As a result, transgressors usually offer perfunctory apologies and hinder their own chances of being forgiven. Given the importance of promoting high-quality apologies, we investigate

The authors of Zell et al. (2023) have supplied the following correction to their article. Co-authors “Christopher A. Stockus, Tara L. Lesick, and corresponding author Ethan Zell” have been added. Correct author group and affiliations are Ethan Zell1, Christopher A. Stockus1, Tara L. Lesick1, Constantine Sedikides2. 1UNC Greensboro, Greensboro, North Carolina, USA. 2University of Southampton, Southampton

Punishment is expected to have an educative, behaviour-controlling effect on the transgressor. Yet, this effect often remains unattained. Here, we test the hypothesis that transgressors' inferences about punisher motives crucially shape transgressors' post-punishment attitudes and behaviour. As such, we give primacy to the social and relational dimensions of punishment in explicating how sanctions

Trust is highlighted as central to effective disease management. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Denmark seemed to embody this understanding. Characterizing the Danish response were high levels of public compliance with government regulations and restrictions coupled with high trust in the government and other members of society. In this article, we first revisit prior claims about the importance of

Previous studies show that the effects of (non-transparent) nudges can spill over to later similar decisions without nudges. In the current study, we aimed to determine whether such nudge temporal spillover effects are affected by making nudges transparent. The latter is recommended to (partly) mitigate ethical concerns surrounding the use of nudges. In two experiments, we nudged participants to complete

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

Scholarly interest in the experience of dehumanization, the perception that one is being dehumanized, has increased significantly in recent years, yet the construct lacks a validated measurement. The purpose of this research is therefore to develop and validate a theoretically grounded experience of dehumanization measurement (EDHM) using item response theory. Evidence from five studies using data

In order to clarify the perceptual underpinnings of critical national attachment, we examined the links between constructive (critical) and conventional patriotism, and evaluations of the actual and ideal representations of the country. Across four studies conducted on US and Polish samples (total N = 3457), perception of a discrepancy between the actual and the ideal representations of the country

Research from the social sciences suggests an association between higher temperatures and increases in antisocial behaviours, including aggressive, violent, or sabotaging behaviours, and represents a heat-facilitates-aggression perspective. More recently, studies have shown that higher temperature experiences may also be linked to increases in prosocial behaviours, such as altruistic, sharing, or cooperative

Previous research has focused on how social identification influences people's adherence to group norms, but has rarely considered how norm adherence might in turn influence how strongly people identify with the group. We proposed a reciprocal relationship between social identification and norm adherence that is shaped by the salience of the social identity in question. Drawing on data from a longitudinal

Dilemmas around differences among people may encapsulate ideological assumptions deep-rooted in modernity, according to work on ideological dilemmas. In this article, we suggest that ideological struggles such as the one between racism and antiracism may further ingrain ideological dilemmas around difference and put certain identities at stake. In a qualitative study addressing constructions of difference

In recent years, there has been a focus in social psychology on efforts to improve the robustness, rigour, transparency and openness of psychological research. This has led to a plethora of new tools, practices and initiatives that each aim to combat questionable research practices and improve the credibility of social psychological scholarship. However, the majority of these efforts derive from quantitative

Three studies investigated how speakers' pitch affects listeners' attribution of mental capacity (e.g., the ability to feel emotions and physical sensations such as pain and pleasure; Gray et al., Science, 315, 2007, 619) to them and further explored downstream effects on social judgements. In Study 1 (N = 234), participants perceived more experience in higher-(vs. lower-)pitched speakers, whereas

According to the big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE), students evaluate themselves more favourably when they have a high rank in a low-rank school than a low rank in a high-rank school. We examined whether the BFLPE impacts self-evaluations in regional settings, where the reference group is one's nation or subnation. In Study 1, participants told that they ranked above average in a below-average nation

The comprehensive analysis of social identity cannot simply focus on individuals' cognitive self-definition. Rather it should also theorize the social conditions that affect individuals' opportunities to act in terms of those self-definitions. We argue that the social distancing interventions associated with Covid-19 provide an opportunity to explore the significance of otherwise taken-for-granted

Although intersectionality is gaining ground in social psychological research, most approaches fail to capture the historically and interactionally contingent nature of intersecting identities and the implications of their mobilization. This study, aiming at addressing this lacuna, focuses on the intersection of identities as lay actors' resource, used to account for the murder of Zak Kostopoulos,