Group Processes & Intergroup Relations

Recent research documents that thinking about God encourages intergroup prosociality among believers. An open question is whether such increased prosociality is dampened by intergroup conflict. We conducted preregistered field experiments with two ethno-religious populations in Fiji: indigenous Christian iTaukei (N = 324) and Hindu Indo-Fijians (N = 280). In each study, we manipulated (between-person) whether participants thought about intergroup conflict before completing a dictator game in which we manipulated (within-person) whether participants thought about God’s preferences when allocating real money to an outgroup member. Although participants who reflected on intergroup conflict gave less money away to outgroup members, thinking about God led to significant and comparable increases in intergroup prosociality regardless of whether participants thought about conflict. Results challenge widely-held assumptions about the role of religious belief in intergroup conflict and raise questions about mechanisms that are often theorized to explain the spread of religious beliefs themselves.

The goal of the present research was to expand on previous work on the dynamics of intergroup helping. Specifically, the present research investigated the responses of Israeli-Arab high school students (Study 1) and Israeli-Arab adults (Study 2) to a scenario in which an Israeli-Arab person receives assistance from an Israeli-Jewish individual. In Study 2, these responses were also compared to assistance from an ingroup member (i.e., an Israeli-Arab individual). In two studies, Israeli-Arab participants learned about a situation in which an Israeli-Arab person receives assistance from an Israeli-Jewish individual. The context of help, with the assistance given either assumptively or in response to a request, and the type of help, either dependency-oriented or autonomy-oriented, were independently varied. In Study 2, conditions in which the helper was an Israeli-Arab individual were also included. Across both studies, context and type of help influenced responses to the outgroup helper (interactively in Study 1 and additively in Study 2) with assumptive, dependency-oriented assistance eliciting the most negative evaluations of the helper. These effects did not occur when, in Study 2, the helper was an ingroup member. For adults (Study 2), perceptions that outgroup assistance weakened the recipient’s sense of control mediated more negative evaluations of the outgroup helper. For both adults and high school students, evaluations of the Israeli-Jewish helper mediated evaluations of Israeli-Jewish people in general. Limitations and implications of the research are considered.

When prototypical leaders commit organizational transgressions, highly-identified members of the organizations are motivated to punish their leaders, due to increased group-based image concerns. However, do similar dynamics apply when high-status ingroup leaders transgress against vulnerable low-status outgroups? Moreover, does this lead to outgroup solidarity? To address these gaps, we conducted three pre-registered experiments with European, Australian, and British samples, respectively (N_total = 1,039). The first two studies, in which we manipulated leader prototypicality, focused on EU and Australian leader transgressions regarding the treatment of refugees. Moderated mediation analyses showed that, when their leader was prototypical, high-identifiers exhibited greater outgroup solidarity, indirectly through increased group-based image concerns. The third study, conducted in the UK, examined prototypical leader transgressions regarding minority mental health issues following the 2024 riots. This study manipulated transgression ambiguity and found that high-identifiers’ image-based outgroup solidarity was more pronounced when the transgression case was clear-cut rather than ambiguous. Across all studies, low-identifiers expressed outgroup solidarity through perceptions of injustice about the treatment of outgroups, regardless of leader prototypicality and transgression ambiguity. These findings integrate the transgressive leadership literature with solidarity-based collective action research by highlighting leader prototypicality as a key factor in eliciting outgroup solidarity through image concerns among individuals highly invested in high-status transgressor groups, especially when transgressions are clear-cut. Implications are discussed.

Humanity is currently confronted with numerous common threats such as pandemics, environmental pollution, and economic crises. Will these common threats affect the public’s attitudes towards their country? Three studies (N = 955) explored the impact of common threats on patriotism. Results showed that only under conditions of high perceived resource scarcity does a common threat promote patriotism. In contrast, under conditions of low perceived resource scarcity, a common threat did not significantly influence patriotism. The role of socioeconomic status was also examined. The results indicated that under conditions of high perceived resource scarcity, individuals of low socioeconomic status, compared with those of high socioeconomic status, exhibited stronger patriotism when facing common threats. This finding provides a reference for uniting hearts and minds as well as for the effective crisis response of the state.

Before the 2020 and 2024 US Presidential elections, several scientific journals publicly endorsed the Democratic candidates or opposed the Republican candidate. We conducted three highly-powered, pre-registered online experiments (N = 6,281) to examine how these endorsements affected trust in science. Results revealed significant declines in trust in science, driven primarily by moderate and conservative Americans. Drawing upon on the theoretical perspective that trust in science is not monolithic, but rather composed of distinct dimensions, we examined and observed effects across a range of trust-related domains, including perceptions of scientific integrity (impartiality), competence (ability), benevolence, and generalized trust in scientific institutions. These findings highlight how motivated reasoning can amplify existing skepticism when individuals who already perceive science as aligned with opposing political ideologies read political endorsements from within the scientific community. Amidst increasing science-skepticism and politicization, journals must consider the unintended consequences of political messaging on public perceptions of science.

Although a vast literature demonstrates that discrimination correlates negatively with health satisfaction, research has yet to examine whether within-person changes in perceptions of discrimination temporally precede declines in subjective health. Studies also overlook the possibility that the relationship between perceived discrimination and health satisfaction differs for structurally advantaged and disadvantaged groups. We address these oversights by utilizing 11 annual waves of data from a nationwide random sample of adults to examine the relationship between perceived discrimination and subjective health among Māori (N = 9,298) and New Zealand Europeans (N = 56,499). Results from a multi-group RI-CLPM reveal that perceived discrimination has a negative cross-lagged effect on within-person changes in health satisfaction for Māori, but not for New Zealand Europeans. These results highlight the asymmetrical consequences of discrimination between structurally advantaged and disadvantaged groups, underscoring the pervasive challenges minoritized communities continue to face.

Workplace weight discrimination is pervasive and negatively impacts employees and organizations. Yet, little is known about the psychological processes linking weight discrimination and work outcomes. The current research addresses this gap in the research literature by testing emotion invalidation as a mediator of weight stigma’s negative effects on employees. Dehumanizing aspects of weight stigma include the denial of complex emotions, higher-order mental faculties, and professional potential, which were theorized to leave heavy employees feeling invalidated, an experience termed social pain minimization (SPM). Three studies (N_total = 1,097) with cross-sectional, experimental, and multi-wave designs provide convergent support that workplace weight discrimination triggered actual and expected SPM, which in turn negatively impacted perceived organizational support (POS), workplace belonging, and workplace ostracism. These results offer insights into psychosocial processes linking workplace weight discrimination and key indicators of worker well-being. In conjunction with efforts to eliminate workplace weight stigma, organizations need to foster a supportive and emotionally validating climate.

In the past decade, collective action advocating for a disadvantaged group’s rights has increased exponentially. However, only a fraction of supporters of a disadvantaged group’s rights takes collective action. What drives some to take collective action for a disadvantaged group’s rights while others do not? We argue that antiprejudice, the belief that one should proactively fight discrimination and injustice faced by a group, is a critical component of promoting collective action for that group and differentiating between those who are engaged and those who are not. Across field and online studies, we examined antiprejudice’s role in driving protesting and intentions to take collective action for a disadvantaged group’s rights among causes associated with liberals (e.g., racial equality) and conservatives (e.g., pro-life rights). Antiprejudice repeatedly emerged as a key construct for differentiating between protestors and non-protestors and for predicting collective action intentions.