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.
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.
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.
The present research investigates conditions under which beliefs in conspiracy theories predict the desire to justify ingroup behavior in the context of intergroup conflict. We propose that within the context of Ukraine's intergroup conflict over the annexation of Crimea, supporters (but not opponents) of the “Euromaidan” social movement are likely to validate protesters’ collective actions as just to the extent that they believe that the authorities are engaged in annexation‐related conspiracies. We also examine the moderating role of perceived political corruption in these processes. Using a public opinion survey of 315 Ukrainians, we found support for our hypothesized moderated mediation model—identification with “Euromaidan” increased beliefs in the annexation‐related conspiracy theories, which in turn, increased justification of protesters’ actions in the setting of intergroup conflict. However, this mediation was only observed among those supporters of the Euromaidan who perceived political corruption to be at a low or average level.
We examined the ascription of five characteristics (moral, peaceful, antagonistic, smart, show initiative) to Chechens and Jews in a large, diverse, sample of participants in the Russian Federation. Factor analysis showed these five characteristics to fit within the expected two-dimensional structure of power (smart, show initiative) and benevolence (moral, peaceful, antagonistic). Consistent with historical stereotypes, Factor analysis showed power to be the more empirically important dimension regarding Jews, whereas benevolence was the more empirically important dimension regarding Chechens. Although the two-dimensional model of judgment was supported, attention to the specific characteristics that fell along these dimensions offered complementary information. For example, the ascription of high benevolence to Jews was more pronounced on the characteristics antagonistic and peaceful than on morality. In contrast, the ascription of low benevolence to Chechens was more pronounced on the characteristic peaceful than on antagonistic or moral. Together, the two general dimensions of power and benevolence, and the specific characteristics that fall along these dimensions, offer a comprehensive model of the content of out-group stereotypes.
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