Partly in response to political leaders’ public expressions of self‐criticism for past generations’ genocide or other mass violence, psychologists have suggested that individuals who are psychologically connected to perpetrators may view themselves as sharing some responsibility. Such broadened self‐perception should enable self‐criticism for past failures just as it enables self‐congratulation for past triumphs. We review studies of self‐criticism regarding European colonization (of Africa, the Americas, Australia, and Indonesia) and 20th century genocide (in Bosnia, Germany, Norway, and Rwanda). Self‐criticism—feelings of guilt, shame, and responsibility; wanting reparation—tended to be low. Self‐criticism appeared to be lowest among nonstudent samples, those allowed to explicitly disagree with self‐criticism, and those asked about more recent violence. Theoretical and practical implications of these patterns are discussed.

The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record.

The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record.

Norm enforcement may be important for resolving conflicts and promoting cooperation. However, little is known about how preferred responses to norm violations vary across cultures and across domains. In a preregistered study of 57 countries (using convenience samples of 22,863 students and non-students), we measured perceptions of the appropriateness of various responses to a violation of a cooperative norm and to atypical social behaviors. Our findings highlight both cultural universals and cultural variation. We find a universal negative relation between appropriateness ratings of norm violations and appropriateness ratings of responses in the form of confrontation, social ostracism and gossip. Moreover, we find the country variation in the appropriateness of sanctions to be consistent across different norm violations but not across different sanctions. Specifically, in those countries where use of physical confrontation and social ostracism is rated as less appropriate, gossip is rated as more appropriate.

Social dominance theory was developed to account for why societies producing surplus take and maintain the form of group-based dominance hierarchies, in which at least one socially-constructed group has more power than another, and in which men are more powerful than women and adults more powerful than children. Although the theory has always allowed for societies to differ in their severity of group-based dominance and how it is implemented, it has predicted that alternative forms of societal organization will occur rarely and not last. This paper revisits aspects of the theory that allow for the possibility of societal alternatives and change. We also consider boundary conditions for the theory, and whether its current theoretical apparatus can account for societal change. By expanding the typical three-level dynamic system to describe societies (micro-meso-macro) into four levels (including meta) to consider how societies relate to one another, we identify political tensions that are unstable power structures rather than stable hierarchies. In research on institutions, we identify smaller-scale alternative forms of social organization. We identify logical, empirical, and theoretical shortcomings in social dominance theory's account of stability and change, consider alternative forms of social organization, and suggest fruitful avenues for theoretical extension.

Modern systems of knowledge production reinforce inequalities and coloniality, especially in the Global South. We investigated whether this was the case in contemporary social psychology. We examined manifestations of coloniality of knowledge (in the form of internalized Global North standards and practices) and critical awareness and reflection (historic and systemic attributions for collective disadvantages) in a survey of social psychologists in 64 countries (N = 232). Although colleagues in the Global South and Southern and Eastern Europe adopted Global Northern publication standards and tendencies, their compliance seemed motivated by institutional demands and pragmatic concerns rather than internalized inferiority or principled conviction. Regarding international mainstream publication practices, participants from all regions (most prominently outside the Global North) reported biases, under-representation, lack of relevance, and structural disadvantages. Participants offered mainly systemic attributions for these and other disadvantages.These findings suggest that social psychologists engaged with the international publication system are caught in a double-bind between collective systemic disadvantages and coerced compliance, especially outside the Global

Using social dominance theory and structural balance theory to analyze the political and psychological perspectives of subordinated peoples, we argue that struggles between dominant and subordinated polities are embedded in layered power structures. In such contexts, it is important to examine publics' political desires and interests in relation to their political elites' positions or choices of political tactics and allegiances. To illustrate these arguments, we used random urban samples surveyed in March 2010 to examine Lebanese and Syrian citizens' favorability toward their governments and Hezbollah (a quasi‐government faction with significant relations to the governments of Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and the United States). As theorized, citizens' favorability depended on (i) how much they view their government as providing services for them, (ii) opposition to general group dominance, (iii) opposition to US oppression, and (iv) their governments' alignments vis‐à‐vis the US. Implications for political psychology and international relations theory are discussed.

We argue that political psychology would benefit from an ecological approach to complement other approaches. After detailing what adopting an ecological approach would entail, we provide examples of how this can enrich political psychological questions. We exemplify this by using the notion of repeated assemblies (Caporael, 1997) to illustrate several political psychological problem-concepts. We then detail an ecological approach to understanding political psychology through the ecological and dynamic features of two organizing principles, human power and need, called power basis theory (Pratto, 2015). This provides a means to understand the behavior of individuals and collectives, as well as a means to understand how political ecologies at any level serve or fail to serve ecologies at either level. We suggest that ecological theories such as power basis enable political psychology to ask ambitious and novel questions that complement the state of the field today.Scientific disciplines evolve in their focus of study, what questions they should ask, and their methods for answering them. People have innovated a variety of academic perspectives, often independently of one another. Research on apparently separate problems and using separate methods have generative effects on scientific progress. This is also apparent by the discoveries made in disciplines as far flung as microbiology and cosmology through the evolution of citizen science (Dickinson, Zuckerberg, & Bonter, 2010). By considering the relevance of disparate pursuits derived from "local" theories and observations, the natural sciences have developed quite general theories such as evolution and the general theory of relativity. The same cannot be said of political psychology or indeed much of the social sciences.We, however, propose that our "interdiscipline" is ready to begin developing such theories by using a universal epistemological approach, namely, ecological theory. This readiness is in part due to the almost limitless scope and diversity of political psychology and in part to the expansion of interest in political psychology in the twenty-first century and the availability of a wealth of disparate findings strewn over multiple departmental homes. The ecological approach, we believe, can encompass political psychological research, and to adopt an ecological approach, it is not necessary to abandon the 3 0162-895X