Societal inequality has been found to harm the mental and physical health of its members and undermine overall social cohesion. Here, we tested the hypothesis that economic inequality is associated with a wish for a strong leader in a study involving 28 countries from five continents (Study 1, N = 6,112), a study involving an Australian community sample (Study 2, N = 515), and two experiments (Study 3a, N = 96; Study 3b, N = 296). We found correlational (Studies 1 and 2) and experimental (Studies 3a and 3b) evidence for our prediction that higher inequality enhances the wish for a strong leader. We also found that this relationship is mediated by perceptions of anomie, except in the case of objective inequality in Study 1. This suggests that societal inequality enhances the perception that society is breaking down (anomie) and that a strong leader is needed to restore order (even when that leader is willing to challenge democratic values).

Sociologists coined the term “anomie” to describe societies that are characterized by disintegration and deregulation. Extending beyond conceptualizations of anomie that conflate the measurements of anomie as ‘a state of society’ and as a ‘state of mind’, we disentangle these conceptualizations and develop an analysis and measure of this phenomenon focusing on anomie as a perception of the ‘state of society’. We propose that anomie encompasses two dimensions: a perceived breakdown in social fabric (i.e., disintegration as lack of trust and erosion of moral standards) and a perceived breakdown in leadership (i.e., deregulation as lack of legitimacy and effectiveness of leadership). Across six studies we present evidence for the validity of the new measure, the Perception of Anomie Scale (PAS). Studies 1a and 1b provide evidence for the proposed factor structure and internal consistency of PAS. Studies 2a-c provide evidence of convergent and discriminant validity. Finally, assessing PAS in 28 countries, we show that PAS correlates with national indicators of societal functioning and that PAS predicts national identification and well-being (Studies 3a & 3b). The broader implications of the anomie construct for the study of group processes are discussed.

Two studies were conducted to explore relations among different aspects of group identification and their effects on in-group evaluations. Two aspects of identification were differentiated, namely, identification with the group membership (IDgroup) and with other group members (IDmember). The first of these was assumed to be further divided into its cognitive and affective subcomponents. An identification scale was developed and administered to students of a Japanese vocational school. Factor analyses in Studies 1 and 2 distinguished IDgroup and IDmember, but the cognitive and affective components of the former were not separated. Experimental studies concurrently undertaken confirmed many of the predictions and contentions by social identity theorists. Of particular importance was the result from Study 1 that members with low IDgroup deprecated the in-group when their negative social identity became salient, whereas those with high IDgroup (but not IDmember) did not. Both theoretical and applied implications are discussed.

Five studies are reported testing the hypothesis that Westerners (Italians) rely more on trait adjectives and that East Asians (Japanese) rely more on behavior-descriptive verbs in person description and memory. In Studies 1 (N = 80) and 2 (N = 128), Italians used more adjectives and fewer verbs than Japanese to describe individuals and groups. Likewise, Studies 3 (N = 161) and 4 (N = 84) revealed that Italians committed more memory errors indicative of behavior-to-trait inferences, whereas Japanese showed an opposite tendency (Study 3) or no difference (Study 4). Study 5 (N = 64) revealed that in both languages, adjectives were perceived to provide more information about the actor and that verbs were perceived to provide more information about the situation. Yet, Japanese participants found adjectives less predictive of future behavior but facilitative of the process of imagining a concrete situation. These results are interpreted as providing evidence for systematic cultural differences in the elaboration of social information.