Group Processes & Intergroup Relations

We investigated the simultaneous influence of descriptive and injunctive ingroup emotion norms and ingroup identification on group-based emotions triggered by ingroup-relevant events (Experiment 1) and by outgroup targets (Experiment 2). For both studies, we hypothesized that both perceived descriptive and injunctive emotion norms would influence experienced emotions (self-categorization effects), effects that would be moderated by identification (with high identifiers being more influenced by norms than low identifiers). We also expected identification to increase the relative positivity of ingroup-relevant emotions in Experiment 1. In each study, we activated ingroup membership, assessed ingroup identification, and then measured group-based emotions and participants’ perceptions of the ingroup’s descriptive and injunctive emotion norms. Both experiments produced strong evidence for independent effects of both descriptive and injunctive emotion norms on experienced emotion. However, evidence for the moderation of those effects by identification was inconsistent and qualified. Identification increased the relative positivity of ingroup-relevant emotions in Experiment 1 as predicted. We conclude that the role of self-categorization processes in constructing the subjective sense of group membership receives strong support in the group-based emotion domain, and discuss the implications of our results for understanding the role of identification in these studies.

The current research examined the impact of perceived social norms of confronting interpersonal prejudice on White people’s perceived barriers and intentions to confront prejudice. The present research (N_total = 1,057) manipulated injunctive (Study 1) and descriptive (Studies 1–3) social norms of confronting prejudice via group consensus information and group behavior. Across studies, descriptive confronting norms facilitated perceptions of fewer anticipated social costs (Studies 1, 3) and greater social benefits (Studies 1–3) relative to the absence of a confronting norm (Studies 2–3) or an injunctive norm of confronting prejudice (Study 1). While social norms of prejudice confrontation did not directly impact White people’s intentions to confront prejudice (Study 1–3) or a specific instance of anti-Asian bias (Studies 2, 3), social norms did indirectly elicit greater intentions to confront prejudice through expectations of reduced social costs and increased social benefits (Studies 1, 2, 3).

The purpose of this study is to advance our understanding of the relationship between perceptions of threat, complex combinations of social identity, and civilians’ willingness to support peace negotiations during active war. Using survey data (N = 1,812) collected in three eastern cities of war-torn Ukraine, we examined the relationship between threat perceptions and support for continuing the war or making concessions to pursue peace negotiations, and how social identities moderated that relationship. We found that symbolic and realistic threats predicted support for continuing the war over pursuing peace. Additionally, we identified latent profiles of meaningful social identities implicated in the war, including Ukrainian, European, and Russian cultural and linguistic identities, which also predicted support for war or peace. While the latent identity profiles did not interact with threat perceptions in explaining support for war or peace, separate measures of European identity and Russian cultural and linguistic identity identities did interact with some realistic and symbolic threats, indicating a stronger association between threat perceptions and support for war among respondents with lower European and higher Russian cultural and linguistic identities. The findings contribute to scholarly debates on support for war or peace, suggesting that threat perceptions may increase support for war during active violent conflict and that social identities shaped by the war may help explain variations in those effects.

Collective narcissism’s links with intergroup relations, such as intergroup hostility, are well established, but less is known about the intergroup conditions that trigger it. We experimentally examined whether categorisation threat—operationalised as mistaking the ingroup for a historically rivalrous outgroup, thus undermining the ingroup’s uniqueness—heightens collective narcissism, and whether this, in turn, escalates hostility toward the pertinent outgroup through collective narcissism. Additionally, we compared collective narcissism to another form of ingroup positivity: ingroup satisfaction. We conducted four experiments (N = 1,537) manipulating categorisation threat in two national contexts (Poland, Portugal), and carried out an internal meta-analysis. As hypothesised, the findings revealed an increase in collective narcissism, as well as a positive indirect effect of categorisation threat on outgroup hostility mediated by collective narcissism, but not by ingroup satisfaction. This research establishes categorisation threat as a robust trigger of collective narcissism.

This study examines the moderating role of the context of social opinion in hostile media perception and its effect on partisan audiences in polarized politics. An online experiment (N = 574), conducted in the US, manipulated the number of congruent/incongruent comments and emojis on social media posts discussing abortion (i.e., pro-choice versus pro-life Facebook posts) to create three distinct opinion contexts (i.e., congruent, balanced, and incongruent). The results indicate that perceived bias gaps between pro-attitudinal and counter-attitudinal posts were reduced in the condition of incongruent context. Furthermore, the study found that the incongruent context mitigates discomfort toward out-party supporters and political participation intention through reducing the perceived bias, whereas the congruent context intensifies them. Implications for media bias perceptions and political polarization are discussed in terms of intergroup relations.

Contemporary right-wing populist rhetoric paradoxically criticizes society as disadvantaging the ethnic majority relative to minorities, while simultaneously emphasizing the superiority of one’s own nation over others. Recent studies suggest that national superiority beliefs compensate for the perceived loss of ingroup advantage among ethnic-majority groups. A critical test of this idea would be whether ethnic-majority individuals with a higher need for group-based dominance show a stronger link between perceived ethnic deprivation and nationalism. Here, we assessed people’s need for dominance using the social dominance orientation (SDO) scale and tested our moderation hypothesis in two community samples in the UK and NZ (total N = 37,510). We found that white people perceiving their ethnic group as deprived predicts higher nationalism and does so more strongly for those higher on SDO. This suggests that part of the appeal of white nationalism may be about maintaining ethnic advantage, rather than economic grievances.

Research consistently finds that shared experiences of discrimination among people of color (PoC) increase interminority solidarity, which in turn fosters strong support for pro-outgroup policies. However, the durability of solidarity’s effects in political contexts remains underexplored. This gap stems from limited theoretical frameworks and research designs that account for the cross-cutting messages PoC encounter regarding interminority relations in the real world. Guided by the competitive victimhood model, we hypothesized that divisive messages activating zero-sum thinking would diminish solidarity’s downstream impact on political opinions. Using two preregistered blockage experiments with Black adults—the prototypical PoC—we find that boosting solidarity via shared discrimination (d = 0.40) is followed by a reduction in its political influence when exposed to divisive narratives (d = 0.10). A preregistered meta-analysis confirms this reduction is small but reliable, indicating that solidarity’s effects are largely resistant to divisive threats.