British Journal of Social Psychology

Nitschinsk, Lewis; Hewett, Melinda; Grand'Pierre, Audree; Thai, Michael; Barlow, Fiona Kate

doi: 10.1111/bjso.70060pmid: 41795588

People can alter the nature of online intergroup interactions by becoming anonymous. Across three studies (N = 1107), we surveyed Black (Studies 1–3) and White (Study 2) participants in majority‐White nations. We argue that Black people living in these countries face substantial pressures in interracial interactions, and that responses associated with the performative pressures of contact might predict a desire for anonymity in interracial settings online. We operationalized these responses in three distinct yet related ways: codeswitching (adjusting language or behaviour), emotional labour (suppressing negative and displaying positive emotions) and experiencing burnout from intergroup contact. As proposed: (1) Black participants who engaged in more codeswitching and emotional labour, and who felt more burned out when interacting with White people, were more likely to seek anonymity in an interracial interaction; (2) Black participants were more likely than White participants to engage in codeswitching and emotional labour, to feel burned out from interracial contact, and, in turn, to seek anonymity in interracial interactions; and (3) stigma consciousness and perceived discrimination partly explained the relationship between codeswitching, emotional labour, and burnout and seeking anonymity. Our findings elucidate how group processes might affect whether members of racially minoritised groups might seek anonymity online.

Beatty‐Wright, Jennifer F.; Hill, Patrick L.

doi: 10.1111/bjso.70076pmid: 41923230

Intergroup anxiety can undermine positive intergroup relations. This Registered Report presents two preregistered online studies testing a mental contrasting intervention to reduce intergroup anxiety towards Black individuals. Previous work aimed to inoculate anxiety by having participants imagine a threatening intergroup experience followed by a positive one, compared to only imagining positive interactions. In Study 1 (N = 300), White US adults were randomly assigned in a 2 × 2 design to imagine either a negative‐then‐positive interaction (intervention) or positive‐only interactions with an outgroup (Black) or ingroup (White) member. State anxiety was measured immediately before and after the second imagined interaction, followed by prejudice and contact intentions. Study 2 (N = 149) replicated the outgroup conditions and tested whether imagining a neutral‐then‐positive interaction reduced anxiety relative to imagining positive‐only interactions. Contrary to preregistered predictions, Study 1 showed higher intergroup anxiety in the intervention condition and a significant condition × time interaction. These effects did not replicate in Study 2. Across both studies, the intervention did not significantly reduce prejudice or increase contact intentions. Overall, the preregistered tests did not support the hypothesis that this intervention reduces intergroup anxiety or related outcomes, constraining claims regarding its robustness and generalizability.

Hart, Helen; Stevenson, Clifford; Kellezi, Blerina

doi: 10.1111/bjso.70056pmid: 41703901

Understanding community resilience to disasters is fundamentally important in a world characterized by increasing political and environmental instability. The Social Identity Model of Collective Resilience has examined how the shared identity that emerges among neighbourhood residents affected by disasters can facilitate and coordinate effective collective responses, but has yet to examine impacts on community members beyond those directly affected. This is particularly important given the role of social identities in creating shared vulnerability and resilience to collective trauma among those indirectly affected, as well as evidence that neighbourhood identification can provide residents with collective resilience to a range of shared socio‐economic and environmental stressors. The present study addresses this gap through an exploration of residents' accounts of the occurrence and aftermath of a terrorist attack on Manchester, England in 2017. The thematic analysis of retrospective interviews with 18 city residents indirectly affected by the bomb revealed that two key aspects of Mancunian identity – diversity and endurance of the city – were used to interpret the event and reported to facilitate coordinated coping and collective recovery. The implications are that identifying and enhancing local norms of cohesion and endurance can play a part in providing communities with resilience to future disasters.

Eckerle, Frank; Lienen, Carmen S.; Cohrs, J. Christopher

doi: 10.1111/bjso.70077pmid: 41928375

Research shows that critically reflecting on ingroup privilege can motivate allyship. However, we lack a deeper understanding of how activists make sense of their privilege, how it contributes to their motivation to stay engaged, and how activism recursively affects the meaning‐making of social privilege. Building on social representations and identity process theory, we explored the social representation of privilege among allies and the identity processes involved in reconciling with ingroup privilege. We conducted 15 semi‐structured interviews with advantaged social justice activists (i.e., activists who are working in organizations to improve conditions for disadvantaged and oppressed groups). Applying thematic network analysis, we found convergent social representations of privilege but varying representations of its (systemic) roots, three types of identity threat elicited by privilege (morality, positionality and social threat) and four ways in which privilege relates to activism (privilege enables action, privilege is a responsibility to act, quest for meaning and relativizing the role of privilege for activism). A key insight concerns the prominent role of the coherence motive, which seems to help (re‐)conceptualizing privilege threat(s) in a way that motivates dismantling systems of inequality. We discuss the need for further theorizing on the bidirectional link between allyship and privilege reflection.

Kirkland, Kelly; Klebl, Christoph; Elbæk, Christian T.; Jetten, Jolanda

doi: 10.1111/bjso.70067pmid: 41906433

Understanding the factors that influence support for wealth redistribution is essential to address growing economic divides around the world. We propose that perceptions of anomie—the belief that society's social and political fabric is crumbling—can influence support for redistribution in opposing ways. When people see society as deteriorating, they may seek drastic change, increasing support for redistribution. Conversely, viewing society as descending into anomie may also foster a belief that the government will mismanage redistributed wealth, thereby reducing support. Study 1 examined these relationships in a U.S. sample, confirming the presence of these two opposing pathways, and Study 2 then replicated the findings in the UK. Study 3 tested this model experimentally, introducing the ‘anomie paradigm’ to explore how perceptions of anomie cause shifts in psychology. Here, participants were exposed to a fictitious society characterized by high or low anomie. The high (relative to low) anomie condition increased support for redistribution through a desire for change but simultaneously decreased support via concerns over government misuse. These findings highlight how perceptions of societal breakdown can shape redistributive preferences through co‐occurring psychological processes with opposing implications for policy support.

Vargas Salfate, Salvador; Scheffauer, Rebecca; Gil de Zúñiga, Homero

doi: 10.1111/bjso.70059pmid: 41741959

Research has conceptualized system justification as an overall perception of legitimacy of the status quo. However, there is mixed evidence to determine whether individuals construe political systems and values that uphold them as part of such status quo. We reasoned that if individuals construe the status quo as encompassing the political system and its values in the United States, system justification should predict support for current political institutions and liberal democracy. Relying on a representative survey and an experiment (N = 1994), we found that system justification was related to support for current institutions but not liberal democracy principles, even when making salient different components of the status quo (i.e. economic inequality and liberal democracy). Results suggest that researchers studying legitimacy of intergroup settings or political institutions should measure legitimacy of those institutions rather than general perceptions of fairness, as individuals might not construe the status quo as encompassing those institutions.

Jaakkola, Jenni; Sakki, Inari; Hakoköngäs, Eemeli; Martikainen, Jari

doi: 10.1111/bjso.70080pmid: N/A

Populist leaders are known for engaging supporters through compelling rhetoric, sparking debate about what persuasive strategies they use to mobilize voters. While research shows that leaders creatively frame their communication, the role of social media–especially its multimodal affordances–remains poorly understood. This study applies multimodal critical discursive psychology (MCDP) to examine the modalities used in TikTok videos of Finnish right‐wing populist politician Sebastian Tynkkynen. Using the integrative social identity model of populist leadership (ISIMPL), we identified eight discursive and multimodal strategies, through which Tynkkynen performs populistic identity leadership and constructs a shared identity: ‘performing populist prototypicality’ by emphasizing authenticity and ordinariness, ‘performing as the voice of the people’ through heroism and self‐sacrifice, ‘mobilizing a populist “us”’ through in‐group celebration and shared victimhood, and ‘othering the elite as “them”’ through blame and ridicule. These are accomplished through various discursive and multimodal resources, with co‐contextualization of elements playing a crucial role in creating an overall message. This study shows how multimodal communication enables populist politicians to innovatively perform leadership and construct shared identities online, enhancing understanding of the discursive and multimodal construction of populist identity leadership.

doi: 10.1111/bjso.70051pmid: N/A

Stott, Clifford

doi: 10.1111/bjso.70065pmid: 41820798

Social psychology has long claimed neutrality in its explanations of collective behaviour, yet its foundational theories of crowds have repeatedly been co‐produced with institutions of authority and mobilized in the reactionary governance of social order. This article challenges the discipline's familiar origin myth—centred on benign laboratory demonstrations of social influence—by re‐situating crowd psychology as one of social psychology's earliest and most politically consequential points of emergence. From nineteenth‐century crowd theory, through mid‐twentieth‐century de‐individuation research, to contemporary public‐order doctrine, assumptions about the inherent irrationality and danger of collective action have been repeatedly reformulated in scientific form, their persistence reflecting institutional and ideological fit rather than explanatory adequacy. Against this background, the article repositions the Social Identity Approach and the Elaborated Social Identity Model (ESIM) not merely as theoretical corrections, but as a reorientation of how psychological knowledge is produced, authorized and used. Drawing on ethnographic participatory action research and sustained engagement with policing institutions in the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States, it conceptualizes collective behaviour as interactional and normatively organized, with policing practices constitutive of crowd dynamics rather than external to them. The article argues that co‐production is not a methodological innovation but a historically persistent condition of social psychology and that the ESIM represents a distinctive attempt to govern this condition reflexively by redirecting psychological knowledge towards legitimacy, restraint and the facilitation of democratic rights. The broader implication is that social psychology cannot plausibly claim political neutrality: its concepts travel into institutions and practices, shaping how collective action is anticipated, governed and policed.

Elster, Andrey; Sagiv, Lilach; Roccas, Sonia

doi: 10.1111/bjso.70069pmid: 41845573

Sharing ideas and offering suggestions for group improvement, while highly beneficial for the group, can challenge its existing order, potentially creating normative conflict. Integrating this perspective with the multidimensional approach to group identification, this research examined the distinct, even opposing, effects of different identification modes on overt suggestion‐making behaviour. In two field studies (n = 599 and n = 412), we hypothesized and found that the affective mode of identification (commitment) positively predicted overt suggestion‐making behaviour, whereas the normative mode of identification (deference) predicted it negatively. These effects were consistent when the identification modes and suggestion‐making were measured concurrently (Studies 1 and 2), and when suggestion‐making was assessed again 2 years later (Study 1). The hypothesized opposing effects of the identification modes were consistent even after accounting for the enduring components of identification and suggestion‐making behaviour in a model combining Studies 1 and 2, and were partially mediated by personal values (Study 1). Taken together, our findings reveal that groups seeking to foster high identification among their members should carefully consider the specific mode they aim to encourage, bearing in mind their differential implications.