In current social-psychological models, social identification has been placed center stage for explaining solidarity-based attitudes and behaviors. However, from the perspective of personality psychology, justice sensitivity has also been identified as influencing advantaged group members' solidarity for disadvantaged groups (other-related justice sensitivity). To obtain an integrated perspective, two correlational studies (pilot study N = 153; main study N = 231) are presented testing if justice sensitivity and social identification explain solidarity-based attitudes and behaviors when investigated simultaneously beyond general ideology (i.e., social dominance orientation). Both studies support the hypothesis that higher other-related justice sensitivity goes along with more positive solidarity-based attitudes and behaviors toward minorities such as Roma people, Syrians, and First Nations in Latin America. Looking at an overall model including the variables from personality, social, and ideological perspectives, both other-related justice sensitivity and superordinate group identification significantly predict solidarity-based attitudes and behaviors. Exploratory tests indicate that social identification may partially account for the relationship between other-related justice sensitivity and solidarity-based attitudes and behaviors. We discuss to what extent justice sensitivity predisposes to certain levels of social identification.

The functioning of representative democracy depends on a “responsible electorate” that rewards and punishes parties according to their promises. Holding representatives accountable is the only way for voters to keep control over the government. This article draws on the normative assumption of accountability theory to investigate the impact of information on pledge fulfillment on citizens’ trust in government, taking into account moderators of this relationship. In a two-wave panel experiment ( N = 841; broken pledges, fulfilled pledges, control group), results supported the hypotheses that fulfilled election pledges resulted in increased trust in the government, whereas broken pledges decreased trust. However, only when citizens had been satisfied with the government’s performance in the past or when they attributed relevance to governmental pledge fulfillment did trust levels depend on pledge fulfillment. These findings provide insights into the process of democratic accountability and highlight the relevance of trust in studying the effects of election pledges. Additionally, our study makes a case for the use of repeated measurements in experimental research, as examining intraindividual changes can provide a more comprehensive understanding, such as by assessing effect sizes.

The large number of refugees and host countries' citizens' reactions regarding their admission have been major global issues. Thus, psychological interventions to foster intergroup relations in the asylum context are desirable. In three experiments with general population samples (N = 986), we adapted a paradoxical thinking intervention to the intergroup context of Germans and refugees, thus testing its effectiveness in an early stage of conflict. Participants in the paradoxical condition, compared to two control conditions, showed lower levels of conflict-related concerns (Experiment 1), higher levels of openness to alternative information (Experiment 1, 3) and higher willingness to compromise (Experiment 2). In addition, the intervention was still successful when the sender of the paradoxical questions belonged to a political outgroup (Experiment 3). A mini-meta-analysis corroborated significant effects across experiments (for openness and willingness to compromise). Ideas for future research and the intervention's practical use are discussed (e.g., in social media).

Since the increase in numbers of refugees worldwide, the acceptance of refugees in host countries is a highly contested topic. Negative attitudes towards refugees pose a challenge to both integration efforts and social cohesion. So-called paradoxical interventions help mitigating such extreme attitudes, but little is known about the cognitive processes elicited by these interventions. This research investigated whether a paradoxical leading-questions intervention targeting anti-refugee attitudes increases cognitive flexibility, especially among those with anti-refugee attitudes. Results of two preregistered experiments with general-population samples (N= 306) provide evidence that participants with anti-refugee attitudes showed higher cognitive flexibility in the paradoxical condition compared to control conditions. Thereby, this research proposes a cognitive foundation for the benefits of paradoxical interventions in intergroup contexts and suggests novel indications as to why these interventions are effective. We discuss the potential of paradoxical interventions for other important socially contested contexts, such as vaccination and climate change.

Five studies (N = 2,339) found that men and women, especially if high on benevolent sexism, engage in dependency-oriented cross-gender helping relations in domestic tasks. Study 1 revealed that, in response to hypothetical scenarios of cross-gender helping interactions in traditionally feminine domains (e.g., cooking a dish), men's benevolent sexism correlated with their intentions to seek dependency-oriented help (direct assistance, rather than tools for autonomous coping) from women, and women's benevolent sexism correlated with their intentions to provide dependency-oriented help to men. Study 2 revealed that the association between benevolent sexism and (a) men's intentions to seek, and (b) women's intentions to provide dependency-oriented help occurs in cross-gender, but not in same-gender, interactions. Studies 3 and 4 replicated these patterns while examining help-seeking (among men) and help-providing (among women) behavior in a test about common domestic tasks (e.g., how to clean a burned pot). Study 5 focused on heterosexual couples, revealing that when encountering difficulties in traditionally feminine domestic tasks (e.g., getting the kids ready for kindergarten): (a) men, especially if high on benevolent sexism, reported seeking more dependency-oriented help from their partners than women; (b) women, especially if high on benevolent sexism, reported providing more dependency-oriented help to their partners than men; and (c) engagement in dependency-oriented helping predicted an unequal division of household labor. We discuss these findings in light of previous theorizing and research on the social psychological barriers that reinforce men's relatively low involvement in the domestic sphere. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

As millions of people flee their countries due to violent conflict and climate change, high support from host societies is desperately needed. One option to increase support could be to induce emotional reactions that elicit prosocial action. To facilitate a needs-adequate support it is important to know if prosocial emotions lead to specific prosocial actions. Based on past research (Nadler, Journal of Social Issues, 2002, 58, 487), we distinguish between potentially hierarchy-challenging (e.g., demanding equal rights for refugees) and prosocial actions that may be hierarchy-maintaining (e g , dependency-oriented helping). We postulated closer relations between moral outrage and hierarchy-challenging actions on the one hand, and sympathy and prosocial hierarchy-maintaining actions on the other, rather than vice versa. These predictions were largely confirmed in two studies targeting a general population sample's (N = 203) actual emotions and asking employees of charity and human-rights organizations (N = 150) which emotions their organization aims to elicit with their campaigns. Study 1 additionally showed that identification with a third party (here: the German government) may have the potential to explain the specific behavioral effects, thereby extending the usual binary intergroup focus to a more realistic multi-group setting. We discuss implications for interventions to satisfy specific needs of refugees.

Although effective interventions to increase international collective action for human rights are highly desirable, the validation of theory-based interventions and their transfer to this practical field is still scarce. We investigated whether collective action intention can be improved by using a diversity intervention technique rooted in social psychology. The intervention builds on the ingroup projection model, postulating that negative intergroup relations are based on the perception of ingroups as more typical of a common superordinate group than outgroups (i.e., relative prototypicality). Thereby, the (quasi-)experimental study tested the ingroup projection model’s theoretical assumptions in the context of Model United Nations (MUN) conferences. We hypothesized that the diversity intervention leads to a higher perceived diversity within the superordinate group (the United Nations, UN) as well as identification with the superordinate group (UN). Furthermore, we hypothesized an indirect effect of the intervention on collective action intention mediated by perception of diversity of, and identification with, the superordinate group. In comparison to the control group (n = 45), those participants who received the diversity workshop intervention (n = 55) perceived less relative prototypicality and more diversity of the UN. In addition, we provide evidence of a serial mediation: Compared to the control group, the diversity workshop group perceived the UN as relatively more diverse, facilitating identification with the UN. In turn, this was associated with a stronger intention to act collectively. This study shows the importance of including psychological theories in the field of international relations.

Interpretational tendencies in ambiguous situations were investigated as causal mechanisms of altruistic compensation. We used a training procedure to induce a tendency to interpret one's own advantages as unjustified. In a subsequent mixed-game, participants had to decide whether to invest their own money to compensate a victim of a norm violation. The amount of one's own resources invested as an altruistic compensation was enhanced after the training procedure compared to controls. These findings suggest that interpretational patterns with regard to injustice determine prosocial behavior. The training procedure offers a potential intervention strategy for enhancing altruistic compensation in bystander situations in which people must invest their own resources to restore justice.