SummaryWe complement the dominant rational model of negotiation found in the West with a new honor model of negotiation found in many Arabic‐speaking populations and illustrate the linguistic processes that facilitate creativity in negotiation agreements in the United States and Egypt. Community samples (N = 136) were recruited in the United States and Egypt and negotiated an integrative bargaining task, Discount Marketplace. Analyses of categories of the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) and our own newly developed honor dictionary illustrate that the same language that predicts integrative agreements in the United States, namely, that which is rational and logical (cognitive mechanisms, LIWC), actually backfires and hinders agreements in Egypt. Creativity in Egypt, by contrast, reflects an honor model of negotiating with language that promotes honor gain (i.e., moral integrity) and honor protection (i.e., image and strength). Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The present research investigates the effects of a subtle essentialist cue: restricting individuals to identify with only one ethnicity. Although this constraint is mundane and commonly used in everyday life, it sends a message of essentialized group differences. Three studies illustrate the harmful impact of this essentialist cue on diversity. Studies 1a and 1b show that it decreases Asian-Americans' desire to participate in ethnicity-related activities. Study 2 reveals that it reduces essentialist European-Americans' desire for friendship with a minority target. Study 3 illustrates the mechanism through which an essentialist cue reduces intergroup contact, with perceivers' chronic beliefs moderating this effect. Together, these findings demonstrate the powerful impact of the seemingly small act of how we ask people to identify with an ethnic group.

We apply a communication perspective to study third party conflict contagion, a phenomenon in which partisan spectators to others' disputes not only become involved in, but escalate, the dispute to a multitude of others. Using the serial reproduction method, we demonstrate the role of third parties' communication biases in conflict escalation, revealing that successive generations of partisan observers share and reproduce conflict narratives that become increasingly biased in their moral framing, attributions for the conflict, evaluations of the disputing parties, and quest for revenge. Despite equal fault between the disputing parties at the beginning, these communication biases increased, rather than subsided, with each iteration throughout communication chains, cumulating in distortions and group biases far above and beyond initial ingroup favoritism. Implications for strategies to debias conflict information transmission are discussed.

This chapter discusses the intersection between culture and intergroup conflict contagion. It reviews the literature on vertical and horizontal individualism and collectivism, before focusing the discussion on vertical collectivism. It also highlights group entitativity as a core underlying process that drives escalation and perpetuation: vicarious revenge via ingroup and outgroup entitativity, and cross-generational perpetuation via transgenerational entitativity. Next, the chapter advances potential moderators for escalation. A model is presented that illustrates the role of group entitativity processes within vertical collectivistic groups and explains intergroup conflict contagion across generations. Emerging laboratory and interview data are presented that support the propositions advanced in the chapter. The chapter concludes with an outlook on much needed future directions in the study of culture and conflict.

Anecdotal evidence abounds that conflicts between two individuals can spread across networks to involve a multitude of others. We advance a cultural transmission model of intergroup conflict where conflict contagion is seen as a consequence of universal human traits (ingroup preference, outgroup hostility; i.e. parochial altruism) which give their strongest expression in particular cultural contexts. Qualitative interviews conducted in the Middle East, USA and Canada suggest that parochial altruism processes vary across cultural groups and are most likely to occur in collectivistic cultural contexts that have high ingroup loyalty. Implications for future neuroscience and computational research needed to understand the emergence of intergroup conflict are discussed.

The special issue on Ambivalent Sexism (Glick and Fiske 1996, 1999, 2001) reflects the current landscape of ambivalent sexism research. This introduction reviews the theory, exploring the particularly insidious case of benevolent sexism. Next, it presents the included papers, which range broadly, but generally fit one of three research streams in the development of ambivalent sexism research. Some papers focus on converging correlations, exploring ambivalent sexism’s relation to other ideologies and cultural dimensions. Other papers demonstrate causality in context, revealing impact on targets and the prescriptive power of ambivalent ideologies. A third line documents converse causality, illustrating impact on perceivers’ self processes. Finally, we discuss possible future areas of research.

Gender-based structural power and heterosexual dependency produce ambivalent gender ideologies, with hostility and benevolence separately shaping close-relationship ideals. The relative importance of romanticized benevolent versus more overtly power-based hostile sexism, however, may be culturally dependent. Testing this, northeast US (N=311) and central Chinese (N=290) undergraduates rated prescriptions and proscriptions (ideals) for partners and completed Ambivalent Sexism and Ambivalence toward Men Inventories (ideologies). Multiple regressions analyses conducted on group-specific relationship ideals revealed that benevolent ideologies predicted partner ideals, in both countries, especially for US culture's romance-oriented relationships. Hostile attitudes predicted men's ideals, both American and Chinese, suggesting both societies' dominant-partner advantage.

Emotion-expressive behavior is often but not always inversely related to physiological responding. To test the hypothesis that cultural context moderates the relationship between expressivity and physiological responding, the authors have Asian American and European American women engage in face-to-face conversations about a distressing film in same-ethnicity dyads. Blood pressure is measured continuously, and emotional expressivity is rated from reviewing videotapes. Results indicate that emotion-expressive behavior is inversely related to blood pressure in European American dyads, but the reverse was true in Asian American dyads in which there is a trend toward a positive association. These results suggest that the links between emotion-expressive behavior and physiological responding may depend on cultural context. One possible explanation for this effect may be that cultural contexts shape the meaning that individuals give to emotional expressions that occur during social interactions.

AbstractAccording to ambivalent sexism theory, sexism combines complementary gender ideologies, held by both men and women worldwide, which serve to justify social hierarchy. This chapter reviews how benevolent and hostile attitudes toward women operate in concert to ultimately maintain gender inequity. Research specifically targets the relationship between sexism and system justification as endorsed and enacted by men and women. Hostile and benevolent beliefs map onto widely held prescriptions and proscriptions for men and women; these beliefs shape men’s and women’s interactions in the private sphere (i.e., the home, close relationships). Finally, these system justifying beliefs extend to the workplace and impede women from progressing in the public sphere.

Glick-Fiske's (1996) Ambivalent Sexism Inventory(ASI) and a new Gender-Role Ideology in Marriage (GRIM) inventory examine ambivalent sexism toward women, predicting power-related, gender-role beliefs about mate selection and marriage norms. Mainland Chinese, 552, and 252 U.S. undergraduates participated. Results indicated that Chinese and men most endorsed hostile sexism; Chinese women more than U.S. women accepted benevolent sexism. Both Chinese genders prefer home-oriented mates (women especially seeking a provider and upholding him; men especially endorsing male-success/female-housework, male dominance, and possibly violence). Both U.S. genders prefer considerate mates (men especially seeking an attractive one). Despite gender and culture differences in means, ASI-GRIM correlations replicate across those subgroups: Benevolence predicts initial mate selection; hostility predicts subsequent marriage norms.

Emotion-expressive behavior is often but not always inversely related to physiological responding. To test the hypothesis that cultural context moderates the relationship between expressivity and physiological responding, the authors have Asian American and European American women engage in face-to-face conversations about a distressing film in same-ethnicity dyads. Blood pressure is measured continuously, and emotional expressivity is rated from reviewing videotapes. Results indicate that emotion-expressive behavior is inversely related to blood pressure in European American dyads, but the reverse was true in Asian American dyads in which there is a trend toward a positive association. These results suggest that the links between emotion-expressive behavior and physiological responding may depend on cultural context. One possible explanation for this effect may be that cultural contexts shape the meaning that individuals give to emotional expressions that occur during social interactions.

John Williams is a black American. On his first day of work at a new job at a mid-size print advertising firm, he arrived early to set up his office, only to find that his "office" was not with the other two new recruits but in the basement, in what was previously a janitor's closet. Displayed prominently on his computer was a noose.

Stereotype research depicts the generic immigrant as incompetent and untrustworthy. The current research expands this image, specifying key information dimensions (e.g. nationality, socioeconomic status) about immigrants. To see how perceivers differentiate among particular immigrant groups, we extend a model of intergroup perception, the Stereotype Content Model (SCM; Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, & Xu, 2002. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 878–902), to immigrant subgroups. The SCM predicts that perception centers on competence and warmth, and relates to targets’ perceived status and competition within society. Specified by nationality, race, ethnicity, and class, images of immigrants differ by both competence and warmth, with most groups receiving ambivalent (low–high or high–low) stereotypes rather than the uniform low–low for the generic immigrant. As predicted, ambivalent stereotypes reflect target nationality combined with socioeconomic status, supporting the SCM's ambivalent stereotypes and social structural hypotheses, as well as better defining immigrant stereotypes and their contingencies.