Social Psychological Bulletin

Foreign Country Conspiracy Beliefs in Separatist Conflicts: Their Role in Fueling Blame Attribution, Delegitimization of Separatist Group, and Symbolic Racism

2026-05-18T07:13:41+00:00

Across 4 correlational studies, using currently unresolved separatist conflicts in West Papua, Indonesia as a contextual background, our work aimed to examine the role of beliefs in foreign country conspiracies in igniting negative reactions of members of a non-separatist society when responding to a political issue. Study 1 (N = 88) constitutes a preliminary investigation revealing that beliefs in foreign country conspiracies, referring to the extent to which non-separatist members believe that foreign countries have clandestinely backed up the separatist group, positively corresponded to the legitimization of the separatist group as a terrorist organization. In Study 2 (N = 325), results showed that more beliefs in foreign country conspiracies, in line with Study 1, corresponded to more endorsement of the Indonesian government’s decision to judge the West Papuan separatist group as a terrorist organization. Study 2 also demonstrated that beliefs in foreign country conspiracies translated into generalized negative attitudes towards West Papuan society, manifested in symbolic racism. Study 3 (N = 497) extended Study 2, showing how blaming the separatist group mediated the role of beliefs in foreign conspiracies as positive antecedents of support for the terrorist label and symbolic racism. Study 4 (N = 550) replicated Study 3 and additionally found that the positive relationship between beliefs in foreign country conspiracies and symbolic racism was more prominent among high national glorifiers. These findings suggest that negative attitudes toward the separatist movement can be rooted in people’s attribution of the independence movement to a distal, international factor.

The Structure and Correlates of Societal Threat Perceptions: A Network Approach

2026-05-18T07:13:49+00:00

Societal threats such as climate change, economic crises, and wars shape citizens’ political attitudes and behaviors. Yet, the structure of threat perceptions and their socio-demographic and ideological correlates remain underexplored. Using a six-wave Dutch survey (N = 685) and a network approach, we uncover the complexity of societal threat perceptions. First, we show that societal threat perceptions vary in their interconnectedness, with security threats, such as crime, threats related to asylum seekers, and the war in Ukraine emerging as central nodes. Second, ideology, age, and education are the most relevant variables linked to societal threat perceptions. Third, we replicate the levels and structure of societal threat perceptions over time, highlighting the robustness of our conclusions. Our study’s results indicate that societal threat perceptions form a complex network that replicates over one year. We outline an agenda for the next generation of theorizing on the structure, correlates and stability of societal threat perceptions.

Threat and Worry (Often) Go Together; Salience Stands Apart – Patterns Across Descriptives, Correlations, and Ideological Associations

2026-05-18T07:13:45+00:00

Societal threat perception, worry, and issue salience are central to research in psychology and political science, and previous research suggests considerable overlap between the three measures. Nevertheless, they have not yet been empirically distinguished. This study addresses whether the empirical patterns of these three measures are consistent and whether they yield congruent conclusions about political ideology across twelve societal issues. Using data from a diverse Dutch sample (N = 1863), we first show that threat and worry, but not salience, produce similar empirical patterns in terms of means and correlations, as citizens find issues more important than threatening or worrying. Next, we find that, overall, threat and worry correlate similarly with ideology—but also highlight exceptions—whereas issue salience often overestimates this relationship (Type M error) but rarely reverses its direction (Type S error). These findings clarify the unique roles of threat, worry, and issue salience in (political) psychology, offering a framework for future research on the threat-politics link.

Consistent Kindness: Money Allocation and Kind Act Decisions Are Regulated by a ‘Welfare Trade-Off Ratio’

2026-04-09T00:16:20+00:00

Is kindness regulated by a cost-benefit ratio? Previous research suggests that money allocation decisions are regulated by a ‘welfare trade-off ratio’ (WTR) that reflects the weight attached to the actor’s welfare relative to the recipient’s welfare. Here we replicate this research, and extend it by creating a new measure—The Kindness Questionnaire—which asks which real-world acts of kindness, previously rated for cost and benefit, participants would perform for others. In Study 1 (n = 6,601) money allocation (MA) and Kindness Questionnaire (KQ) decisions for family, friends, colleagues and strangers were highly consistent with an underlying WTR (~92%); more consistent than would be expected by chance; and generally more consistent than with cost or benefit alone. WTRs were high (~0.81); and, for money allocation, declined with social distance. In Study 2 (n = 8,492) MA and KQ decisions for neighbors were highly consistent with an underlying WTR (~89%); more consistent than would be expected by chance; and generally more consistent than with cost or benefit alone. WTRs were high (~0.75). In both studies, The Kindness Questionnaires showed good convergent, divergent and incremental validity. These studies corroborate ‘welfare tradeoff ratio’ theory, establish proof of principle for a new way of measuring kindness, and provide new tools for measuring kindness to colleagues, strangers and neighbors.

Higher Dispersion and Volume of Consumer Product Ratings Increases Product Preferences

2026-03-26T01:08:53+00:00

We examined the impact of dispersion and volume of product ratings on product preferences. Earlier work shows that extremely positive exemplars have a disproportionate influence on people’s decision-making when they seek desirable outcomes. We examined if the occurrence of both extremely positive and extremely negative review ratings changed people’s preferences, even if the average review ratings remained similar, in a within-person experiment that simulated an online purchasing website. Participants (N = 281 adults residing in the USA) repeatedly chose one out of four products with review ratings. We experimentally varied the dispersion and volume of these rating scores. As hypothesized, individuals preferred products accompanied by a high volume and highly dispersed set of review ratings. The results hold important implications for understanding the influence of reviews on consumer purchasing intentions and behavior.

Temporal Aspects of Mimicry and Costs of Mimicry: The Link Between Mimicry, Its Duration, and Self-Esteem of The Mimickee

2026-03-17T02:43:33+00:00

Experiments that manipulate the presence of mimicry generally find that mimicry benefits the mimicker. These results led to the "mimicry-as-a-social-glue" hypothesis, which considers mimicry as a mechanism responsible for starting and maintaining social relations. There are two novel aspects in the present pre-registered experiment. First, the experiment examines temporal aspects by including four conditions: no mimicry, mimicry during the first five minutes, the last five minutes, or mimicry present throughout the interaction. By doing so, we contribute to ongoing efforts to standardise mimicry methodology. Second, this explores the underexplored issue of potential costs associated with mimicry and challenges the "mimicry-as-a-social-glue" hypothesis. The results demonstrate a relationship between temporal factors and the effects of mimicry. Participants who were mimicked during the final five minutes of the interaction reported significantly lower self-esteem compared to those mimicked during the initial five minutes. However, no significant differences in self-esteem were found between the no mimicry condition and mimicry during the first five minutes, nor between the final five minutes condition and mimicry sustained throughout the entire interaction. Similarly, no significant differences were observed between the no mimicry condition and the condition in which mimicry was sustained for the entire interaction. These findings suggest that the costs and benefits associated with mimicry depend on its temporal dynamics.

Counter-Intuitive Findings on Affect and Ideology Likely Reflect Collider Bias: Commentary on Turner-Zwinkels et al., 2025

2026-03-17T02:43:37+00:00

A paper recently published by Turner-Zwinkels et al. (2025) contains a peculiar set of findings: using cross-sectional analyses of international survey data, one study found that the more partisans agree with their co-partisans on matters of policy and ideology, the less they like the party they all support, whereas in another study these variables were uncorrelated. These negative and null relationships are counter-intuitive and conflict with prior findings showing that greater perceived ideological similarity tends to increase liking. Turner-Zwinkels et al. suggest these results could be a product of optimal distinctiveness theory. However, I suggest that this result is a statistical artefact caused by collider bias. I explain how collider bias could create this result even if the true relationship between liking and ideological similarity is positive. I demonstrate the plausibility of this explanation using simulations and a re-analysis of Turner-Zwinkels et al.’s data.

Neither Asian nor American: How COVID-19 Impacted Asian Americans’ Identity and Well-Being

2026-02-24T04:15:59+00:00

Asians and Asian Americans have experienced increased discrimination due to COVID-19. Building on the rejection-identification model (RIM; Branscombe et al., 1999) and the rejection-disidentification model (RDIM; Jasinskaja-Lahti et al., 2009), we sought to examine how COVID-19 discrimination has impacted Asian Americans’ identities and well-being. Asian and Asian American individuals currently residing in the United States were recruited to participate in our study. The relations between perceived COVID-19 discrimination, identification, and well-being were examined correlationally (Study 1) and experimentally (Studies 2 and 3). Across 3 studies, COVID-19 discrimination is associated with increased levels of anxiety and stress but decreased identification with being American. At the same time, perceived discrimination was unrelated to participants’ Asian (Study 1, 2, and 3) and specific ethnic (Study 3) identities. In Study 2, we experimentally demonstrated that reading about the negative impact of COVID-19 on Asian Americans interacted with perceived discrimination to decrease the extent to which participants identified as American, which has implications for anxiety and stress. Results from Study 2 supported the RDIM predictions and was replicated in a US-born sample in Study 3. Our studies suggest that Asian and Asian Americans’ well-being is harmed through the decrease of a positive identity (i.e., being an American) without the compensation of another positive identity (i.e., being Asian or being a specific ethnicity) to protect them from the negative impactive of COVID-19 discrimination. Thus, Asian Americans need support now more than ever.

Intellectual Humility: Validation and Comparison of Four Self-Report Scales in the German Context

2026-01-16T00:17:20+00:00

Intellectual humility (IH), the recognition of one’s intellectual limitations, is a promising characteristic to tackle societal conflicts such as affective political polarization. Despite increasing research on IH in recent years, most research has been conducted in the USA, probably due to a lack of scales that are validated in languages other than English. Our objective was to offer researchers in the German context several IH measures to choose from depending on their specific research question. Therefore, we validated and compared four established IH scales within the German context. Items of three widely-used IH scales (CIHS, SIHS, LIHS) were translated from English into German by two independent researchers, rated by experts (n = 8), and pre-tested (n = 13). We then assessed the structural, convergent, discriminant, and incremental validity of the scales plus an existing Swiss-German IH scale (IHS) in a preregistered online-survey (N = 698), representative for Germany regarding age, gender, and education. Discriminant validity was assessed via social desirability, cognitive closure, need for cognition, HEXACO honesty-humility, and openness, and incremental validity regarding affective polarization. Results showed that the IHS did not meet all of our pre-registered criteria, potentially due to cross-cultural differences between Germany and Switzerland. However, the three translated scales were comparable to the original English scales regarding structural, convergent, and discriminant validity. The SIHS showed the best incremental validity in predicting less affective polarization towards opinion-based outgroups. Limitations and directions for future research regarding IH in German-speaking contexts are discussed.

Exploring Self-Reported Helping, Punishment, and Moral Courage Within and Across Group Boundaries: Implications for the Inclusion of Others in Self Scale

2025-10-10T01:05:41+00:00

Altruism may not be a unitary concept but may include behaviorally dissociable subfactors. Here, we examined the effects of social distance within and across group boundaries on three facets of altruism: help giving, peer punishment, and moral courage. Using real-life scenarios presented as vignettes, participants were asked to indicate the likelihood that they would engage in the described behaviors across three different social settings: a familiar low-distance in-group, an unfamiliar high-distance in-group, and a hostile out-group. We used the Inclusion of Others in Self (IOS) scale to measure perceived closeness to members of the described social group. We hypothesized that help giving would be most and moral courage least sensitive to variations in social distance. In both studies, results revealed no significant differences in help giving across variations in social distance but a higher self-reported likeliness to show morally courageous acts in the familiar and close in-group compared to the other groups. The results for peer punishment were only partially consistent, following a similar pattern to moral courage. IOS scores discriminated between high and low-distance in-groups, as expected, but did not discriminate well between a high-distance in-group and hostile out-group. On the other hand, facet-specific trait scores correlated significantly with vignette responses. When the three facets were considered together across all vignettes, in-group favoritism became apparent. The studies contribute to our understanding of the social context conditions of altruistic behaviors and call for the refinement of experimental and self-report measures in the study of altruistic behavior.