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Prejudiced attitudes and political nationalism vary widely around the world, but there has been little research on what predicts this variation. Here we examine the ecological and cultural factors underlying the worldwide distribution of prejudice. We suggest that cultures grow more prejudiced when they tighten cultural norms in response to destabilizing ecological threats. A set of seven archival analyses, surveys, and experiments (∑N = 3,986,402) find that nations, American states, and pre-industrial societies with tighter cultural norms show the most prejudice based on skin color, religion, nationality, and sexuality, and that tightness predicts why prejudice is often highest in areas of the world with histories of ecological threat. People's support for cultural tightness also mediates the link between perceived ecological threat and intentions to vote for nationalist politicians. Results replicate when controlling for economic development, inequality, conservatism, residential mobility, and shared cultural heritage. These findings offer a cultural evolutionary perspective on prejudice, with implications for immigration, intercultural conflict, and radicalization.

Germany is ethnically diverse and the social climate is more or less welcoming for different immigrant groups. The social climate can be described by stereotypes of members of the receiving society about immigrant groups, which in turn shape receiving-society members' behavioral tendencies of support or discrimination. We investigated warmth and competence stereotypes about 17 immigrant groups in Germany. Results showed four clusters of immigrant groups in the two-dimensional space of warmth and competence. Groups who immigrated comparatively recently and from regions of conflict (e.g., the Balkans, Northern Africa) were stereotyped most negatively (moderate warmth, low competence). Across groups, path analysis investigated the socio-structural relations proposed by the stereotype content model and the BIAS map for immigrant groups in the German context. In a pre-registered model all hypothesized paths were significant but model fit was not good. Therefore, an exploratory model included additional paths as well as intercorrelations between exogenous variables and error terms. The modified model showed good fit and partly replicated the relations proposed by the BIAS map. Threat predicted warmth, whereas status predicted competence. Warmth predicted active behavioral tendencies and competence predicted passive behavioral tendencies. Additional paths from status to warmth, threat to competence, as well as from warmth to passive behavioral tendencies and competence to active behavioral tendencies were also significant. Thus, findings support receiving-society members' active role in the process of integrating immigrant groups into German society. Based on the results, social-psychological approaches to foster immigrant integration are discussed.

Individuals have the automatic tendency to imitate each other. A key prediction of different theories explaining automatic imitation is that individuals imitate in-group members more strongly than out-group members. However, the empirical basis for this prediction is rather inconclusive. Only a few experiments have investigated the influence of group membership using classic automatic imitation paradigms and these experiments led to mixed results. To put the group membership prediction to a critical test, we carried out six high-powered experiments (total N  = 1538) in which we assessed imitation with the imitation-inhibition task and manipulated group membership in different ways. Evidence across all experiments indicates that group membership does not modulate automatic imitation. Moreover, we do not find support for the idea that feelings of affiliation or perceived similarity moderate the effect of group membership on automatic imitation. These results have important implications for theories explaining automatic imitation and contribute to the current discussion of whether automatic imitation can be socially modulated.

The biasing role of stereotypes is a central theme in social cognition research. For example, to understand the role of race in police officers’ decisions to shoot, participants have been shown images of Black and White males and instructed to shoot only if the target is holding a gun. Findings show that Black targets are shot more frequently and more quickly than Whites. The decision to shoot has typically been modeled and understood as a signal detection process in which a sample of information is compared against a criterion, with the criterion set for Black targets being lower. We take a different approach, modeling the decision to shoot as a dynamic process in which evidence is accumulated over time until a threshold is reached. The model accounts for both the choice and response time data for both correct and incorrect decisions using a single set of parameters. Across four studies, this dynamic perspective revealed that the target’s race did not create an initial bias to shoot Black targets. Instead, race impacted the rate of evidence accumulation with evidence accumulating faster to shoot for Black targets. Some participants also tended to be more cautious with Black targets, setting higher decision thresholds. Besides providing a more cohesive and richer account of the decision to shoot or not, the dynamic model suggests interventions that may address the use of race information in decisions to shoot and a means to measure their effectiveness.

•Machine learning can decode emotional patterns and track them over time.•The group perceived as low in competence and warm evoked more negative emotions.•The group perceived as low in competence and high in warmth elicited ambivalent emotional responses.•The emotional responses were modulated by the decreasing interpersonal distance. The Stereotype Content Model (SCM) states that different social groups elicit different emotions according to their perceived level of competence and warmth. Because of this relationship between stereotypes and emotional states and because emotions are highly predictive of intergroup behaviors, emotional evaluation is crucial for research on intergroup relations. However, emotional assessment heavily relies on self-reports, which are often compromised by social desirability and challenges in reporting immediate emotional appraisals. In this study, we used machine learning to identify emotional brain patterns using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Subsequently, those patterns were used to monitor emotional reactions during virtual intergroup encounters. Specifically, we showed Finnish majority group members 360-videos depicting members of their ethnic ingroup and immigrant outgroups approaching and entering participants’ personal space. All the groups showed different levels of perceived competence and warmth. In alignment with the SCM, our results showed that the groups perceived as low in competence and warmth evoked contempt and discomfort. Moreover, the ambivalent low-competent/high-warm group elicited both happiness and discomfort. Additionally, upon the protagonists’ approach into personal space, emotional reactions were modulated differently for each group. Taken together, our findings suggest that our method could be used to explore the temporal dynamics of emotional responses during intergroup encounters.

Many people argue that support for populist radical‐right political agents is motivated by people feeling “left behind” in globalized Western democracies. Empirical research supports this notion by showing that people who feel personally or collectively deprived are more likely to hold populist beliefs and anti‐immigration attitudes. Our aim was to further investigate the psychological link between individuals' justice concerns and their preferences for populist radical‐right political agents. We focused on stable individual differences in self‐oriented and other‐oriented justice concerns and argue that these should have opposing correlations with preferences for populist radical‐right parties. We tested our hypotheses in two national samples, one from the United States (N = 1500) and one from Germany (N = 848). Sensitivity to injustice towards oneself enhanced the likelihood of preferring Trump (United States) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) (Germany) via increased anti‐immigration attitudes and increased populist attitudes. Sensitivity to injustice towards others reduced the likelihood of preferring Trump and AfD via decreased anti‐immigration attitudes. We discuss our findings in regard to how stable individual differences in the evaluation of fairness can motivate intra‐ and interpersonal political conflicts in modern western societies and how politics and mass media can fuel these conflicts.

In this conceptual paper, we draw on social identity theory as a means to bridge individuals' memberships in social groups with value creation in stakeholder networks defined by a socio-economic issue. To address recent calls for microfoundations of stakeholder theory, we introduce a reconceptualization of stakeholders as social groups to examine how value is defined and interpreted in intergroup processes embedded in an issue-based stakeholder network. We establish a theoretical model of value creation that links individuals' identification with stakeholder groups to intergroup trust, co-operation, and value creation. Specifically, we argue that the salience of pre-existing social identities causes harmful tensions in stakeholder relationships that negatively impact value creation. We then propose that the development of a more inclusive stakeholder identity overcomes these negative intergroup consequences in multistakeholder settings. We discuss the impact on value creation of four stakeholder identity representations based on the salience of specific and superordinate stakeholder groups. The paper concludes with implications of our theoretical model for both research and practice related to value creation in issue-based stakeholder networks.

Mimicry has been ascribed affiliative functions. In three experiments, we used a newly developed social-affective mimicry task (SAMT) to investigate mimicry´s modulation by emotional facial expressions (happy, angry) and ethnic group-membership (White in-group, Black out-group). Experiment 1 established the main consistent effect across experiments, which was enhanced mimicry to angry out-group faces compared to angry in-group faces. Hence the SAMT was useful for experimentally investigating the modulation of mimicry. Experiment 2 demonstrated that these effects were not confounded by general aspects of response conflict, as a Simon task resulted in different response patterns than the SAMT. Experiment 2 and pooled analysis of Experiments 1 and 2 also corroborated the finding of enhanced mimicry to angry out-group faces. Experiment 3 tested whether this effect was related to perceptions of threat, by framing angry persons as physically threatening, or not. Selective enhancement of mimicry to out-group persons framed as physically threatening confirmed this hypothesis. Further support for the role of threat was derived from implicit measures showing, in all experiments, that black persons were more strongly associated with threat. Furthermore, enhanced mimicry was consistently related to response facilitation in the execution of congruent movements. This suggests that mimicry acted as a social congruency signal. Our findings suggest that mimicry may serve as an appeasement signal in response to negative affiliative intent. This extends previous models of mimicry, which have predominantly focused on its role in reciprocating affiliation. It suggests that mimicry might not only be used to maintain and establish affiliative bonds, but also to ameliorate a negative social situation.

The target article is an appeal to allow explicit computational theorizing into the study of social groups. Some commentators took this proposal and ran with it, some had questions about it, and some were confused or even put off by it. But even the latter did not seem to outright disagree – they thought the proposal was mutually exclusive with some other enterprise, when in fact it is not. Unfortunately, scientists studying social groups have not yet avoided the thread-bare trope of the blind men studying the different parts of the elephant: We see mutual exclusivity when we should see complementarity. I hope we can all take the next steps of examining how the different enterprises and approaches within our area of research might all fit together into a unified whole.

BackgroundAs social media are evolving rapidly online support groups (OSG) are becoming increasingly important for patients. Therefore, the aim of our study was to compare the users of traditional face-to-face support groups and OSG.Patients and methodsWe performed a cross-sectional comparison study of all regional face-to-face support groups and the largest OSG in Germany. By applying validated instruments, the survey covered sociodemographic and disease-related information, decision-making habits, psychological aspects, and quality of life.ResultsWe analyzed the complete data of 955 patients visiting face-to-face support groups and 686 patients using OSG. Patients using OSG were 6 years younger (65.3 vs. 71.5 years; p < 0.001), had higher education levels (47 vs. 21%; p < 0.001), and had higher income. Patients using OSG reported a higher share of metastatic disease (17 vs. 12%; p < 0.001). Patients using OSG reported greater distress. There were no significant differences in anxiety, depression, and global quality of life. In the face-to-face support groups, patient ratings were better for exchanging information, gaining recognition, and caring for others. Patients using OSG demanded a more active role in the treatment decision-making process (58 vs. 33%; p < 0.001) and changed their initial treatment decision more frequently (29 vs. 25%; p < 0.001).ConclusionsBoth modalities of peer support received very positive ratings by their users and have significant impact on treatment decision-making.Implications for cancer survivorsOlder patients might benefit more from the continuous social support in face-to-face support groups. OSG offer low-threshold advice for acute problems to younger and better educated patients with high distress.Trial registrationwww.germanctr.de, number DRKS00005086