Social Psychological Bulletin
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An Interdisciplinary Investigation Into the Behaviors That Build (and Express) Interpersonal Trust
No full textThe expression of specific nonverbal behaviors has been proposed to play an important role in the development of interpersonal trust. In this review, we examined the andragogical descriptions presented by 8 different disciplines for which behaviors are used to build trust. Despite drawing from largely separate source material, cross-discipline analyses revealed consistency regarding the recommended behaviors that should be used to communicate trust, including eye contact, smiling, mimicry, and maintaining physical proximity. A comparison of these behaviors with those seen in the attraction literature and parenting context further suggests that the function of such behaviors is not confined to the professional context. A model in which affiliative behaviors are used in the expression of trust and interpersonal attraction is discussed
The Function of Feeling Kama Muta in Face of Collective Threat
No full textKama muta is a positive emotion that is commonly elicited against a backdrop of difficulties and reorients one’s values towards priorities in life. Hence, we expect kama muta to cause similar beneficial shifts in attitudes, when exposed to collective threat such as natural disasters. In these contexts, kama muta may help to build individuals’ resources for prosocial action, through mechanisms like reducing the perceived burden of their own personal problems. As such, the current research proposes that kama muta reduces negative attitudes towards one's personal problems (personal problem appraisals) and is simultaneously enhanced by exposure to collective threat. Across three studies on Japanese participants (N = 725), we found that participants' experiences of kama muta predicted alleviations in their personal problem appraisals, even after controlling for other positive emotions. However, kama muta was not enhanced by experimental manipulation of collective threat contexts, but was instead positively correlated with subjective perceptions of the societal impact of these threats
The Readability of the Non-Binary Gender Star in German: Evidence From a Lexical Decision Task
No full textThe non-binary gender star in German (e.g., Radfahrer*in - cyclist) is intended to inclusively address all genders, that is, persons identifying beyond a female-male dichotomy, as well as women and men. Critics of this gender-fair form claim that, because it is not in line with German orthography, it impedes the readability of texts. Experimental research on this claim is still scarce. Because word recognition is a crucial component of the reading process, we developed a lexical decision task to investigate lexical access to role nouns in star form with a student (Experiment 1: 97 participants, 18–29 years) and a non-student sample (Experiment 2: 80 participants, 30–80 years), thus taking interindividual differences into account. Our results are promising for proponents of the star form: First, we found that less than 3% of all participants rejected star nouns as German words. Second, amongst the remaining participants, students accepted star nouns as quickly and as often as feminine and masculine forms. In contrast, non-students accepted star nouns more slowly and less often. However, the non-students’ initial difficulties in lexical access reflected in slower reaction times were overcome quickly over the course of the experiment thus suggesting that the readability of the gender star is a matter of familiarity and practice
The Role of Social Class in the Use of Gender-Inclusive Language: An Analysis of Polish and German Job Titles
No full textPast research has found that gender-inclusive language is more commonly used in egalitarian cultures. People in middle-class communities not only endorse more egalitarian values but also more strongly believe that social change is possible than people in working-class communities. As such, there may be a higher demand for and, thus, use of gender-inclusive language in middle-class professions than for working class professions. Two studies investigated the use of feminine and gender-inclusive job titles for working vs. middle class professions in two grammatical gender languages, namely feminine job titles in Polish corpus texts (Study 1) and gender-inclusive job titles in Swiss German job advertisements (Study 2). Results showed that feminine and gender-inclusive job titles were indeed more often used for middle- than for working-class professions in both countries. These findings document the need to take social class into account in future language research as well as in the implementation of language reforms
Gender Discrimination and Hegemonic Masculinity in Study Fields: A Multi-Level Analysis Among Female and Male Students in Vocational Education
No full textA substantial body of research has documented significant variations across fields of study in the prevalence of discrimination experiences among women. In the present research, we investigated the role of normative climates in fields of study by focusing on the shared endorsement of hegemonic masculinity on the experiences and anticipations of gender discrimination among female and male students. We recruited a large sample of students attending upper-secondary vocational schools (N = 1,298), segmented into various fields of study (k = 35). We assessed students’ endorsement of hegemonic masculinity (whose effects were estimated at the field level), along with perceived and anticipated gender discrimination (estimated at the individual level). Multi-level structural equation modelling revealed cross-level interactions consistent with our hypotheses. Female students, particularly in fields of study scoring high in hegemonic masculinity, perceived and anticipated more gender discrimination than their male counterparts. These gender differences were either weaker or absent in fields with a climate low in hegemonic masculinity. These findings highlight the importance of addressing the role of normative climates occurring in local educational contexts to adequately determine the experiences of female and male students
The Role of Grammatical Gender and Gender Stereotypes in Noun Processing: The Tug of War in Greek
No full textThe present study examined the interaction of grammatical gender and gender stereotypes in Modern Greek. Native Greek adults were primed with Greek occupational nouns of common gender (i.e., nouns that are used for both male and female characters) with a masculine ending and a stereotypically male or female bias (e.g., iδravlikós ‘plumber’ and esθitikós ‘beautician’), followed by a masculine or feminine pronoun target (aftós ‘he’ or aftí ‘she’), forming stereotypically congruent (iδravlikós – aftós, ‘plumber – he’, esθitikós – aftí, ‘beautician - she’) and incongruent (iδravlikós – aftí, ‘plumber – she’, esθitikós – aftós, ‘beautician - he’) prime-target pairs. The participants’ task was to decide the gender of the pronoun, and their response times were measured. An effect of congruency was found for masculine pronouns, with slower response times when the masculine pronoun had been primed with a stereotypically female role noun. No such effect of congruency was found for feminine pronouns. This suggests that not only gender stereotypicality but also the morphological form of the noun influenced processing in Greek role nouns. Specifically, apparent morphosyntactic cues, albeit being uninformative about referential gender, seemingly generated a male bias and mitigated the impact of gender stereotypes associated with female-biased role nouns in prime-target pairs involving a feminine pronoun, reflecting an interaction between grammatical form and stereotype
Processing of Pronouns With Gender-Inclusive –x in Spanish: An Eye-Tracking Study
No full textPsycholinguistic research on gender-inclusive language has mainly focused on the processing of stereotyped nouns, while other work has centered on the processing of gender-inclusive morphemes (GIMs). This study focuses on Spanish and, by means of an eye-tracking technique, it examines the early and late processing of pronouns ending with the gender-inclusive morpheme –x, in comparison to those ending with the canonical masculine morpheme –o and the feminine morpheme –a. It also considers emerging trends between –x and extralinguistic factors, such as gender identity, sexual orientation, experience with gender studies, and attitudes towards GIMs. Spanish-speaking university students in Puerto Rico completed a sentence reading task and a questionnaire that collected information pertaining to four extralinguistic factors. Linear mixed-effects models display that processing –x is more costly than –o in all early and late reading measures, but more costly than –a only in some early and late reading measures. Furthermore, the random-effects structure showed an inverse relationship between these differences: the smaller the difference between –x and –o, the larger the difference between –a and –x. Emerging trends with extralinguistic factors suggest future studies should further explore their relationship with gender-inclusive morpheme –x. For a holistic understanding of gender-inclusive Spanish processing at the intersection of language and gender, these findings evince the importance of examining GIMs in comparison to both canonical morphemes and measuring both early and late processing
Tolerating Injustice When Feeling in Control: Personal Control Enhances the Link Between Collectivism and Coercion in the Face of Disease Threats
No full textAmid the COVID-19 pandemic, authorities worldwide imposed coercive regulations aimed at curbing the virus’s spread, often at the expense of individuals who were considered potential threats to public health. We argue that individual differences in their support for such actions can be understood from the perspective of an evolved “behavioral immune system”. We conducted two studies within the context of the “zero-COVID” policy in Mainland China. Study 1 recruited 819 Shanghai residents during a strict citywide lockdown and found that individuals’ collectivistic orientation and personal control over their lives predicted their tolerance of injustices involved in disease-control measures. Moreover, the effect of psychological collectivism was enhanced by personal control. Study 2 (N = 403) partly replicated these findings using hypothetical scenarios related to various fictitious viruses. Notably, the effects found in Study 1 only manifested in scenarios involving ambivalent pathogens, which are seldom fatal but highly contagious. Building on the functional flexibility principle of the behavioral immune system theory, we discussed the unique role of ambivalent pathogen signals in generating within-society variability and fine-tuning behavioral immune responses
Feeling Bad About Feeling Good? How Avengers and Observers Evaluate the Hedonic Pleasure of Taking Revenge
No full textFour pre-registered experiments (N total = 2,039) investigated how people morally evaluate avengers who experience hedonic pleasure (vs. displeasure) after taking revenge and whether avengers themselves pick up on these moral evaluations by third parties. Victims who took revenge were judged as more immoral than victims who did not take revenge, especially when they felt pleasure from doing so (Study 1). Conversely, participants anticipated that others would perceive them as more competent (but not less moral) when imagining them showing visible signs of pleasure (vs. displeasure) about taking revenge (Study 2). Furthermore, showing signs of pleasure from taking revenge was attributed to greater competence than showing signs of displeasure from taking revenge (Study 3). On the other hand, feeling good about revenge was attributed to lower morality than feeling bad about taking revenge (Study 4)
The Impact of Mimicry Behavior on Guilt
No full textGuilt, on the one hand, can be unpleasant and exhausting. On the other hand, it can also motivate individuals to, for example, make amends and repair broken social relationships. To understand this dual nature of guilt, this research turns to the concept of mimicry. Mimicry is defined as the unconscious imitation of behaviors and is widely recognized as a 'social glue' that plays a crucial role in forming and maintaining social relationships. A key question is whether mimicry could serve as an appliance for the sake of guilt release. A series of six studies (N = 414) reveals the opposite pattern: participants who were mimicked (compared to non-mimicked) felt more guilty. This outcome suggests that while mimicry generally fosters social connections, its interplay with emotions like guilt can be complex