Varieties of groups and the perception of group entitativity

Theater practice and interpersonal synchronization behaviors: a pilot study comparing actors and non-actors

Recent studies in the field of theater studies no longer view theater as an object, but rather as a dynamic relationship between actors and spectators. In an embodied and situated perspective of cognition, imagination emerges as a product of this dynamic. This study aims to investigate whether acting practice enhances someone's abilities to set up an effective relationship with others and allows the individual to better manage not only the relationship itself, but also her/his own feelings and those of her/his partner. Eighty two healthy Italian adults, with no communication disorders, including 43 actors (Mage = 25.4; S.D. = 3.64) and 39 non-actors (Mage = 24.1 = S.D. = 4.17) completed a joint verbal production task named Random Sequence Generation (RSG) task. Initially, participants performed the task individually. Subsequently, in a second phase, they worked in pairs with another participant, taking turns to contribute to a shared sequence. Pairings were predetermined to ensure a balanced mix of actors and non-actors, and to prevent participants from having prior relationships. Following the task, subjects were queried about their sense of presence, and, their perception of entitativity with their partner. We observed a replication of previous studies, showing higher RSG scores and reduced repetition in the paired condition, indicative of coupling and synchronization behavior. Within pairs, the level of the sense of presence of both partners was positively correlated. Furthermore, an interaction effect between the sense of presence and acting experience on the perception of entitativity was observed. Specifically, actors described perceived entitativity with their partners when their sense of presence was heightened, whereas non-actors experienced a decrease in perceived entitativity with their partners under similar circumstances. We discuss the results and limitations of the study, suggesting the effect of artistic practice on the development of a sort of dual-task ability which enables actors to organize their sensations and actions while sustaining a meaningful connection with others. This research represents an interdisciplinary collaboration between theater studies and cognitive sciences, highlighting the value of a multidisciplinary approach to research.

Same people, different group: Social structures are a central component of group concepts

We examine whether people conceptualize organized groups as having at least two parts: In addition to members (e.g., Alice), they also have social structures (i.e., roles and relations). If groups have members and social structures, then numerically distinct groups can have the same members if they differ in their structures. In Studies 1-4, participants numerically distinguished groups that had the same members when they had different structures. Participants numerically distinguished even when groups had the same function-the same people playing chess together Monday and Tuesday can be numerically distinct groups. In Study 4, we compare clubs to tables, and find that participants numerically distinguish tables by their structures too (i.e., the configuration of their parts) even when they have the same parts (which can be disassembled and then reassembled with ease). In Study 5, we find that participants rate groups as existing in space and time like concrete objects, suggesting that participants represent groups as at least partially concrete, such that groups have at least two parts (their structures and their members). Finally, in Study 6, we show that people will judge the same person as exemplary with respect to one group but condemnable with respect to another-even when those groups have the same members.

Do Companies Think and Feel? Mind Perception of Organizations

How do people perceive the minds of organizations? Existing work on organizational mind perception highlights two key debates: whether organizational groups are ascribed more agency than experience, and whether people are really perceiving minds in organizational groups at all. Our current paper and its data weigh in on these debates and suggest that organizations can indeed be ascribed experiential minds. We present a "member and goals" framework for systematically understanding the mind perception of organization. This framework suggests that people can perceive the organizational mind through its elemental building blocks: members (people who form the organization) and goals (its aims). Four studies reveal that people ascribe agency and experience to organizations based on whether the members of organizations and the goals of the organization are characterized by agency or experience. Study 1 finds that past work on mind perception often examines for-profit corporations, which consist of agentic members (corporate professionals) and agentic goals (market competition). Studies 2 and 3 reveal that when an organization with members and goals high (vs. low) in experience, people imbue its mind with perceived experience-equal to that of a person-and that even emotions low in warmth (i.e., anger) can imbue an organization with such perceptions. Study 4 shows the moral consequences of emphasizing experience: after organizational wrongdoing, experiential organizations are seen to deliver more sincere apologies and are more forgiven.

How do Americans perceive the stigma of leprosy?

The stigma of leprosy will have reduced effects if people cannot reliably perceive it. Two factors impact these perceptions: familiarity and entitativity. One hundred and forty-five participants tested this assertion using an online platform to complete measures of stigma about leprosy as well as measures of familiarity and entitativity. The group of 145 completed the same measures of stigma, entitativity, and familiarity 1 week later. Standard deviations of time 1 and time 2 measures of stigma were used as indices of consistent (reliable) perceptions at the individual level. Results showed partial support for familiarity being positively associated with reliable responding. Moreover, high entitativity scores were associated with greater stigma perceptions at time 1 and time 2. Ongoing research on these indicators may be important in crafting future anti-stigma programs for leprosy.

A developmental investigation of group concepts in the context of social hierarchy: Can the powerful impose group membership?

Group membership is not always voluntary and can be imposed within a social context; moreover, those with power disproportionately shape group membership. We asked if children and adults view group membership as imposed by the powerful. We undertook four studies (465 children ages 4-9, 150 adults): Studies 1-2 used novel minimal groups; Study 3 used 'cool' and 'uncool'; Study 4 used novel ethnic groups. In the first three studies, children saw groups varying in power asserting that a non-categorized individual ought to belong to one of the operating groups in the context. Adults indicated that the declarations of the high-power group (and only the high-power group) made the individual a member of the declared group. Young children rejected that group membership could be imposed. In Study 4, children of all ages reasoned that the high-power group could decide membership for a consenting individual and impose clothing restrictions on a non-consenting individual; unlike adults, children of all ages did not reason the high-power group could impose group membership more frequently than chance. Taken together, adult participants consistently reasoned that group membership was imposed and disproportionately by those with power but children, more often than adults, reasoned that group membership was voluntary.

Event-related potential and behavioural evidence of goal-based expectations for consistent actions among group members

PLACEHOLDER TEXT

ABSTRACT: People expect group members to act consistently. However, because actions are organized hierarchically, incorporating deep-level goals and shallow-level movements, it remains unclear what level of action is expected to be consistent among group members. We determined that these two levels of action representations can be dissociated in object-directed actions and measured the late positive potential (LPP), which indicates expectation. We found that participants identified a new agent's actions more quickly when this agent pursued a consistent goal while moving in a manner inconsistent with group members than when this agent pursued an inconsistent goal while moving in the same manner as group members. Moreover, this facilitation effect disappeared when the new agent was from a different group, revealing goal-based expectations for consistent actions among group members. The LPP amplitude during the action-expectation phase was greater for agents from the same group than for agents from a different group, suggesting that people implicitly generate clearer action expectations for group members than for other individuals. Additionally, the behavioural facilitation effect was observed when the goal of actions was clearly identifiable (i.e. performing rational actions to reach an external target) rather than when there was no clear association between actions and external targets (i.e. performing irrational actions). The LPP amplitude during the action-expectation phase was greater after observing rational actions than after observing irrational actions performed by two agents from the same group, and the expectation-related increase in LPP predicted the behavioural measurements of the facilitation effect. Hence, the behavioural and event-related potential evidence suggest that people implicitly expect group members to behave consistently according to goals rather than movements per se.

The impact of race, gender, and heroin use on opioid addiction stigma

INTRODUCTION

Stigmatization of an opioid addiction acts as a barrier to those seeking substance use treatment. As opioid use and overdoses continue to rise and affect minority populations, understanding the impact that race and other identities have on stigma is pertinent.

METHODS

This study aimed to examine the degree to which race and other identity markers (i.e., gender and type of opioid used) interact and drive the stigmatization of an opioid addiction. To assess public perceptions of stigma, this research team conducted a randomized, between-subjects case vignette study (N = 1833) with a nation-wide survey. Participants rated a hypothetical individual who became addicted to opioids on four stigma indices (responsibility, dangerousness, positive affect, and negative affect) based on race (White or Black), gender (male or female), and end point (an individual who transitioned to using heroin or who continued using prescription painkillers).

RESULTS

Our results first showed that the White individual had higher stigma ratings compared to the Black individual (range of partial η2 = 0.002-0.004). An interaction effect demonstrated that a White female was rated with higher responsibility for opioid use than a Black female (Cohen's d = 0.21) and a Black male was rated with higher responsibility for opioid use than a Black female (Cohen's d = 0.26). Last, we showed that a male and an individual who transitioned to heroin had higher stigma than a female and an individual who continued to use prescription opioids (range of partial η2 = 0.004-0.007).

CONCLUSION

This study provides evidence that information about multiple identities can impact stigmatizing attitudes, which can provide deeper knowledge on the development of health inequities for individuals with an opioid addiction.

Ideological prejudice is stronger in ideological extremists (vs. moderates)

The agency–beliefs–communion (ABC) model and worldview conflict research show that people rate groups as more moral and likable if they rate their ideology as more similar to the ideology of the self. This paper refers to this effect as ideological prejudice. There is a debate whether ideology moderates the effect size of ideological prejudice. Through three observational studies ( NS1 = 700, NS2 = 974, NS3 = 633), this paper contributes to this debate in three ways. First and primarily, the paper shows that ideological prejudice is stronger in conservatives and progressives compared to people with more moderate ideological beliefs. Second, stronger ideological prejudice in ideological extremists (vs. moderates) holds when controlling for stronger ingroup favoritism in ideological extremists (vs. moderates). And third, the paper suggests that higher importance of own ideology in ideological extremists (vs. moderates) may explain why ideological prejudice is stronger in ideological extremists (vs. moderates). These findings develop a part of the ABC model of stereotypes, contribute to worldview conflict research, and help to explain why ideological polarization is divisive.

Unpacking all-inclusive superordinate categories: Comparing correlates and consequences of global citizenship and human identities

Previous research suggests that all-inclusive superordinate categories, such as “citizens of the world” and “humans,” may represent different socio-psychological realities. Yet it remains unclear whether the use of different categories may account for different psychological processes and attitudinal or behavioral outcomes. Two studies extended previous research by comparing how these categories are cognitively represented, and their impact on intergroup helping from host communities toward migrants. In a correlational study, 168 nationals from 25 countries perceived the group of migrants as more prototypical of the superordinate category “citizens of the world” than their national group (relative outgroup prototypicality), whereas no differences in prototypicality occurred for the category “humans.” Identification with “citizens of the world” was positively associated with a disposition to oppose helping migrants and to offer dependency-oriented help. However, identification with “humans” was positively associated with helping in general, and with offering dependency- and autonomy-oriented help; and negatively associated with opposition to helping. The experimental study manipulated the salience of “citizens of the world” vs. “humans” vs. control category, among 224 nationals from 36 countries. Results showed that the salience of “humans” (vs. “citizens of the world”) triggered higher entitativity and essentialist perceptions, and dual-identity representations. No differences due to salience were found for representations of relative ingroup prototypicality or helping responses. Overall, these findings suggest that the interchangeable use of different labels is problematic, considering these might activate different representations, and thus, are likely to lead, in some circumstances, to different attitudinal or behavioral outcomes.

Video meeting signals: Experimental evidence for a technique to improve the experience of video conferencing

We found evidence from two experiments that a simple set of gestural techniques can improve the experience of online meetings. Video conferencing technology has practical benefits, but psychological costs. It has allowed industry, education and social interactions to continue in some form during the covid-19 lockdowns. But it has left many users feeling fatigued and socially isolated, perhaps because the limitations of video conferencing disrupt users’ ability to coordinate interactions and foster social affiliation. Video Meeting Signals (VMS™) is a simple technique that uses gestures to overcome some of these limitations. First, we carried out a randomised controlled trial with over 100 students, in which half underwent a short training session in VMS. All participants rated their subjective experience of two weekly seminars, and transcripts were objectively coded for the valence of language used. Compared to controls, students with VMS training rated their personal experience, their feelings toward their seminar group, and their perceived learning outcomes as significantly higher. Also, they were more likely to use positive language and less likely to use negative language. A second, larger experiment replicated the first, and added a condition where groups were given a version of the VMS training but taught to use emoji response buttons rather than gestures to signal the same information. The emoji-trained groups did not experience the same improvement as the VMS groups. By exploiting the specific benefits of gestural communication, VMS has great potential to overcome the psychological problems of group video meetings.

Which group matters more: The relative strength of minimal vs. gender and race group memberships in children's intergroup thinking

Experimentally created "minimal" social groups are frequently used as a means to investigate core components of intergroup cognition in children and adults. Yet, it is unclear how the effects of such arbitrary group memberships compare to those of salient real-world group memberships (gender and race) when they are directly pitted against each other in the same studies. Across three studies, we investigate these comparisons in 4-7-year-olds. Study 1 (N = 48) establishes the minimal group paradigm, finding that children develop ingroup preferences as well as other forms of group-based reasoning (e.g., moral obligations) following random assignment to a minimal group. Study 2 (N = 96) and Study 3 (N = 48) directly compare this minimal group to a real-world social group (gender or race) in a cross-categorization paradigm, in which targets are participants' ingroups in terms of the minimal group and outgroups in terms of a real-world social group, or vice versa. The relative strength of the minimal group varies, but in general it either has a similar effect or a stronger effect as compared to race and in some cases even gender. Our results support the contention that an abstract tendency to divide the world into "us" and "them" is a central force in early intergroup cognition.

The Influence of Group Identification with Student Subgroups on Perceptions of Bystander Intervention to Prevent Sexual Assault

College students can use bystander intervention tactics to prevent sexual assault within their communities. One's group memberships and group identification-conceptualized within social identity theory-could influence attitudes and behaviors related to bystander intervention. College students (n = 1,170) participated in an online survey measuring group membership with student subgroups, identification, and bystander intervention perceptions. Subgroups in this study included fraternities/sororities, student organizations, National Collegiate Athletic Association athletes, club/intramural sports, and spiritual/faith-based organizations. For various student subgroups, group identification was significantly correlated with individuals' perceived willingness and likelihood to engage in bystander intervention and their perceptions about the helpfulness of bystander intervention tactics.

On vagueness and parochialism in psychological research on groups

Pietraszewski asserts that social psychological research on groups is too vague, tautological, and dependent on intuitions to be theoretically useful. We disagree. Pietraszewski's contribution is thought-provoking but also incomplete and guilty of many of the faults he attributes to others. Instead of rototilling the existing knowledge landscape, we urge for more integration of new and old ideas.

Validation of the German group development (GD) questionnaire

Group Development (GD) is an important variable when researching and evaluating what makes teams successful. We analyzed the psychometric properties of the originally Spanish GD questionnaire with German participants. 501 team members and 104 team leaders, 18 to 65 years old, from a German research organization answered an online survey composed of the GD questionnaire and items related to other group processes of democracy, mutual trust, team spirit, and interest in the team’s tasks. Results confirmed the unidimensional factor structure of the translated Spanish version for the German GD construct. Internal consistency, convergent and discriminant validity were good. The German GD correlated as expected to other constructs, and it showed concurrent validity with respect to the team members’ motivation and interest in team tasks (r = .79, p < .01). We recommend using the GD in German samples to measure team processes that are highly relevant for team effectiveness.

Group Membership Trumps Shared Preference in Five-Year-Olds’ Resource Allocation, Social Preference, and Social Evaluation

This study investigated five-year-olds’ priority between shared preference and group membership in resource allocation, social preference, and social evaluation. Using a forced-choice resource allocation task and a friend choice task, we first demonstrate that five-year-old children distribute more resources to and prefer a character who shares a preference with them when compared to a character who has a different preference. Then, we pitted the shared preference against group membership to investigate children’s priority. Children prioritized group membership over shared preference, allotting more resources to and showing more preference toward characters in the same group who did not share their preferences than those from a different group who shared their preferences. Lastly, children evaluated resource allocation and social preference in others that prioritized group membership or shared preference. Children regarded prioritization of group membership more positively than prioritization of shared preference from the perspective of a third person. The results suggest that children by five years of age consider group membership as of greater importance than shared preference not only in their own resource allocation and social preference, but also in their evaluation of others’ resource allocation and liking.

Perceived Value Similarity With Important Others: Well-Being Implications for Emerging Adults

Emerging adults establish, question, and reestablish their values within the most diverse social contexts. Every social context privileges expressing certain values and/or punishes expressing conflicting ones. This makes a similarity between one's own values and those preferred in one's life contexts psychologically desirable (person-environment fit). This study focuses on the similarity of individuals' values with the perceived values of important others from five immediate social contexts, namely, family, friends, intimate partner, study group, and work group, and their relationship with life satisfaction. The sample consisted of emerging adults from Serbia interacting with the five mentioned contexts (N = 479). A mobile app with a game-like survey was launched to collect the data. The data indicated a positive association between life satisfaction and perceived value similarity with one's family and with one's intimate partner. Value similarity with friends and study and work colleagues emerged as insignificant. Identity centrality and the general importance of the immediate social contexts were studied as possible moderators. Identity centrality showed no moderation effect, whereas general importance of the intimate partner did: High importance of the intimate partner decreased the positive effect of value similarity on well-being.

The entitativity underlying meetings: Meetings as key in the lifecycle of effective workgroups

As more employees work in different locations, meetings become the primary opportunity for workgroup interactions. We explore how workgroup entitativity develops within successful meetings and grounds positive employee and group outcomes between meetings. Social identity theory and self-categorization processes explain how entitativity develops during meetings and activates workgroup identification between meetings. Further, construal level theory, which establishes that physical and psychological distance are positively related, affects entitativity and social identity for dispersed and hybrid workgroups. We propose that entitativity develops in meetings through interactions, co-presence, leader behavior, and meeting size. Between meetings, the frequency of self-categorization into a workgroup identity maintains and even increases workgroup entitativity. Further, task interdependence, informal interactions, and time between meetings affects frequency of self-categorization and, thus, employees’ workgroup entitativity between meetings. We conclude that meetings serve as the primary formal occasion in which workgroup entitativity can be maintained or repaired for optimal workgroup performance. Plain Language Summary Successful meetings lead to productive workgroups but we do not know why or now. We suggest that entitativity (a person's perception of a “group”) develops during successful meetings and explains productive workgroups. Specifically, when people start to work, they can either think of their group or themselves. If they think about their group, a process follows such that the employee comes under the influence of all of the positive characteristics of their group. Because successful meetings influence how people think about their group, entitativity explains successful groups.

Differentiating Between Belief-Indicative and Status-Indicative Groups Improves Predictions of Intergroup Attitudes

Ingroup bias is often treated as the default outcome of intergroup comparisons. We argue that the mechanisms of impression formation depend on what information people infer from groups. We differentiate between belief-indicative groups that are more informative of beliefs and affect attitudes through ingroup bias and status-indicative groups that are more informative of status and affect attitudes through a preference for higher status. In a cross-cultural factorial experiment (N_total = 1,281), we demonstrate that when information about targets' multiple group memberships is available, belief-indicative groups affect attitudes via ingroup bias, whereas status-indicative groups-via preference for higher status. These effects were moderated by social-structural context. In two follow-up studies (N_total = 451), we develop and validate a measure of belief- and status-indicativeness (BISI) of groups. BISI showed expected correlations with related constructs of entitativity and essentialism. Belief-indicativeness of groups was a better predictor of ingroup bias than entitativity and essentialism.

You Are Not Alone!

Abstract. Experiencing ostracism is a painful situation that can urge a desire to restore social bonds. However, few studies have investigated the conditions under which it leads to ingroup identification. In three studies using minimal groups ( N = 611), we have investigated the consequences of coexperiencing ostracism for group identification and well-being. In Study 1a and 1b ( N = 171; N = 211), the results showed that sharing a common experience of ostracism with an ingroup member increases ingroup identification but does not improve psychological needs during the ostracism experience. In Study 2 ( N = 230), we replicated our results on identification and showed that sharing ostracism fosters psychological closeness with the partner ostracized but does not moderate need recovery.

Social capital, identification and support: Scope for integration

Social relationships are important predictors of a range of individual outcomes, such as wellbeing and health. These social relationships are conceptualised in different ways, such as (inter-personal) forms of social support, identification with groups, or social capital. What is the overlap among these concepts and in what ways do they differ? The present work aims to clarify this with empirical evidence from two panel studies (N = 3934; N = 2912). The studies include central measures of social relationships (group identification, group membership, social support and social capital). Empirical differences and overlap were studied by evaluating the factor structure of the data with both confirmatory factor analyses and bi-factor analyses. Results showed that the different concepts had a large amount of empirical overlap (together accounting for over 60% of common variance). Surprisingly, results also revealed that subcomponents were identifiable based on who they target and not based on their conceptualisation. For example, items about identification with neighbourhood factored together with support items from the neighbourhood, and not with other identification items. Accordingly, we conclude that in addition to a general factor, it is possible to meaningfully distinguish components of social relations based on which group is targeted by the items (e.g. neighbourhood or family and friends). For future research on the relationship between social relations and health, the present measures are unlikely to be sufficiently precise to disentangle whether health effects are caused by identification, support or capital. Differences between targets appear to be more important than differences between these concepts for understanding the relationship between social relations and health and wellbeing.

Tell Me Where You Live… How the Perceived Entitativity of Neighborhoods Determines the Formation of Impressions About Their Residents

The studies presented here apply the concept of entitativity in order to understand how belonging to a particular geographical area - neighborhood - can determine the way others organize information and form impressions about area's residents. In order to achieve this objective, three studies were carried out. The first study aims to verify if a neighborhood varies in terms of perceived entitativity, and identify the physical and social characteristics of the neighborhoods that are more strongly associated with the perception of entitativity. The Study 2 and 3 used an experimental paradigm to explore how people's perceptions of neighborhoods' entitativity influenced their impressions of residents. To activate stereotypes, Study 2 used the name of real neighborhoods, and Study 3 employed only a set of pictures of unknown neighborhoods. The results show that the neighborhoods vary significantly with the regard to the perception of entitativity, and a set of physical attributes of place were strongly related with entitativity. The results showed that, independent of stimuli, the neighborhoods perceived as highly entitative, the supposed residents were subject to more extreme and quicker trait judgments, supported by greater confidence on the part of perceivers. Study 3 also reported that in highly entitative neighborhoods, the perceivers transferred more traits from the group to individual members. These results provide strong evidence that physical structure of neighborhoods imply different entitatity judgments that influences the way in which residents are perceived.

Speed Dating with Voice User Interfaces: Understanding How Families Interact and Perceive Voice User Interfaces in a Group Setting

As voice-user interfaces (VUIs), such as smart speakers like Amazon Alexa or social robots like Jibo, enter multi-user environments like our homes, it is critical to understand how group members perceive and interact with these devices. VUIs engage socially with users, leveraging multi-modal cues including speech, graphics, expressive sounds, and movement. The combination of these cues can affect how users perceive and interact with these devices. Through a set of three elicitation studies, we explore family interactions (N = 34 families, 92 participants, ages 4–69) with three commercially available VUIs with varying levels of social embodiment. The motivation for these three studies began when researchers noticed that families interacted differently with three agents when familiarizing themselves with the agents and, therefore, we sought to further investigate this trend in three subsequent studies designed as a conceptional replication study. Each study included three activities to examine participants’ interactions with and perceptions of the three VUIS in each study, including an agent exploration activity, perceived personality activity, and user experience ranking activity. Consistent for each study, participants interacted significantly more with an agent with a higher degree of social embodiment, i.e., a social robot such as Jibo, and perceived the agent as more trustworthy, having higher emotional engagement, and having higher companionship. There were some nuances in interaction and perception with different brands and types of smart speakers, i.e., Google Home versus Amazon Echo, or Amazon Show versus Amazon Echo Spot between the studies. In the last study, a behavioral analysis was conducted to investigate interactions between family members and with the VUIs, revealing that participants interacted more with the social robot and interacted more with their family members around the interactions with the social robot. This paper explores these findings and elaborates upon how these findings can direct future VUI development for group settings, especially in familial settings.

Person Perception, Meet People Perception: Exploring the Social Vision of Groups

Groups, teams, and collectives-people-are incredibly important to human behavior. People live in families, work in teams, and celebrate and mourn together in groups. Despite the huge variety of human group activity and its fundamental importance to human life, social-psychological research on person perception has overwhelmingly focused on its namesake, the person, rather than expanding to consider people perception. By looking to two unexpected partners, the vision sciences and organization behavior, we find emerging work that presents a path forward, building a foundation for understanding how people perceive other people. And yet this nascent field is missing critical insights that scholars of social vision might offer: specifically, for example, the chance to connect perception to behavior through the mediators of cognition and motivational processes. Here, we review emerging work across the vision and social sciences to extract core principles of people perception: efficiency, capacity, and complexity. We then consider complexity in more detail, focusing on how people perception modifies person-perception processes and enables the perception of group emergent properties as well as group dynamics. Finally, we use these principles to discuss findings and outline areas fruitful for future work. We hope that fellow scholars take up this people-perception call.

Together We can Figure It out: Groups Find Hospitality Robots Easier to Use and Interact With Them More than Individuals

As robots are becoming more prevalent and entering hospitality settings, understanding how different configurations of individuals and groups interact with them becomes increasingly important for catering to various people. This is especially important because group dynamics can affect people's perceptions of situations and behavior in them. We present research examining how individuals and groups interact with and accept a humanoid robot greeter at a real-world café (Study 1) and in an online study (Study 2). In each study, we separately examine interactions of individuals, groups that participants formed after they arrived at the café (new-formed groups), and groups that participants arrived with at the café (pre-formed groups). Results support prior findings that groups are more likely to interact with a public robot than individuals (Study 1). We also report novel findings that new-formed groups interacted more with the robot than pre-formed groups (Study 1). We link this with groups perceiving the robot as more positive and easier to use (Study 2). Future research should examine perceptions of the robot immediately after interaction and in different hospitality contexts.

“That’s Just a Part of Growing Up”: A Study of Non-formal Educators’ Lay Theories of Adolescence

This instrumental case study explored non-formal educators’ lay theories of adolescence using the case of the Boy Scouts of America’s Scouts BSA program, a co-ed program serving youth between the ages of 11 and 17. We conducted an iterative analysis of 110 structured interviews with Scouts BSA adult volunteer leaders who served as scoutmasters or assistant scoutmasters. Results indicated that participants discussed adolescence in terms of youth characteristics as well as processes youth underwent during their adolescent years. These adults sometimes viewed adolescence as idiosyncratic, identifying differences in learning, behavior, and family situations among youth, particularly those whom they had identified as exhibiting specific challenges like autism. The results also illustrated relationships between the program and lay theories of adolescence. Namely, core Scouts BSA programmatic structures and expectations such as operating the patrol/troop method hierarchies, building leadership skills, camping or outdoor activities, and including all youth in activities influence participants’ own views of adolescence, including their views of adolescence as a time to cultivate maturity and independence. The study concludes with a brief discussion of results and limitations of the study, including recommendations for training and additional research.

Do it for others! The role of family and national group social belongingness in engaging with COVID-19 preventive health behaviors

COVID-19 is an unprecedented threat and an effective response requires a collective effort: engagement in preventive health behaviors, even from people at low risk. Previous research demonstrates that belongingness to social groups can promote prosocial, preventive health behaviors. The current research tests the effects of belongingness to two types of groups, intimate (family) and social category (nation), on intentions to comply with preventive health behaviors and reasons for these behaviors. We conducted three studies using French participants at low risk of grave effects from COVID-19 (total N = 875). In Study 1, across three time periods, belongingness was correlated with greater intentions to comply with preventive behaviors when these behaviors were not enforced by law. In Study 2, we experimentally manipulated threat to belongingness (vs. no threat). When belongingness was threatened, participants were less concerned with protecting vulnerable people. Closeness to family predicted preventive behavior intentions and both self-centered and prosocial reasons for these behaviors, regardless of condition. National identification buffered the negative effects of the threat to belongingness condition on preventive behavior intentions. In Study 3, we experimentally primed thoughts of belongingness to family vs. nation vs. control condition. We found greater intentions to engage in preventive behaviors and greater concern with protecting oneself and close relatives in the family condition. In summary, belongingness to one's family promotes preventive behavior intentions and the reasons given are to protect both oneself and others. Self-reported (but not primed) national identification can be related to prevention behavior intentions under certain conditions.

How Group Perception Affects What People Share and How People Feel: The Role of Entitativity and Epistemic Trust in the "Saying-Is-Believing" Effect

This research investigated how interpersonal communication with a large audience can influence communicators' attitudes. Research on the saying-is-believing effect has shown that when an individual's attitude is perceived in advance by a communicator, the communicator tunes the message to the person, which biases the communicator's attitude toward the person's attitude. In this study, we examined the conditions under which audience tuning and attitude bias can occur with audiences containing more than one individual. We manipulated communicators' perceived group entity for a large audience and the audience's prior attitudinal valence and measured the audience's epistemic trust. The results showed that communicators tuned their messages to the audience's attitude when they perceived group entitativity and epistemic trust. Furthermore, tuning the message to the audience was found to bias communicators' subsequent impressions of the topic in a direction closer to the audience's attitude. These results suggest that perceiving a large audience as a group influences the subsequent impressions of electronic word-of-mouth product or service communicators.

A Social-Identity Theory of Information-Access Regulation (SITIAR): Understanding the Psychology of Sharing and Withholding

Secrecy, privacy, confidentiality, concealment, disclosure, and gossip all involve sharing and withholding access to information. However, existing theories do not account for the fundamental similarity between these concepts. Accordingly, it is unclear when sharing and withholding access to information will have positive or negative effects and why these effects might occur. We argue that these problems can be addressed by conceptualizing these phenomena more broadly as different kinds of information-access regulation. Furthermore, we outline a social-identity theory of information-access regulation (SITIAR) that proposes that information-access regulation shapes shared social identity, explaining why people who have access to information feel a sense of togetherness with others who have the same access and a sense of separation from those who do not. This theoretical framework unifies diverse findings across disparate lines of research and generates a number of novel predictions about how information-access regulation affects individuals and groups.

Human-Robot Interaction in Groups: Methodological and Research Practices

Understanding the behavioral dynamics that underline human-robot interactions in groups remains one of the core challenges in social robotics research. However, despite a growing interest in this topic, there is still a lack of established and validated measures that allow researchers to analyze human-robot interactions in group scenarios; and very few that have been developed and tested specifically for research conducted in-the-wild. This is a problem because it hinders the development of general models of human-robot interaction, and makes the comprehension of the inner workings of the relational dynamics between humans and robots, in group contexts, significantly more difficult. In this paper, we aim to provide a reflection on the current state of research on human-robot interaction in small groups, as well as to outline directions for future research with an emphasis on methodological and transversal issues.

Biased evaluations emerge from inferring hidden causes

How do we evaluate a group of people after a few negative experiences with some members but mostly positive experiences otherwise? How do rare experiences influence our overall impression? We show that rare events may be overweighted due to normative inference of the hidden causes that are believed to generate the observed events. We propose a Bayesian inference model that organizes environmental statistics by combining similar events and separating outlying observations. Relying on the model's inferred latent causes for group evaluation overweights rare or variable events. We tested the model's predictions in eight experiments where participants observed a sequence of social or non-social behaviours and estimated their average. As predicted, estimates were biased toward sparse events when estimating after seeing all observations, but not when tracking a summary value as observations accrued. Our results suggest that biases in evaluation may arise from inferring the hidden causes of group members' behaviours.

Group-specific contact and sense of connectedness during the COVID-19 pandemic and its associations with psychological well-being, perceived stress, and work-life balance

Theories of social cure, sense of community, and social identity suggest that feelings of connectedness affect how we have coped with the COVID‐19 pandemic. Although people can feel connected to a variety of different groups, such as their family, friends, co‐workers, neighbours, nation, or all humanity, previous research has focused on connectedness to only a subset of these groups. To examine the relative importance of connectedness to and contact with specific groups for well‐being, stress, and work‐life balance during the pandemic, we conducted a longitudinal experience sampling study (N = 578) during the first 8 weeks of the Spring 2020 COVID‐19 lockdown in Germany. Feeling connected to family members most strongly predicted psychological well‐being (positively) and perceived stress (negatively) during the lockdown, followed by a sense of connectedness with friends and neighbours. Sense of connectedness to other groups did not predict well‐being, stress, or work‐life balance when controlling for the respective other groups. Hence, it not only matters whether or not a person feels connected to a group but also to which specific group he or she feels connected.

Beneficiaries or Charity: The Influence of the Source of Acknowledgments

This study employs entitativity theory to explore how acknowledgment letters from various thankers (e.g., a group of beneficiaries, a charity) influence donors' subsequent donation desires. This empirical research consists of three experiments. Study 1 reveals that an acknowledgment letter from a group of beneficiaries elicits more favorable subsequent donation desires than an acknowledgment letter from a charity. To shed light on the psychological mechanism underlying this effect, Study 2 shows that a categorical appellation can enhance the effects of an acknowledgment letter sent by a charity. Study 3 reveals that the influence of the thanker is stronger under no external pressure conditions (than under external pressure). The current study offers insightful suggestions for the management and administration of charities.

Sweating the big stuff: Arousal and stress as functions of self-uncertainty and identification

Groups serve a variety of crucial functions, one of which is the provision of an identity and belief system that impart self-referent information, thereby reducing self-uncertainty. Entitative groups are more attractive for highly uncertain participants seeking groups for identification and self-uncertainty reduction than less entitative groups. The purpose of the current study was to explore how self-uncertainty impacts physiological arousal and stress responses. Using a mixed-methods design (N = 123), we found that self-uncertainty increased physiological arousal (measured via skin-conductance level) and stress responses (measured via heart rate). Furthermore, we found that uncertainty-activated physiological arousal and stress responses were decreased through identification with a high entitativity group. Our findings expand upon uncertainty identity theory by identifying physiological mechanisms that motivate uncertainty reduction.

Coaching for a Sustainability Transition: Empowering Student-Led Sustainability Initiatives by Developing Skills, Group Identification, and Efficacy Beliefs

Self-, collective, and participative efficacy are strong predictors of sustainability action. Yet, few studies have investigated the dynamics and variability of efficacy beliefs. In this transdisciplinary study, we tested such factors in the context of a peer-to-peer coaching program for sustainability volunteers, embedded in a structured-educational context. Over weekends, 2 qualified coaches trained 36 German bottom-up, student-led sustainability initiatives. These coaches instructed students in team building, envisioning, project planning, and on-campus sustainability practice. While 317 participants completed our pre-questionnaire, N = 165 completed both the pre- and post-questionnaire. As hypothesized, after having participated in the coaching weekend, action skills, collaboration skills, group identification, and self-, collective, and participative efficacy all increased. The latter of these increased, to our knowledge, for the first time in environmental psychology research. Group identification and having a vision emerged as important efficacy predictors, and participative efficacy beliefs in turn predicted volunteering. Moreover, we took initial steps in investigating the interaction of psychological and structural factors from a multilevel perspective. Our analyses revealed that efficacy beliefs on the individual level were higher when the university had a green office and when the student initiative was at a small university. We conclude by proposing an empowerment model for sustainability volunteers and by discussing the practical implications of our findings.

Towards a computational theory of social groups: A finite set of cognitive primitives for representing any and all social groups in the context of conflict

We don't yet have adequate theories of what the human mind is representing when it represents a social group. Worse still, many people think we do. This mistaken belief is a consequence of the state of play: Until now, researchers have relied on their own intuitions to link up the concept social group on the one hand, and the results of particular studies or models on the other. While necessary, this reliance on intuition has been purchased at considerable cost. When looked at soberly, existing theories of social groups are either (i) literal, but not remotely adequate (such as models built atop economic games), or (ii) simply metaphorical (typically a subsumption or containment metaphor). Intuition is filling in the gaps of an explicit theory. This paper presents a computational theory of what, literally, a group representation is in the context of conflict: it is the assignment of agents to specific roles within a small number of triadic interaction types. This "mental definition" of a group paves the way for a computational theory of social groups-in that it provides a theory of what exactly the information-processing problem of representing and reasoning about a group is. For psychologists, this paper offers a different way to conceptualize and study groups, and suggests that a non-tautological definition of a social group is possible. For cognitive scientists, this paper provides a computational benchmark against which natural and artificial intelligences can be held.

Perceived Suicide Stigma and Associated Factors in Chinese College Students: Translation and Validation of the Stigma of Suicide Attempt Scale and the Stigma of Suicide and Suicide Survivors Scale

This study aims to translate and validate two perceived suicide stigma scales, including the Stigma of Suicide Attempt Scale (STOSA) and the Stigma of Suicide and Suicide Survivor Scale (STOSASS) into Chinese language, examining the factor structure, and assessing the correlation between suicide stigma and a series of variables. After translating and back translating the STOSA and STOSASS, an online survey was administrated to 412 college students in China. These two scales were tested for their dimensionality in a series of confirmatory factor analyses. A series of regression analyses were conducted to examine the factors that are associated with perceived and public suicide stigma, including demographics, psychological distress, suicidality, suicide exposure, and perceived entitativity of suicide ideators, decedents, and survivors. The results showed that the two translated scales, STOSA and STOSASS, were reliable (Cronbach’s α = 0.79~0.83) and valid in Chinese contexts and it can be treated as unidimensional scales. Suicidality, exposure to suicide, and perceived entitativity of suicide-related persons were significantly associated with higher endorsement of public suicide stigma (SOSS Stigma, p < 0.03), but not perceived stigma (STOSA, STOSASS). Higher levels of psychological distress were associated with both higher perceived and public suicide stigma (p < 0.05).

Effects of Intergroup Vicarious Ostracism on Individual Prejudicial Attributions and Aggressive Intentions

This study explores the effects of intergroup vicarious ostracism on individual prejudicial attributions and aggressive intentions. It takes Tibetan and Hui college students in northwestern China as participants. Study 1 and Study 2 explore the difference in observers' prejudicial attributions and aggressive intentions, respectively, when the group members who experienced ostracism (Tibetan college students) observed an in-group member being ostracized by out-group members versus an in-group member being ostracized by in-group members. Results show that those in-group participants, i.e., the Tibetan college students, who observed an in-group member being ostracized by out-group members, showed much higher prejudicial attributions, F(1, 106) = 19.65, p < .001, ηp2 = .156, and aggressive intentions, F(1, 108) = 10.51, p = .002, ηp2 = .089, toward ostracizers than those who observed an in-group member being ostracized by in-group members. In Study 3, Hui college students were recruited as participants to further test the results of Study 1 and Study 2. In addition, we also found that under the out-group conditions, prejudicial attribution mediates the effects of inclusionary status on aggressive intentions (95% bias-corrected confidence interval did not include zero; 95% CI [0.15, 0.69]). This study shows that ostracizers' group membership could affect observers' prejudicial attributions and their aggressive intentions toward the ostracizers.

Meeting multiple same-donor offspring: psychosocial challenges

Debates regarding donor-conceived people's rights to genetic information have caused some jurisdictions to abolish donor anonymity. Moreover, voluntary services have been established whose primary focus is providing possibilities to find information about the donor. A less discussed consequence is that donor-conceived people also find information about donor half-siblings: people conceived through the same donor. In the recent climate of openness and online DNA tests, there is an increased chance of finding multiple donor half-siblings. This study explored how donor-conceived people experience meeting multiple same-donor offspring in a group setting. Second, the study investigated donor-conceived people's need for support when meeting multiple donor half-siblings. A qualitative approach was used. Nineteen donor-conceived offspring who participated in donor half-sibling network meetings were interviewed. Using a grounded theory approach three themes were identified regarding group aspects: (i) defining group membership; (ii) regulating closeness and distance; and (iii) managing group dynamics. Professional support needs in relation to these themes were also analysed. While establishing relationships between donor half-siblings are viewed as generally more beneficial than connecting with a donor, this study showed that these new relationships also come with their challenges, and counselling may need to be refined towards a more specific same donor-offspring relationships' framework.

How People Evaluate Anti-Corona Measures for Their Social Spheres: Attitude, Subjective Norm, and Perceived Behavioral Control

Restrictions on outdoor activities, tips for hygiene, and tips for mental health are among the most common initiatives to counter the COVID-19 pandemic. These measures aim to protect people's health and, at the same time, impact their social lives. So far, it is little known how people evaluate those anti-Corona measures with regard to their social spheres (close family, wider family and friends, colleagues, and society). Furthermore, it is plausible that the subjective evaluation of attitudinal objects and especially severe events, like the COVID-19 pandemic and the related counter-measures, is multidimensional. Against this background, we combine the social spheres with the elements of the Theory of Planned Behavior. On the methodological basis of the Means-End Theory of Complex Cognitive Structures, we determine the perceived relevance and quality of the attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, and social spheres regarding anti-Corona measures. Furthermore, the applied methodology allows the deduction of norm strategies to define the priority of securing or increasing the effectiveness of elements of anti-Corona measures. Based on the answers of 663 participants, we found that the protection from COVID-19 and its consequences (attitude) are more important to people than the practicability of anti-Corona measures in their social lives (perceived behavioral control), which, again, has a higher subjective relevance than the willingness to fulfill the expectations of others (subjective norm). Additionally, people distinguish between their close family (higher subjective relevance) and their other social spheres (lower subjective relevance). The people attribute the highest quality to the tips on hygiene, followed by the restrictions on outdoor activities and the tips for mental health. The protection and practicability of the anti-Corona measures have higher quality ratings than the willingness to fulfill the expectations of others. Based on the norm strategies, policymakers should secure the effectiveness of the current anti-Corona measures with a high priority by focusing on the protection and practicability with regard to close and wider family and friends. Increasing the effectiveness of the protection and practicability of anti-Corona measures in work and society also has a high priority. Focusing on the subjective norm should be of lower priority.

When peer norms work? Coherent groups facilitate normative influences on cyber aggression

Due to the impersonal and anonymous nature of cyberspace, past work underscored the pivotal role of social influence processes in cyberbullying among adolescents. However, there was also evidence revealing the weak influences that some referent groups yield on youth. The current study argues that the strength of normative influences on cyberbullying depends on the properties of the referent groups. In the school context, we examined whether class entitativity-the extent to which a class is a unified and coherent group, rather than a mere aggregation of students-moderated the relationship between class norms and cyberbullying. A total of 474 adolescent students responded to measures of descriptive and injunctive class norms about cyberbullying, perceived class entitativity, and cyberbullying. The results indicated that pro-cyberbullying descriptive and injunctive class norms were positively correlated with cyber aggression. Most importantly, higher levels of pro-cyberbullying class norms predicted increases in cyber aggression when students perceived their classes as highly entitative. In contrast, this effect was not significant when students perceived their classes having low entitativity. These findings promote an understanding of how peer norms work and provide an alternative strategy for interventions into cyber aggression in schools.