Moral Expansiveness Around the World: The Role of Societal Factors Across 36 Countries

What are the things that we think matter morally, and how do societal factors influence this? To date, research has explored several individual-level and historical factors that influence the size of our ‘moral circles.' There has, however, been less attention focused on which societal factors play a role. We present the first multi-national exploration of moral expansiveness—that is, the size of people’s moral circles across countries. We found low generalized trust, greater perceptions of a breakdown in the social fabric of society, and greater perceived economic inequality were associated with smaller moral circles. Generalized trust also helped explain the effects of perceived inequality on lower levels of moral inclusiveness. Other inequality indicators (i.e., Gini coefficients) were, however, unrelated to moral expansiveness. These findings suggest that societal factors, especially those associated with generalized trust, may influence the size of our moral circles.

Subjective status and perceived legitimacy across countries

The relationships between subjective status and perceived legitimacy are important for understanding the extent to which people with low status are complicit in their oppression. We use novel data from 66 samples and 30 countries (N = 12,788) and find that people with higher status see the social system as more legitimate than those with lower status, but there is variation across people and countries. The association between subjective status and perceived legitimacy was never negative at any levels of eight moderator variables, although the positive association was sometimes reduced. Although not always consistent with hypotheses, group identification, self-esteem, and beliefs in social mobility were all associated with perceived legitimacy among people who have low subjective status. These findings enrich our understanding of the relationship between social status and legitimacy.

Measurement invariance of the moral vitalism scale across 28 cultural groups

Moral vitalism refers to a tendency to view good and evil as actual forces that can influence people and events. The Moral Vitalism Scale had been designed to assess moral vitalism in a brief survey form. Previous studies established the reliability and validity of the scale in US-American and Australian samples. In this study, the cross-cultural comparability of the scale was tested across 28 different cultural groups worldwide through measurement invariance tests. A series of exact invariance tests marginally supported partial metric invariance, however, an approximate invariance approach provided evidence of partial scalar invariance for a 5-item measure. The established level of measurement invariance allows for comparisons of latent means across cultures. We conclude that the brief measure of moral vitalism is invariant across 28 cultures and can be used to estimate levels of moral vitalism with the same precision across very different cultural settings.

Explaining illness with evil: pathogen prevalence fosters moral vitalism

Pathogens represent a significant threat to human health leading to the emergence of strategies designed to help manage their negative impact. We examined how spiritual beliefs developed to explain and predict the devastating effects of pathogens and spread of infectious disease. Analysis of existing data in studies 1 and 2 suggests that moral vitalism (beliefs about spiritual forces of evil) is higher in geographical regions characterized by historical higher levels of pathogens. Furthermore, drawing on a sample of 3140 participants from 28 countries in study 3, we found that historical higher levels of pathogens were associated with stronger endorsement of moral vitalistic beliefs. Furthermore, endorsement of moral vitalistic beliefs statistically mediated the previously reported relationship between pathogen prevalence and conservative ideologies, suggesting these beliefs reinforce behavioural strategies which function to prevent infection. We conclude that moral vitalism may be adaptive: by emphasizing concerns over contagion, it provided an explanatory model that enabled human groups to reduce rates of contagious disease.

Collective Narcissism Predicts Hypersensitivity to In–group Insult and Direct and Indirect Retaliatory Intergroup Hostility

Results of five studies (N = 1596) linked collective narcissism—a belief in in–group exaggerated greatness contingent on external validation—to direct and indirect, retaliatory hostility in response to situations that collective narcissists perceived as insulting to the in–group but which fell well beyond the definition of an insult. In Turkey, collective narcissists responded with schadenfreude to the European economic crisis after feeling humiliated by the Turkish wait to be admitted to the European Union (Study 1). In Portugal, they supported hostile actions towards Germans and rejoiced in the German economic crisis after perceiving Germany's position in the European Union as more important than the position of Portugal (Study 2). In Poland, they supported hostile actions towards the makers of a movie they found offensive to Poland (Studies 3 and 5) and responded with direct and indirect hostility towards a celebrity whose jokes about the Polish government they found offensive (Study 4). Comparisons with self–positivity and in–group positivity indices and predictors of intergroup hostility indicated that collective narcissism is the only systematic predictor of hypersensitivity to in–group insult followed by direct and indirect, retaliatory intergroup hostility. Copyright © 2016 European Association of Personality Psychology

State anxiety impairs attentional control when other sources of control are minimal

Research suggests anxiety impairs attentional control; however, this effect has been unreliable. We argue that anxiety's impairment of attentional control is subtle, and can be obscured by other non-emotional sources of control. We demonstrate this by examining conflict adaptation, an enhancement in attentional control following a trial with high conflict between distracter and target stimuli. Participants completed a Stroop task featuring incongruent (e.g. RED in green font; high-conflict) and control (e.g. +++ in green font; low-conflict) trials. More state-anxious participants showed greater Stroop interference following control trials, but interference was uniformly low following incongruent trials. This suggests state anxiety can impair attention, but other sources of top-down control - such as conflict adaptation - can easily overcome this impairment. This is consistent with recent theories of anxious cognition and shows that anxiety researchers must attend to the dynamics and sources of attentional control.

Looking good or doing good? Motivations for organisational citizenship behaviour in Turkish versus South Korean collectivists

The purpose of this article is to explore potential motivations to perform organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) in collectivistic Turkish and South Korean societies. Although collectivism has been proposed as a predictor of OCB, previous research has not fully explored the possibility that collectivistic individuals' OCB may result from their self-oriented motives (i.e. social desirability concerns) or their future-oriented motives (i.e. long-term orientation concerns). We predicted that OCB stems from social desirability concerns among Turkish collectivists, meaning it is used for maintaining a positive image within the organisation. However, for South Korean collectivists, we predicted that OCB stems from their long-term orientation concerns, meaning it is used to make the organisation better. The results were in line with our predictions, and the findings are discussed in terms of their implications for firms in collectivistic societies.

Predictors of ingroup projection: The roles of superordinate category coherence and complexity

Based on an integration of research on ingroup projection, self-anchoring and social identification, three experiments investigated whether projection of ingroup characteristics to a superordinate category would be moderated by both the perceived complexity (number of defining prototypes) and coherence (structural clarity, organization) of the superordinate category. We predicted that ingroup projection would be prevented by the presence of either a complex or coherent superordinate representation. However, we also predicted that complexity would reduce ingroup projection at the expense of superordinate category identification, while coherence would not. We observed the predicted interaction between superordinate category complexity and coherence in three studies: a complex or coherent superordinate category led to lower levels of projection. However, only complexity of the superordinate category reduced superordinate group identification. These findings clarify and refine our understanding of the conditions under which ingroup projection can be discouraged, and the cognitive mechanisms involved.

The Role of Familiarity Among Group Members in Collaborative Inhibition and Social Contagion

The present study looks at the effects of familiarity among group members on collaborative inhibition, false memory creation, and social contagion. Friend, nonfriend (adhoc) and nominal three-person groups studied categorized wordlists, followed by free recall and recognition tests, including remember/know judgments. Friend and nonfriend group members were asked to engage in collaborative recall, while nominal group members were tested individually. Results showed that collaborative inhibition was evident among friend and nonfriend groups. However, these detrimental effects of collaboration disappeared during recognition judgments. In terms of susceptibility to false memory creation, it was found that friend groups showed higher levels of social contagion and made more know than remember judgments than nonfriend and nominal group members. These findings suggest that friend group members took the veracity of others’ memories for granted and were less able to make clear distinctions between what they did and did not see. The findings are discussed in relation to the lasting effects of collaboration and social pressures on group recall among friend and nonfriend groups.