What you bring to the table
Kostadin Kushlev & Jason Proulx
PLoS ONE, September 2016
Abstract:
In an age already saturated with information, the ongoing revolution in mobile computing has expanded the realm of immediate information access far beyond our homes and offices. In addition to changing where people can access information, mobile computing has changed what information people access - from finding specific directions to a restaurant to exploring nearby businesses when on the go. Does this ability to instantly gratify our information needs anytime and anywhere have any bearing on how much we trust those around us - from neighbors to strangers? Using data from a large nationally representative survey (World Values Survey: Wave 6), we found that the more people relied on their mobile phones for information, the less they trusted strangers, neighbors and people from other religions and nationalities. In contrast, obtaining information through any other method - including TV, radio, newspapers, and even the Internet more broadly - predicted higher trust in those groups. Mobile information had no bearing on how much people trusted close others, such as their family. Although causality cannot be inferred, these findings provide an intriguing first glimpse into the possible unforeseen costs of convenient information access for the social lubricant of society - our sense of trust in one another.
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Novel Rituals Inculcate Intergroup Bias: Evidence from the Trust Game and Neurophysiology
Nicholas Hobson et al.
Harvard Working Paper, September 2016
Abstract:
Long-established rituals in pre-existing cultural groups have been linked to the cultural evolution of large-scale group cooperation. Here we show the causal effect of novel rituals - arbitrary hand and body gestures enacted in a stereotypical and repeated fashion - on the development of intergroup bias in newly formed groups. In four studies, participants practiced novel rituals at home for one week (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) or once in the lab (Experiment 3), and then were divided into minimal ingroups and outgroups in the laboratory. Behavioral and neurophysiological results revealed that novel rituals are capable of generating intergroup bias, but only when certain psychological features are present: in order to inculcate intergroup bias, novel rituals must be sufficiently elaborate and repeated over time. Together, our results suggest psychological consequences of novel rituals: they promote ingroup cohesion, but at the expense of the outgroup.
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Dying for charisma: Leaders' inspirational appeal increases post-mortem
Niklas Steffens et al.
Leadership Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the present research, we shed light on the nature and origins of charisma by examining changes in a person's perceived charisma that follow their death. We propose that death is an event that will strengthen the connection between the leader and the group they belong to, which in turn will increase perceptions of leaders' charisma. In Study 1, results from an experimental study show that a scientist who is believed to be dead is regarded as more charismatic than the same scientist believed to be alive. Moreover, this effect was accounted for by people's perceptions that the dead scientist's fate is more strongly connected with the fate of the groups that they represent. In Study 2, a large-scale archival analysis of Heads of States who died in office in the 21st century shows that the proportion of published news items about Heads of State that include references to charisma increases significantly after their death. These results suggest that charisma is, at least in part, a social inference that increases after death. Moreover, they suggest that social influence and inspiration can be understood as products of people's capacity to embody valued social groups.
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Family Counts: Deciding When to Murder Among the Icelandic Vikings
Markel Palmstierna et al.
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
In small scale societies, lethal attacks on another individual usually invite revenge by the victim's family. We might expect those who perpetrate such attacks to do so only when their own support network (mainly family) is larger than that of the potential victim so as to minimise the risk of retaliation. Using data from Icelandic family sagas, we show that this prediction holds whether we consider biological kin or affinal kin (in-laws): on average, killers had twice as many relatives as their victims. These findings reinforce the importance of kin as a source of implicit protection even when they are not physically present. The results also support Hughes' (1988) claim that affines are biological kin because of the shared genetic interests they have in the offspring generation.
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Influence of Indirect Information on Interpersonal Trust Despite Direct Information
Pareezad Zarolia, Max Weisbuch & Kateri McRae
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Trust is integral to successful relationships. The development of trust stems from how one person treats others, and there are multiple ways to learn about someone's trust-relevant behavior. The present research captures the development of trust to examine if trust-relevant impressions and behavior are influenced by indirect behavioral information (i.e., descriptions of how a person treated another individual) - even in the presence of substantial direct behavioral information (i.e., self-relevant, first-hand experience with a person). Participants had repeated interpersonal exchanges with a partner who was trustworthy or untrustworthy with participants' money. The present studies vary the frequency with which (Studies 1 & 2), the order in which (Study 3) and the number of people for whom (Study 4) indirect information (i.e., brief vignettes describing trustworthy or untrustworthy behavior) were presented. As predicted, across 4 studies, we observed a robust effect of indirect-information despite the presence of substantial direct information. Even after dozens of interactions in which a partner betrayed (or not), a brief behavioral description of a partner influenced participants' willingness to actually trust the partner with money, memory-based estimates of partner-behavior, and impressions of the partner. These effects were observed even though participants were also sensitive to partners' actual trust behavior, and even when indirect behavioral descriptions were only presented a single time. Impressions were identified as a strong candidate mechanism for the effect of indirect-information on behavior. We discuss implications of the persistence of indirect information for impression formation, relationship development, and future studies of trust.
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Smadar Cohen-Chen, Richard Crisp & Eran Halperin
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
In conflicts, political attitudes are based to some extent on the perception of the out-group as sharing the goal of peace and supporting steps to achieve it. However, intractable conflicts are characterized by inconsistent and negative interactions, which prevent clear messages of out-group support. This problem calls for alternative ways to convey support between groups in conflict. One such method is emotional expressions. The current research tested whether, in the absence of out-group support for peace, observing expressions of out-group hope induces conciliatory attitudes. Results from two experimental studies, conducted within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, revealed support for this hypothesis. Expressions of Palestinian hope induced acceptance of a peace agreement through Israeli hope and positive perceptions of the proposal when out-group support expressions were low. Findings demonstrate the importance of hope as a means of conveying information within processes of conflict resolution, overriding messages of low out-group support for peace.
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Ilanit SimanTov-Nachlieli, Nurit Shnabel & Samer Halabi
Journal of Social Issues, September 2016, Pages 566-583
Abstract:
Based on recent extensions of the needs-based model of reconciliation, we argue that in conflicts characterized by mutual transgressions, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, group members prioritize their agency-related over morality-related needs. Optimistically, however, two studies conducted among Israeli Jews (Study 1) and West Bank Palestinians (Study 2) found that addressing group members' pressing need for agency by affirming their in-group's strength, competence, and self-determination brought their moral considerations to the fore, leading to stronger prosocial tendencies across group boundaries. These studies suggest that group members need to feel secure and agentic in order to allow their otherwise unprioritized moral needs to come into play. Practically, our insights regarding the positive effects of agency affirmation can be used in the planning of interventions by dialog group facilitators, mediators, or group leaders who wish to encourage members to relinquish some power in order to exhibit greater morality toward their out-group.
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In-group defense, out-group aggression, and coordination failures in intergroup conflict
Carsten De Dreu et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 20 September 2016, Pages 10524-10529
Abstract:
Intergroup conflict persists when and because individuals make costly contributions to their group's fighting capacity, but how groups organize contributions into effective collective action remains poorly understood. Here we distinguish between contributions aimed at subordinating out-groups (out-group aggression) from those aimed at defending the in-group against possible out-group aggression (in-group defense). We conducted two experiments in which three-person aggressor groups confronted three-person defender groups in a multiround contest game (n = 276; 92 aggressor-defender contests). Individuals received an endowment from which they could contribute to their group's fighting capacity. Contributions were always wasted, but when the aggressor group's fighting capacity exceeded that of the defender group, the aggressor group acquired the defender group's remaining resources (otherwise, individuals on both sides were left with the remainders of their endowment). In-group defense appeared stronger and better coordinated than out-group aggression, and defender groups survived roughly 70% of the attacks. This low success rate for aggressor groups mirrored that of group-hunting predators such as wolves and chimpanzees (n = 1,382 cases), hostile takeovers in industry (n = 1,637 cases), and interstate conflicts (n = 2,586). Furthermore, whereas peer punishment increased out-group aggression more than in-group defense without affecting success rates (Exp. 1), sequential (vs. simultaneous) decision-making increased coordination of collective action for out-group aggression, doubling the aggressor's success rate (Exp. 2). The relatively high success rate of in-group defense suggests evolutionary and cultural pressures may have favored capacities for cooperation and coordination when the group goal is to defend, rather than to expand, dominate, and exploit.
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Corinne Bendersky & Nicholas Hays
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Status conflicts, conflicts about members' relative positions in a team's status hierarchy, generally harm group performance. We integrate research on status conflicts and social information processing and find in two longitudinal survey studies that the disruptive effects of status conflicts depend on the extent to which members agree about the group's status hierarchy. Specifically, status conflicts in teams with high status agreement disrupt team performance by producing lower status agreement after the conflict. Status conflicts that occur in teams with low status agreement, however, benefit performance by helping members clarify the hierarchy, leading to higher subsequent status agreement. In a third study, we examine how status conflict and status agreement interactively impact teams' use of task-relevant cues to assign status. By contextualizing status conflicts in terms of the teams' status agreement, we identify conditions in which the dysfunctional effects of status conflicts counterintuitively enhance team performance.
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Young Children See a Single Action and Infer a Social Norm: Promiscuous Normativity in 3-Year-Olds
Marco Schmidt et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Human social life depends heavily on social norms that prescribe and proscribe specific actions. Typically, young children learn social norms from adult instruction. In the work reported here, we showed that this is not the whole story: Three-year-old children are promiscuous normativists. In other words, they spontaneously inferred the presence of social norms even when an adult had done nothing to indicate such a norm in either language or behavior. And children of this age even went so far as to enforce these self-inferred norms when third parties "broke" them. These results suggest that children do not just passively acquire social norms from adult behavior and instruction; rather, they have a natural and proactive tendency to go from "is" to "ought." That is, children go from observed actions to prescribed actions and do not perceive them simply as guidelines for their own behavior but rather as objective normative rules applying to everyone equally.