The state of the natural environment is a topic of increasing concern, with climate change, loss of biodiversity, and diminishing natural resources all posing eminent threats to the well-being of the planet and its inhabitants. Much of this environmental degradation is caused by human behaviour that can be changed. Psychologists have realised their role in understanding and influencing pro-environmental behaviours to help (see Chapter 1). Most psychological research of environmental behaviour has focused on the individual person as the unit of analysis. While this has been helpful, less attention has been given to how group memberships, and the social influences these create, affect environmental behaviour. Because environmental behaviour often occurs within a social context, understanding the social element may be critically important to promoting environmentally sustainable behaviour (see Chapter 2). Using the social identity approach, this research investigates how various aspects of social group membership interact with individual attributes to influence environmental behaviour. Three related strands of research explore this issue (see Chapter 3 for an overview). In Chapter 4, two studies (Studies 1 and 2) examined how group feedback in the form of social comparisons affect individual behaviour. Based on social identity theory, it was predicted that positive social comparisons would lead to more positive behaviour, and less positive comparisons to less positive behaviour, especially among individuals who identified strongly with the target ingroup. Results from both studies found some support for these hypotheses on certain (but not all) behavioural dependent measures, both at the time of manipulation and one week later. This supports the notion that individual social identification strength can moderate behavioural response to group-level feedback on environmental topics. In Chapter 5, Study 3 considered how interaction within groups via discussion might induce group norms about environmental behaviour that over-ride the effects of intergroup comparisons. A design similar to Study 1 was used, with the addition of a small-group discussion following the feedback manipulation. Discussion content was hypothesised to predict environmental behaviour, with the feedback manipulation having less impact than in Study 1. Results found that the more participants discussed environmental behaviours, the more they engaged in them one week later. This effect was independent of pre-existing environmental values, suggesting that the effects of group interaction were not merely a reflection of existing individual orientations. Following the discussion, values were also found to be very strong predictors of behaviour, a result not found in Study 1, suggesting that group interaction not only shapes individual behaviour but also reduces the classic value-action gap. Together, these findings point to the powerful role that intra-group interaction can play in forming norms of environmental behaviour and shaping individual responses. In Chapter 6, two studies (Studies 4 and 5) explored how comparisons within a group over time (i.e., intra-group comparisons) may function differently to comparisons between groups (i.e., inter-group comparisons), which were explored in Chapter 4. Based on the findings in Chapter 4, positive intergroup comparisons were predicted to result in more positive individual intentions, whereas negative intergroup comparisons were expected to result in reduced intentions. With respect to intra-group comparisons, however, the opposite pattern of effects was predicted. The results of Study 4 did not support these hypotheses. However, feedback from participants suggested that the experimental design may have produced reactance. To address this, Study 5 made use of a revised design, and the results of this study indicated support for the hypotheses. Importantly, in addition to negative and positive comparisons having opposing effects depending on whether these were intra- or inter-group, the processes behind these effects also differed. The effects of intra-group comparisons were mediated by shared responsibility whereas the effects of intergroup comparisons were mediated by environmental value centrality. These results are integrated and discussed in Chapter 7. The recurring theme of these results is that group-level feedback can interact with individual-level variables in subtle but powerful ways, leading to differing outcomes of environmental behaviour. These findings highlight the socially imbedded nature of individual environmental actions, and suggest new avenues for theoretical and practical work in the environmental domain. In particular, on the basis of the studies included in this thesis it is recommended that psychologists who are interested in understanding and changing individual environmental behaviour should incorporate an understanding of intra- and inter-group processes into their theorising and future research.

Master of Science / Department of Psychological Sciences / Donald A. Saucier / The current research examined whether participants’ levels of racial prejudice impact their perceptions of a Black racial slur (“nigga”) used by a Black individual toward a White individual. The “racism justification hypothesis” predicts racial prejudice will be negatively related to perceptions of offensiveness due to motivations to trivialize racial slurs which allows for increased use of the slur by individuals higher in prejudice. The “hierarchy defense hypothesis” predicts racial prejudice will be positively related to more negative perceptions of the slur due to White individuals seeking to resist affiliation with Black individuals and perceiving affiliative attempts as threatening. Consistent with the hierarchy defense hypothesis, the results showed racial prejudice predicted greater offensive and negatively expressive perceptions, and lower positively expressive perceptions following “nigga” being used by a Black individual toward a White individual (Study 1). In Study 2, the current research examined whether motivations to trivialize racial slurs (i.e., racism justification) versus participants’ experiences of threat (i.e., hierarchy defense) mediated the relationships between racial prejudice and perceptions of “nigga” used by a Black individual toward a White individual. Consistent with the hierarchy defense hypothesis, racial prejudice, through status hierarchy threat, predicted greater offensive and negatively expressive perceptions, and lower positively expressive perceptions. The racism justification hypothesis was also supported. Participants’ levels of racial prejudice, through racism trivialization, were generally related to lower perceptions of the slur as offensive and greater perceptions of the slur as positively expressive. The current research then examined participants’ perceptions of “nigga” reciprocated by the White individual toward the Black individual. Interestingly, racial prejudice, through status hierarchy threat, predicted greater offensive and negatively expressive perceptions and lower positively expressive perceptions. Racial prejudice, through racism trivialization, predicted generally lower offensive perceptions and greater positively expressive perceptions. Thus, participants may have used their experiences of threat as justification for explicit prejudice toward the Black individual (i.e., perceiving the slur as more offensive and negative), while individuals who experienced trivialization motivations attempted to decrease their experiences of suppression factors by perceiving the slur as less offensive, allowing for increased use of the slur. Implications for these findings are discussed.

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abstract: In an affordance management approach, stereotypes, prejudices, and discrimination are conceptualized as tools to manage the potential opportunities and threats afforded by others in highly interdependent social living. This approach suggests a distinction between two “kinds” of stereotypes. “Base” stereotypes are relatively factual, stable beliefs about the capacities and inclinations of groups and their members, whereas “affordance stereotypes” are beliefs about potential threats and opportunities posed by groups and their members. Two experiments test the hypothesized implications of this distinction: (1) People may hold identical base stereotypes about a target group but hold very different affordance stereotypes. (2) Affordance stereotypes, but not base stereotypes, are shaped by perceiver goals and felt vulnerabilities. (3) Prejudices and (4) discrimination are more heavily influenced by affordance stereotypes than by base stereotypes. I endeavored to manipulate participants’ felt vulnerabilities to measure the predicted corresponding shifts in affordance (but not base) stereotype endorsement, prejudices, and discriminatory inclinations toward a novel target group (Sidanians). In Study 1 (N = 600), the manipulation was unsuccessful. In Study 2 (N = 338), the manipulation had a partial effect, allowing for preliminary causal tests of the proposed model. In both studies, I predicted and found high endorsement of the base stereotypes that Sidanians try to share their values and actively participate in the community, with low variability. I also predicted and found more variation in affordance (vs. base) stereotype endorsement, which was systematically related to participants’ felt vulnerabilities in Study 2. Taken together, these findings support my hypothesized distinction between base stereotypes and affordance stereotypes. Finally, I modeled the proposed correlational relationships between felt vulnerabilities, base stereotypes, affordance stereotypes, prejudices, and discriminatory inclinations in the model. Although these relationships were predominantly significant in the predicted directions, overall fit of the model was poor. These studies further our critical understanding of the relationship between stereotypes, prejudices, and discrimination. This has implications for how we devise interventions to reduce the deleterious effects of such processes on their targets, perhaps focusing on changing perceiver vulnerabilities and perceived affordance (rather than base) stereotypes to more effectively reduce prejudices and discrimination. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Psychology 2018

Socially salient information (such as stereotypes and expectancies) can be transmitted amongst individuals in a variety of subtle ways. One of these is the Linguistic Expectancy Bias (LEB), in which patterns of linguistic abstraction indirectly indicate a speaker's attitudes toward a target. The LEB is a common feature of human communication, but research on it has largely been limited to the laboratory; its presence in news media reports is not well-studied. In three studies, I investigate the operation of the LEB in the print media domain. In the first, published reports of NFL games between intercity rivals were analyzed to determine whether or not hometown teams receive more favorable linguistic treatment than hated rivals; results indicate no evidence of a systematic LEB effect. In the second, news reports about the 2004 Presidential election were examined for differential coverage based on the party membership of the candidates, with no evidence of linguistic bias discovered. In the third, participants were exposed to a description of a politician that varies in the levels of abstraction used to describe his actions and asked to form impressions of him. Linguistic bias was found to have a subtly paradoxical effect, such that bias against a candidate resulted in greater explicit and implicit liking for him. Implications for both the social psychology and political science literatures are discussed. / Psychology

The diploma thesis Cooperation of Teams and Joint Leisure Time of Employees deals with relation between frequency of involvement of individuals in cooperation of teams and their evaluation of the cooperation, information sharing and spending leisure time with colleagues. In the theoretical part, the theme is put into the broader framework of culture. The main areas affecting the problem are defined further. Emphasis is put on corporate culture, organizational climate and social relations between individuals in a company. In the empirical part of the text, the research question is described, the main hypothesis is set, the operational hypotheses are derived, the operationalization is performed, and the company and its teams that are subject of the research are presented. Subsequently, all processes and their relation being subject of the research are theoretically anchored and described based on the data analysis. In the concluding part of the text, there is an overview of mutual sympathy, ties and antipathy of members of the studied teams as well as it is found out to what extent the data analysis confirms the hypotheses determined. Information about mutual sympathy, ties and antipathy of individuals was obtained using the first questionnaire at the beginning of the research. The analyses of...