Using artificial agents to nudge outgroup altruism and reduce ingroup favoritism in human-agent interaction.

Ingroup favoritism and intergroup discrimination can be mutually reinforcing during social interaction, threatening intergroup cooperation and the sustainability of societies. In two studies (N = 880), we investigated whether promoting prosocial outgroup altruism would weaken the ingroup favoritism cycle of influence. Using novel methods of human-agent interaction via a computer-mediated experimental platform, we introduced outgroup altruism by (i) nonadaptive artificial agents with preprogrammed outgroup altruistic behavior (Study 1; N = 400) and (ii) adaptive artificial agents whose altruistic behavior was informed by the prediction of a machine learning algorithm (Study 2; N = 480). A rating task ensured that the observed behavior did not result from the participant's awareness of the artificial agents. In Study 1, nonadaptive agents prompted ingroup members to withhold cooperation from ingroup agents and reinforced ingroup favoritism among humans. In Study 2, adaptive agents were able to weaken ingroup favoritism over time by maintaining a good reputation with both the ingroup and outgroup members, who perceived agents as being fairer than humans and rated agents as more human than humans. We conclude that a good reputation of the individual exhibiting outgroup altruism is necessary to weaken ingroup favoritism and improve intergroup cooperation. Thus, reputation is important for designing nudge agents.

Leadership and discursive mobilizing of collective action in the Jonestown mass killing.

We study a transcript of discourse recorded on an open mic during the mass suicide/murder of 909 members of a religious community in Jonestown in 1978. The 'Jonestown massacre' is often cited in psychology textbooks as a warning example of how powerful situations and charismatic leaders can lead ordinary people to extreme and destructive behaviours. These accounts suggest that individuals lose control of reason and will such that their behaviour becomes subject to outside control. We develop an alternative explanation of the mass killing as identity-based collective action. Our analysis shows how a shared understanding of the community's situation and the options available to them were constructed and contested in discourse. We demonstrate how Jim Jones served as impresario, entrepreneur and champion of identity, recognizing his followers' agency, initiating collective meaning-making and mobilizing action. Jones engaged his followers in jointly constructing the situation as hopeless, developing a shared view of their situated social identity and collectively formulating the identity-congruent solution of collective suicide as a hopeful act of collective agency. Our analysis points to the importance of addressing the conditions that sustain narratives of collective hopelessness and helping groups successfully choose non-extremist pathways out of hopelessness.

Studying intersectionality using ideological dilemmas: The case of paid domestic labour.

Intersectionality has gained a great deal of academic purchase within the social sciences but there is still a need for further conceptual and methodological innovation and clarity. As such, this study uses paid domestic labour as a case study to apply Billig et al.'s (Ideological dilemmas: A social psychology of everyday thinking, 1988) notion of ideological dilemmas to explore the common sense that paid domestic workers draw on to position themselves as women and workers. The analysis highlights how participants use (often contradictory) themes of common sense when speaking about their place in the household through dilemmas of servitude, belonging, and intimacy. Speakers draw on gendered ideology, not as a fixed set of ideas, but rather as a mobile discursive resource that can be deployed in situ, allowing them to justify, subvert, and evaluate social positions of domestic womanhood. The study provides both a conceptual window and a robust method for studying nonessentialist intersectionality through ideological dilemmas.

The identification environment matters: Students' social identification, perceived physical school environment, and anxiety - A cross-level interaction model.

The social identity approach to health argues that well-being depends on the psychosocial circumstances of the groups to which individuals belong. However, little is known about how the average level of identification in the group - 'the identification environment' - buffers the negative health consequences of stressors. We used multilevel modelling to investigate whether identification environment in a school modified the association between the students' perceptions of the quality of their school's physical environment and their reported levels of anxiety. In two representative samples of Finnish school students (N = 678 schools/71,392 students; N = 704 schools/85,989 students), weak identification environment was related to increased anxiety. In addition, in schools where identification environment was weaker, the student level relationship between perceived physical environment and anxiety was stronger, and students were more anxious. Our results provide evidence that identification environment needs to be considered when we analyse how group membership affects well-being.

Conversational Silencing of Racism in Psychological Science: Toward Decolonization in Practice.

This article addresses a paradox between self-perceptions of psychology as a liberal, progressive, antiracist discipline and profession and the persistent criticisms of racism and calls for decolonization. It builds on the criticisms of epistemic exclusion and White centering, arguing that White supremacy is maintained by "conversational silencing" in which the focus on doing good psychology systematically draws attention away from the realities of racism and the operation of power. The process is illustrated by investigations of disciplinary discourse around non-Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic psychology and on stereotyping, racism, and prejudice reduction, which constitute the vanguard of liberal scholarship in the discipline. This progressive scholarship nurtures "White ignorance," an absence of belief about systemic racism that psychology plays a part in upholding.

Agent-based null models for examining experimental social interaction networks.

We consider the analysis of temporal data arising from online interactive social experiments, which is complicated by the fact that classical independence assumptions about the observations are not satisfied. Therefore, we propose an approach that compares the output of a fitted (linear) model from the observed interaction data to that generated by an assumed agent-based null model. This allows us to discover, for example, the extent to which the structure of social interactions differs from that of random interactions. Moreover, we provide network visualisations that identify the extent of ingroup favouritism and reciprocity as well as particular individuals whose behaviour differs markedly from the norm. We specifically consider experimental data collected via the novel Virtual Interaction APPLication (VIAPPL). We find that ingroup favouritism and reciprocity are present in social interactions observed on this platform, and that these behaviours strengthen over time. Note that, while our proposed methodology was developed with VIAPPL in mind, its potential usage extends to any type of social interaction data.

Using word embeddings to investigate cultural biases.

Word embeddings provide quantitative representations of word semantics and the associations between word meanings in text data, including in large repositories in media and social media archives. This article introduces social psychologists to word embedding research via a consideration of bias analysis, a topic of central concern in the discipline. We explain how word embeddings are constructed and how they can be used to measure bias along bipolar dimensions that are comparable to semantic differential scales. We review recent studies that show how familiar social biases can be detected in embeddings and how these change over time and in conjunction with real-world discriminatory practices. The evidence suggests that embeddings yield valid and reliable estimates of bias and that they can identify subtle biases that may not be communicated explicitly. We argue that word embedding research can extend scholarship on prejudice and stereotyping, providing measures of the bias environment of human thought and action.

Everyday dehumanization: Negative contact, humiliation, and the lived experience of being treated as 'less than human'.

Developing work on the nature and consequences of negative intergroup contact, this study explores its potential role in sustaining everyday experiences of dehumanization; that is, experiences in which participants report feeling deprived of full human status. As a case study, we explore domestic service relations in a neighbourhood of Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, analysing interviews (n = 22) conducted with Black domestic workers and their families (n = 64 participants in total) about their day-to-day interactions with Indian employers. Drawing on thematic analysis of accounts of paid domestic labour and food-sharing practices, we argue that negative contact experiences may cumulatively engender a sense of dehumanization and associated feelings of humiliation: a response marked by intertwined constructions of shame and injustice. Implications for understanding wider problems of intergroup conflict and political solidarity are discussed and avenues for future research proposed.

Individual Differences in Lexical Repetition Priming.

The current research investigated whether individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) and affective states have differential effects on lexical-semantic repetition priming outcomes based on whether participants were first- or second-language English speakers. Individual differences in priming effects have often been overlooked in the priming literature. Using logistic mixed-effects models to account for within-subject variation, the current paper investigated a three-way interaction between WMC, negative affect (NA) score, and language primacy on lexical-semantic repetition priming outcomes. The results indicate that a statistically significant three-way interaction exists between language primacy, WMC, and NA scores. No significant interaction effect was found for positive affect scores. We present an argument which posits that an individual's primary language and subsequent familiarity with the primed concepts, in conjunction with individual differences in WMC and mood, plays an important role in determining the most effective strategy used to complete a word-stem completion task. The implications of the findings presented highlight that second-language English speakers are more susceptible to priming effects when prime-inducing stimuli are constructed using English lexicon; however, larger WMC and heighted negative affective states help to mitigate these priming effects.

Agreement threshold on Axelrod's model of cultural dissemination.

Shared opinions are an important feature in the formation of social groups. In this paper, we use the Axelrod model of cultural dissemination to represent opinion-based groups. In the Axelrod model, each agent has a set of features which each holds one of a set of nominally related traits. Survey data has a similar structure, where each participant answers each of a set of items with responses from a fixed list. We present an alternative method of displaying the Axelrod model by representing it as a bipartite graph, i.e., participants and their responses as separate nodes. This allows us to see which feature-trait combinations are selected in the final state. This visualisation is particularly useful when representing survey data as it illustrates the co-evolution of attitudes and opinion-based groups in Axelrod's model of cultural diffusion. We also present a modification to the Axelrod model. A standard finding of the Axelrod model with many features is for all agents to fully agree in one cluster. We introduce an agreement threshold and allow nodes to interact only with those neighbours who are within this threshold (i.e., those with similar opinions) rather than those with any opinion. This method reliably yields a large number of clusters for small agreement thresholds and, importantly, does not limit to single cluster when the number of features grows large. This potentially provides a method for modelling opinion-based groups where as opinions are added, the number of clusters increase.

'I'm happy to own my implicit biases': Public encounters with the implicit association test.

The implicit association test (IAT) and concept of implicit bias have significantly influenced the scientific, institutional, and public discourse on racial prejudice. In spite of this, there has been little investigation of how ordinary people make sense of the IAT and the bias it claims to measure. This article examines the public understanding of this research through a discourse analysis of reactions to the IAT and implicit bias in the news media. It demonstrates the ways in which readers interpreted, related to, and negotiated the claims of IAT science in relation to socially shared and historically embedded concerns and identities. IAT science was discredited in accounts that evoked discourses about the marginality of academic preoccupations, and helped to position test-takers as targets of an oppressive political correctness and psychologists as liberally biased. Alternatively, the IAT was understood to have revealed widely and deeply held biases towards racialized others, eliciting accounts that took the form of psychomoral confessionals. Such admissions of bias helped to constitute moral identities for readers that were firmly positioned against racial bias. Our findings are discussed in terms of their implications for using the IAT in prejudice reduction interventions, and communicating to the public about implicit bias.

Beyond the two-group paradigm in studies of intergroup conflict and inequality: Third parties and intergroup alliances in xenophobic violence in South Africa.

Social psychologists typically conceptualize intergroup processes in terms of unequal pairs of social categories, such as an advantaged majority (e.g., 'Whites') and a disadvantaged minority (e.g., 'Blacks'). We argue that this two-group paradigm may obscure the workings of intergroup power by overlooking: (1) the unique dynamics of intergroup relations involving three or more groups, and (2) the way some two-group relationships function as strategic alliances that derive meaning from their location within a wider relational context. We develop this argument through a field study conducted in a grape-farming town in South Africa in 2009, focusing on an episode of xenophobic violence in which a Zimbabwean farm worker community was forcibly evicted from their homes by their South African neighbours. Discursive analysis of interview accounts of the nature and origins of this violence shows how an ostensibly binary 'xenophobic' conflict between foreign and South African farm labourers was partially constituted through both groups' relationship with a third party who were neither victims nor perpetrators of the actual violence, namely White farmers. We highlight some potential political consequences of defaulting to a two-group paradigm in intergroup conflict studies.

Investigating the Evolution of Ingroup Favoritism Using a Minimal Group Interaction Paradigm: The Effects of Inter- and Intragroup Interdependence.

We investigated the effect of structural interdependencies between groups (especially inequality), and interdependencies between individuals on ingroup favoritism in minimal group situations. Previous research has attempted to determine whether ingroup favoritism is produced by categorization or intragroup interdependencies (reciprocation expectations), but recent literature suggests that it is not possible to tease these influences apart. We report two studies that investigate how ingroup favoritism evolves over time in social interaction. The levels of ingroup favoritism were affected by categorization and inequality, and the level of ingroup favoritism changed over time, increasing or decreasing depending on the nature of the initial intergroup structure. We conclude by providing two explanations for this change: emergent norms, and changes to the intergroup situation produced by interaction. Our experiments confirm the value of studying the evolution of minimal group behavior, especially for explaining why low status groups act to preserve intergroup inequalities.

Race trouble: attending to race and racism in online interaction.

This article advocates the concept of race trouble as a way of synthesizing variation in racial discourse, and as a way of studying how social interaction and institutional life continue to be organized by conceptions of 'race' and 'racism'. Our analysis of an online discussion at a South African University about the defensibility of a characterization of (black) student protesters as 'savages' revealed a number of familiar strategies: participants avoided explicit racism, denied racism, and denied racism on behalf of others. However, the aim of this analysis was not to identify the 'real' racism, but to show how race and racism were used in the interaction to develop perspectives on transformation in the institution, to produce social division in the University, and to create ambivalently racialized and racializing subject positions. We demonstrate how, especially through uses of deracialized discourse, participants' actions were observably shaped by the potential ways in which others could hear 'race' and 'racism'. Race trouble thus became manifest through racial suggestion, allusion, innuendo, and implication. We conclude with a call to social psychologists to study the ways in which meanings of 'race' and 'racism' are forged and contested in relation to each other.

Attitudes toward Arab ascendance: Israeli and global perspectives.

Arab nations are decades behind many other previously colonized nations in developing stronger economies, more democratic institutions, and more autonomy and self-government, in part as a result of external interference. The year 2011 brought the potential for greater Arab autonomy through popular uprisings against autocratic governments in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen, and through the Palestinian request for state recognition by the United Nations. We examined the psychology of support for Arab ascendancy among adults in 14 nations in the Balkans, the Middle East, Asia, Oceania, Europe, and North America. We predicted and found that people low on social dominance orientation endorsed forming an independent Palestinian state and desired that the Arab uprisings succeed. Rejection of ideologies that legitimize outside interference with Arabs mediated this support. Measures and model results were robust across world regions. We discuss theoretical implications regarding the advent of new ideologies and extending social dominance theory to address international relations.

Beyond prejudice: are negative evaluations the problem and is getting us to like one another more the solution?

For most of the history of prejudice research, negativity has been treated as its emotional and cognitive signature, a conception that continues to dominate work on the topic. By this definition, prejudice occurs when we dislike or derogate members of other groups. Recent research, however, has highlighted the need for a more nuanced and "inclusive" (Eagly 2004) perspective on the role of intergroup emotions and beliefs in sustaining discrimination. On the one hand, several independent lines of research have shown that unequal intergroup relations are often marked by attitudinal complexity, with positive responses such as affection and admiration mingling with negative responses such as contempt and resentment. Simple antipathy is the exception rather than the rule. On the other hand, there is mounting evidence that nurturing bonds of affection between the advantaged and the disadvantaged sometimes entrenches rather than disrupts wider patterns of discrimination. Notably, prejudice reduction interventions may have ironic effects on the political attitudes of the historically disadvantaged, decreasing their perceptions of injustice and willingness to engage in collective action to transform social inequalities. These developments raise a number of important questions. Has the time come to challenge the assumption that negative evaluations are inevitably the cognitive and affective hallmarks of discrimination? Is the orthodox concept of prejudice in danger of side-tracking, if not obstructing, progress towards social justice in a fuller sense? What are the prospects for reconciling a prejudice reduction model of change, designed to get people to like one another more, with a collective action model of change, designed to ignite struggles to achieve intergroup equality?

Beyond prejudice: relational inequality, collective action, and social change revisited.

This response clarifies, qualifies, and develops our critique of the limits of intergroup liking as a means of challenging intergroup inequality. It does not dispute that dominant groups may espouse negative attitudes towards subordinate groups. Nor does it dispute that prejudice reduction can be an effective way of tackling resulting forms of intergroup hostility. What it does dispute is the assumption that getting dominant group members and subordinate group members to like each other more is the best way of improving intergroup relations that are characterized by relatively stable, institutionally embedded, relations of inequality. In other words, the main target of our critique is the model of change that underlies prejudice reduction interventions and the mainstream concept of "prejudice" on which they are based.

Discourse, action, rhetoric: from a perception to an action paradigm in social psychology.

This article provides a personal account of how discursive social psychology has been used to understand social and political change in South Africa and to reflect on the strengths and limitations of the approach. While celebrating the shift from the perception paradigm to the genuinely social constructionist focus on discursive interaction, the article also argues for an expanded focus on embodied action.

Advice-giving difficulties in voluntary counselling and testing: a distinctly moral activity.

Advice-giving in voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) is demanding as it involves the discussion of difficult topics such as the morality of sexual risk and behaviour. We conducted a detailed exploration of how the giving and receiving of advice is managed in VCT, and how this is achieved against the backdrop of the competing public health and counselling imperatives that shape VCT practice. Informed by social constructionism and adopting a discursive approach, a sample of 27 videotaped simulated VCT sessions in South Africa were analysed. Two prominent advice strategies were identified. The combined effect of the discursive techniques used in the "making appeals strategy" (using a question which morally obligated the client to respond, drawing on the clients' views about condom use in framing the advice and finally evoking the client's responsibilities to protect others) eventually resulted in the uptake of the counsellor's advice. In the "prescribing rules for living" strategy, little attempt was made to include the client's concerns and views in the advice formulation instead the counsellor relied more on her authoritative, persuasive and professional position to enforce behaviour change - this led to client resistance of the advice. In both strategies, when confronted with certain contextual triggers counsellors invariably up-graded their advice in moral terms. In the first strategy, the moral upgrade had a positive effect on the outcome, in the second, it did not. VCT involves talk about HIV sexual risk behaviour. As such, a moral context is likely to be evoked in these conversations. The challenge is to assist counsellors to address the moral questions surrounding HIV risk in a way that places responsibility not blame onto clients.

Does perceived HIV stigma contribute to nurses' intent to migrate in five African countries?

Nurse migration out of low-resource countries has occurred for many years, resulting in workforce shortages, particularly in countries with a high prevalence of HIV. A cross-sectional survey of 1,374 nurses from five African countries (Lesotho, Malawi, South Africa, Swaziland, and Tanzania) was conducted. A logistic regression analysis resulted in a profile of odds ratios predicting increased odds of intent to migrate for nurses who were more experienced and working in urban hospitals. These data provide the first support that HIV stigma experienced by nurses through their association as providers for people living with HIV may also be contributing to their intent to migrate. The study contributes to a greater understanding of the complexity of nurse migration in Africa.