The socio-psychological predictors of support for post-truth collective action.

Politics in the current era are replete with unreliable media stories which lack evidence, sometimes disparagingly dubbed "fake news". A survey on a sample of Muslims in Indonesia (N = 518) in this work found that participants' endorsement of collective action in of support issues with little to no empirical evidence (i.e., post-truth collective action) increased as a function of their belief in fake news and prejudice against the outgroup (i.e., non-Muslims). Belief in fake news stemmed from participants' generic and specific conspiratorial thinking, whereas prejudice was positively predicted by relative Muslim prototypicality, denoting how much Muslims in Indonesia view that their group is more representative than non-Muslims of the superordinate Indonesian identity that encompasses both groups. Additionally, our findings revealed that generic conspiratorial thinking and relative Muslim prototypicality were positively predicted by collective narcissism, which in turn spurred participants' support for collective action by augmenting belief in fake news.

Social mindfulness and prosociality vary across the globe.

Humans are social animals, but not everyone will be mindful of others to the same extent. Individual differences have been found, but would social mindfulness also be shaped by one's location in the world? Expecting cross-national differences to exist, we examined if and how social mindfulness differs across countries. At little to no material cost, social mindfulness typically entails small acts of attention or kindness. Even though fairly common, such low-cost cooperation has received little empirical attention. Measuring social mindfulness across 31 samples from industrialized countries and regions (n = 8,354), we found considerable variation. Among selected country-level variables, greater social mindfulness was most strongly associated with countries' better general performance on environmental protection. Together, our findings contribute to the literature on prosociality by targeting the kind of everyday cooperation that is more focused on communicating benevolence than on providing material benefits.

Remember your crimes: How an appeal to ingroup wrongdoings fosters reconciliation in separatist conflict.

The aim of this study was to compare the effectiveness of appeals to ingroup wrongdoings, as opposed to ingroup rightdoings, on reconciliation between groups in a real-world conflict. We conducted an experiment in Indonesia, where separatist conflict in the province West Papua is currently unresolved. Participants were a sample of Javanese residents (N = 502), representing the majority group in Indonesia. Compared to ingroup rightdoings, being reminded of ingroup wrongdoings significantly increased participants' sense of perpetratorhood. These feelings of being a perpetrator in turn fostered participants' reconciliatory attitudes towards the separatist group. These findings reveal that an appeal to ingroup wrongdoings can be effective in promoting intergroup reconciliation. In addition to theoretical implications, we discuss practical implications in terms of highlighting the importance of acknowledging ingroup wrongdoings as part of an intervention programme.

Predicting Support for Reconciliation in Separatist Conflict.

The current research examined two fundamental motives that could lie at the root of separatist groups' desire to be independent from the nonseparatist majority: the need to maintain the own subgroup identity and the need to preserve power vis-à-vis the majority. These motives were examined in two studies through surveys among samples of indigenous people in West Papua ( N = 201 and N = 248), where separatist movements are actively striving for secession from the Republic of Indonesia. As expected, identity threat increased perceptions of injustice in both studies, whereas power threat increased the need for subgroup empowerment. Perceived injustice and need for subgroup empowerment, in turn, decreased support for reconciliation with the majority. The current research is the first to examine how identity and power motives combine in predicting separatist intentions. The studies reveal important insights that can contribute to the reconciliation of separatist conflict.

You Are the Real Terrorist and We Are Just Your Puppet: Using Individual and Group Factors to Explain Indonesian Muslims' Attributions of Causes of Terrorism.

The current study investigates the role of individual and intergroup factors in predicting Muslims' tendency to attribute domestic terrorism in Indonesia to an external cause (i.e., The West) or an internal cause (i.e., radical Islamist groups). The results (N = 308) showed that intergroup factors of symbolic threat and realistic threat directly increased the external attribution and conversely decreased the internal attribution. Within the context of the current research, symbolic threat refers to Muslims' perception that the norms and values of the West undermine Islamic identity. Realistic threat denotes Muslims' perception that the economy and technology of the West undermine Islamic power. The individual factor of Islamic fundamentalism, which has to do with Muslims' belief in the literal interpretation of and strict guidelines to Islamic doctrines, indirectly predicted both external attribution and internal attribution of terrorism as hypothesized, via the extent to which Muslims perceived the West as posing a symbolic threat, but not a realistic threat to Islamic existence. Uncertainty avoidance, a cultural dimension that describes the extent to which people view clear instructions as a pivotal source of concern to deal with societal problems, also significantly increased perceived symbolic threat and realistic threat, and this cultural dimension mediated the effect of Islamic fundamentalism on each of the intergroup threats. Finally, we found that the level of Islamic fundamentalism was dependent upon cognitive response, but not emotional response to mortality salience. The cognitive response to mortality salience denotes what Muslims are thinking about in coping with their own death whereas the emotional response denotes what Muslims are feeling about such issue. In particular, we found the cognitive response, but not the emotional response to mortality salience significantly gave rise to Muslims' Islamic fundamentalism. These findings shed light on the importance of combining individual factors and group factors in explicating the dynamics of Muslims' tendency to make attributions of causes of domestic terrorism. We discuss theoretical implications and study limitations, as well as practical actions policy makers could conduct to deal with Muslims' Islamic fundamentalism and reduce the extent to which this particular group perceives the West as threatening their existence.

Intergroup helping in response to separatism.

Despite its prevalence and widespread media coverage, separatism as a phenomenon is barely covered in psychological investigations, and the majority's response to separatism has been completely ignored. We present two studies in which we investigated the notion that separatist movements threaten the continuation of the national identity, as well as the nation's economic position. Moreover, we hypothesized and found that members of the majority group respond to continuation threat by supporting government measures to help the separatist group. Javanese students who were induced to believe that existing separatist movements in West Papua (Study 1, N = 322) or Aceh (Study 2, N = 180) were currently increasing their efforts to gain independence were more willing to support these groups than participants who believed these movements were dormant. Moreover, this effect was mediated by continuation threat but not economic threat. These results demonstrate the possibility of a peaceful response to separatism threat.