Social identity enactment in a pandemic: Scottish Muslims' experiences of restricted access to communal spaces.

The comprehensive analysis of social identity cannot simply focus on individuals' cognitive self-definition. Rather it should also theorize the social conditions that affect individuals' opportunities to act in terms of those self-definitions. We argue that the social distancing interventions associated with Covid-19 provide an opportunity to explore the significance of otherwise taken-for-granted social factors which routinely support and sustain individuals' identity enactments. Using qualitative data gathered with 20 members of the Scottish Muslim community (19 diary entries and 20 post-diary interviews), we explore their experiences of restricted access to community-relevant social spaces (e.g., mosques and prayer rooms). Our analysis shows that while these regulations could result in new opportunities for Muslims' religious identity enactments, they also impeded their abilities to act in terms of their religious identification. Addressing such impediments, we develop our understanding of the contextual factors that shape individuals' abilities to enact identity-defining norms and values.

Open science communication: The first year of the UK's Independent Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a light on the complex relationship between science and policy. Policymakers have had to make decisions at speed in conditions of uncertainty, implementing policies that have had profound consequences for people's lives. Yet this process has sometimes been characterised by fragmentation, opacity and a disconnect between evidence and policy. In the United Kingdom, concerns about the secrecy that initially surrounded this process led to the creation of Independent SAGE, an unofficial group of scientists from different disciplines that came together to ask policy-relevant questions, review the evolving evidence, and make evidence-based recommendations. The group took a public health approach with a population perspective, worked in a holistic transdisciplinary way, and were committed to public engagement. In this paper, we review the lessons learned during its first year. These include the importance of learning from local expertise, the value of learning from other countries, the role of civil society as a critical friend to government, finding appropriate relationships between science and policy, and recognising the necessity of viewing issues through an equity lens.

'Not our war, not our country': contents and contexts of Scottish political rhetoric and popular understandings during the invasion of Iraq.

Recent research has questioned the traditional assumption that populations inevitably rally round their national leaders in times of war and suggested instead that whether this occurs depends upon political communication and mass media coverage. In this study, we provide systematic analysis of the debate in Scotland over the invasion of Iraq in 2003. We examine how the conflict was construed as either for or against the national interest, and how the way this is done is linked to different dimensions of context. First, we provide a mixed-methods analysis of debates in the Scottish Parliament. We show that anti-war speakers from Scottish separatist parties map opposition to the war onto a series of collectively consistent and temporarily flexible categorical oppositions, starting with a familiar antinomy between Scottish people and British rulers (before the invasion), and then shifting to broader oppositions between subjugated people and imperial powers (after the invasion). By contrast, speakers from other parties appear less consistent and less flexible in the nature of their arguments. Second, we examine the opinions of a population sample on the war, how these opinions relate to understandings of Scottish identity and how the media context is pivotal in the translation of anti-war opinions into votes for separatist/anti-war political parties.

Is everyone Irish on St Patrick's Day? Divergent expectations and experiences of collective self-objectification at a multicultural parade.

We examine experiences of collective self-objectification (CSO) (or its failure) among participants in a 'multicultural' St Patrick's Day parade. A two-stage interview study was carried out in which 10 parade participants (five each from ethnic majority and minority groups) were interviewed before and after the event. In pre-event interviews, all participants understood the parade as an opportunity to enact social identities, but differed in the category definitions and relations they saw as relevant. Members of the white Irish majority saw the event as being primarily about representing Ireland in a positive, progressive, light, whereas members of minority groups saw it as an opportunity to have their groups' identities and belonging in Ireland recognized by others. Post-event interviews revealed that, for the former group, the event succeeded in giving expression to their relevant category definitions. The latter group, on the other hand, cited features of the event such as inauthentic costume design and a segregated structure as reasons for why the event did not provide the group recognition they sought. The accounts revealed a variety of empowering and disempowering experiences corresponding to the extent of enactment. We consider the implications in terms of CSO, the performative nature of dual identities, as well as the notion of multicultural recognition.

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.

Come together: two studies concerning the impact of group relations on personal space.

This paper describes two experiments investigating the impact of group relations on personal space. In Study 1, participants (N=39) in minimal groups were told that they would be interacting with another person. In line with expectations, personal space (as measured by the distance between chairs) was significantly less in the intragroup context than in the intergroup and interpersonal contexts. This finding was replicated in Study 2 (N=80) using an improved experimental design. These results are discussed in terms of developing a self-categorization account of personal space and crowding.

Cooperation versus competition in a mass emergency evacuation: a new laboratory simulation and a new theoretical model.

Virtual reality technology is argued to be suitable to the simulation study of mass evacuation behavior, because of the practical and ethical constraints in researching this field. This article describes three studies in which a new virtual reality paradigm was used, in which participants had to escape from a burning underground rail station. Study 1 was carried out in an immersion laboratory and demonstrated that collective identification in the crowd was enhanced by the (shared) threat embodied in emergency itself. In Study 2, high-identification participants were more helpful and pushed less than did low-identification participants. In Study 3, identification and group size were experimentally manipulated, and similar results were obtained. These results support a hypothesis according to which (emergent) collective identity motivates solidarity with strangers. It is concluded that the virtual reality technology developed here represents a promising start, although more can be done to embed it in a traditional psychology laboratory setting.

Everyone for themselves? A comparative study of crowd solidarity among emergency survivors.

Crowd behaviour in emergencies has previously been explained in terms of either 'mass panic' or strength of pre-existing social bonds. The present paper reports results from a study comparing high- versus low-identification emergency mass emergency survivors to test the interlinked claims (1) that shared identity in an emergency crowd enhances expressions of solidarity and reduces 'panic' behaviour and (2) that such a shared identity can arise from the shared experience of the emergency itself. Qualitative and descriptive quantitative analyses were carried out on interviews with 21 survivors of 11 emergencies. The analysis broadly supports these two claims. The study therefore points to the usefulness of a new approach to mass emergency behaviour, based on self-categorization theory (SCT).

Helping to improve the group stereotype: on the strategic dimension of prosocial behavior.

Three studies consider a basis for intergroup helping. Specifically, they show that group members may help others to disconfirm a stereotype of their own group as mean. Study 1 shows that Scots believe they are seen as mean by the English, resent this stereotype, are motivated to refute it, and believe out-group helping is a particularly effective way of doing so. Study 2 shows that increasing the salience of the English stereotype of the Scottish as mean leads Scots to accentuate the extent to which Scots are depicted as generous. Study 3 shows that increasing the salience of the stereotype of the Scots as mean results in an increase in the help volunteered to out-group members. These results highlight how strategic concerns may result in out-group helping. In turn, they underscore the point that helping others may be a means to advance a group's interest.