What makes people feel respected? Toward an integrative psychology of social worth.

People care a great deal about their social worth in other people's eyes, and social worth is an important factor in many social scientific theories. At the same time, social worth phenomena are scattered across diverse literatures under different conceptual labels, with little correspondence between them. In the present article, we attempt to integrate social worth research by focusing on three core questions: (1) What is the meaning of social worth in a particular interaction or relationship? (2) How do people evaluate their social worth in the eyes of their partner? and (3) How do people react when they are credited with different forms of social worth? According to the theoretical framework we propose, the particular meaning of social worth depends on a person's goals for an interaction, and we draw on interdependence theory to map how different situations afford the activation of different goals. To evaluate their social worth in a partner's eyes, a person judges whether the role they are accorded by the partner satisfies their own interaction goals. This comparison can yield an affirmation, a disconfirmation, or a violation of the person's social worth expectations. A person's reactions to these social worth experiences can be understood as attempts to regulate the situation's interdependence structure following the partner's feedback. We review social worth-related research from different research areas to show the framework's wide applicability and integrative potential. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

"They just don't understand us": The role of felt understanding in intergroup relations.

We report 5 studies examining the unique role of felt understanding in intergroup relations. In intergroup terms, felt understanding is the belief that members of an outgroup understand and accept the perspectives of ingroup members, including ingroup members' beliefs, values, experiences, and self-definition/identity. In Studies 1 (Scotland-U.K. relations; N = 5,033) and 2 (U.K.-EU relations; N = 861) felt understanding consistently and strongly predicted outcomes such as trust, action intentions, and political separatism, including participants' actual "Brexit" referendum vote in Study 2. These effects were apparent even when controlling for outgroup stereotypes and metastereotypes. Felt understanding was a unique predictor of outgroup trust and forgiveness in Study 3 (Catholic-Protestant relations in Northern Ireland; N = 1,162), and was a powerful predictor of political separatism even when controlling for specific, relational appraisals including negative interdependence and identity threat in Study 4 (Basque-Spanish relations; N = 205). Study 5 (N = 190) included a direct manipulation of felt understanding, which had predicted effects on evaluation of the outgroup and of ingroup-outgroup relations. Overall, the findings provide converging evidence for the critical role of felt understanding in intergroup relations. We discuss future research possibilities, including the emotional correlates of felt understanding, and its role in intergroup interactions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).