Papers
Collective Regret versus Collective Guilt: Different Emotional Reactions to Historical Atrocities
co-authored with Michal Bilewicz and Jennes Erb; accepted for publication in European Journal of Social Psychology
A distinction between guilt and regret in reactions to ingroup atrocities is proposed. Four studies (total N = 1,249) support the notion that guilt and regret are distinct emotional reactions. Whereas guilt is a self-focussed, aversive emotional reaction following from appraisals of responsibility and associated with the intention to make amends, regret follows from an empathic victim perspective, is less aversive and more strongly associated with positive attitudes towards the victim groups and the intention to engage in intergroup contact. These findings suggest that less aversive emotions like regret are more likely to improve intergroup attitudes after a common history of conflict but the aversive experience of guilt might be more potent in motivating reparations.
Download (.pdf) Partner-AMP and Well-Being: Evidence for an Implicit Secure Base Script?
first author is Rainer Banse // in press, Personal Relationships
The current research presents an adapted Affect Misattribution Procedure to assess the aspects of the relational schema of romantic partners that are difficult to verbalize, and tests the prediction that a positive implicit image of the partner constitutes a psychological resource that increases well-being. In Study 1, the Partner-AMP predicted well-being in student participants even after controlling for explicit partner attitudes and socially desirable responding. In Study 2, the Partner-AMP was assessed in women with a recent history of physical abuse and a control group. As expected, the Partner-AMP was related to group membership and predicted well-being over and above explicit partner attitudes and battering experience. The results are compatible with the notion of an implicit secure base schema.
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Vicarious Viewing Time: Prolonged Response Latencies for Sexually Attractive Targets as a Function of Task- or Stimulus-Specific Processing
multiple co-authors // accepted at Archives of Sexual Behavior
The amount of time an individual spends gazing at images is longer if the depicted person is sexually appealing. Despite an increasing use of such response latencies as a diagnostic tool in applied forensic settings, the underlying processes that drive the seemingly robust effect of longer response latencies for sexually attractive targets remain unknown. In the current study, two alternative explanations are presented and tested using an adapted viewing time paradigm that disentangled task- and stimulus-specific processes. Hetero- and homosexual male participants were instructed to rate the sexual attractiveness of target persons differing in sex and sexual maturation from four experimentally assigned perspectives–heterosexual and homosexual perspectives for both sexes. This vicarious viewing time paradigm facilitated the estimation of the independent contributions of task (assigned perspective) and stimuli to viewing time effects. Results showed a large task-driven effect as well as a relatively smaller stimulus-based effect. This pattern suggests that, when viewing time measures are used for the assessment of sexual interest, it should be taken into consideration that response latency patterns can be biased by judging images from a selected perspective.
The affect misattribution procedure: Hot or Not?
accepter for publication in Emotion // co-authored with Chirstoph Blaison and others
The Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP; Payne et al., 2005) is an important tool in implicit social cognition research, but its underlying mechanisms are still unknown. This paper investigates whether, as the name implies, affect-based processes really underlie the AMP. We used a modified AMP that enabled us to separate the influence of affective and
non-affective processes. In three studies, evidence for the implication of non-affective processes was consistently found. In contrast, there was no evidence for affect-based processes. Thus, the AMP rather seems cold than hot. The generalizability of the results obtained with the modified AMP is discussed.
Facing Europe: Visualizing Spontaneous Ingroup Projection
Psychological Science, in press // co-authored with multiple authors, equal contribution with Ron Dotsch.
Individuals perceive their own group to be more typical of a shared superordinate identity than other groups. This ingroup projection process has been demonstrated both on self-report and indirect measures. In two studies this research is expanded to the visual level, specifically within the domain of faces. Using an innovative reverse correlation approach we found that participants’ visual representations of European faces resemble the appearance typical for their own national identity (German vs. Portuguese). This effect was found also for participants who explicitly denied that one nation was more typical of Europe than the other (Study 1). Moreover, Study 2 provided experimental evidence that the process is restricted to
inclusive superordinate groups, as the effect was not observed for visual representations of a non-inclusive category (Australian). Implications for the ingroup projection model as well as the applicability of reverse correlation paradigms are discussed.
Differentiating Islamophobia: Introducing a new scale to measure Islamoprejudice and Secular Islam Critique
accepted for publication in Political Psychology
Since 2001 there has been a steadily increasing awareness of the discrimination against Muslims based on their religion. Despite the widespread use of the neologism Islamophobia to refer to this phenomenon, this term has been harshly criticized for confounding prejudiced views of Muslims with a legitimate critique of Muslim practices based on secular grounds. In the current research a scale was developed to differentiate Islamoprejudice (based on the influential Islamophobia definition of the British Runnymede Trust) and Secular Critique of Islam. Across two studies, Islamoprejudice was related to explicit and implicit prejudice, right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation whereas Secular Critique was unrelated to any forms of prejudice but negatively related to religiosity and authoritarianism. The two scales were mostly independently or only moderately related. Importantly, the new Islamoprejudice scale outperformed all other scales in predicting actual opposition vs. support for a heatedly debated, newly built mosque. Implications and application of the differentiation between Islamoprejudice and Secular Critique will be discussed.
