Acculturation is an inherently causal phenomenon that deals with changes and processes initiated by intercultural contact. However, although more than 13,000 scientific articles to date have been ...published on a topic related to acculturation, only a small fraction uses data that allow for causal inferences. As a result, our field can be seen as facing a “crisis of causality,” where central theories and models that assume causality between constructs still lack robust empirical support. To address this gap, I provide recommendations for the next generation of acculturation research, emphasizing primarily the need for experimental and longitudinal studies.
Background
Conspiracy theories about the origins of COVID‐19 are widespread and have even been propagated by highly ranked state officials and politicians in the US. Health authorities have cautioned ...that such theories, although not questioning the existence of the pandemic, may increase the spread of the virus by reducing people's efforts to socially distance.
Methods
We test this proposition empirically using longitudinal survey data collected at five timepoints during the early outbreak of the virus in the US (N = 403).
Results
Multivariate growth curve analyses showed that, although conspiracy beliefs decreased and social distancing increased over time, people holding more conspiracy beliefs at the beginning of the pandemic showed the lowest increase in social distancing. Moreover, cross‐lagged analyses demonstrated that people who reported more conspiracy beliefs at any wave tended to report less social distancing at the following wave.
Conclusions
Our findings show that COVID‐19 conspiracy theories pose a significant threat to public health as they may reduce adherence to social distancing measures.
When moving to a new country or living in that country as ethnic-minority-group members, individuals have to relate to different cultural spheres. Scholars and practitioners commonly agree that how ...people acculturate influences their psychological and sociocultural adaptation. Integration (or biculturalism), which involves engagement in both one’s heritage culture and the dominant mainstream culture, is considered the most beneficial acculturation strategy. But how robust is the evidence for the role of acculturation in adaptation? Here, we present a reanalysis of a previous meta-analysis of mostly correlational studies (k = 83, N = 23,197) and a new meta-analysis of exclusively longitudinal studies (k = 19, N = 6,791). Results show that the correlational link between acculturation and adaptation is much weaker than previously assumed and that longitudinal evidence is minuscule at best. Our findings suggest that empirical support is still lacking for the most basic premises of acculturation theory.
Many people enjoy eating meat but dislike causing pain to animals. Dissociating meat from its animal origins may be a powerful way to avoid cognitive dissonance resulting from this ‘meat paradox’. ...Here, we provide the first comprehensive test of this hypothesis, highlighting underlying psychological mechanisms. Processed meat made participants less empathetic towards the slaughtered animal than unprocessed meat (Study 1). When beheaded, a whole roasted pork evoked less empathy (Study 2a) and disgust (Study 2b) than when the head was present. These affective responses, in turn, made participants more willing to eat the roast and less willing to consider an alternative vegetarian dish. Conversely, presenting a living animal in a meat advertisement increased empathy and reduced willingness to eat meat (Study 3). Next, describing industrial meat production as “harvesting” versus “killing” or “slaughtering” indirectly reduced empathy (Study 4). Last, replacing “beef/pork” with “cow/pig” in a restaurant menu increased empathy and disgust, which both equally reduced willingness to eat meat and increased willingness to choose an alternative vegetarian dish (Study 5). In all experiments, effects were strongly mediated by dissociation and interacted with participants’ general dissociation tendencies in Study 3 and 5, so that effects were particularly pronounced among participants who generally spend efforts disassociating meat from animals in their daily lives. Together, this line of research demonstrates the large role various culturally-entrenched processes of dissociation play for meat consumption.
On October 15, 2017, actress Alyssa Milano popularized the #metoo campaign, which sought to expose the prevalence of sexual harassment and assault in public domains by encouraging victims to share ...their experiences on social media using the hashtag metoo. The online campaign rapidly grew to a global phenomenon, which was generally well supported. However, some criticized the campaign online as a battle of the sexes, which pits men against women. Our cross-cultural research investigated whether gender differences in attitudes and feelings toward #metoo are due to underlying differences in ideologies and experiences that only partly overlap with gender. We surveyed respondents in the United States, where the campaign began, and in Norway, a highly gender-egalitarian country. In both countries, men expressed less positivity toward #metoo than women and perceived it as substantially more harmful and less beneficial. These gender differences were largely accounted for by men being higher than women in hostile sexism, higher in rape myth acceptance, and lower in feminist identification. The results, hence, suggest that gender differences in attitudes to social media campaigns such as #metoo might be best characterized as dimensional ideological differences rather than fundamental group differences.
Humans are a coalitional, parochial species. Yet, extreme actions of solidarity are sometimes taken for distant or unrelated groups. What motivates people to become solidary with groups to which they ...do not belong originally? Here, we demonstrate that such distant solidarity can occur when the perceived treatment of an out-group clashes with one's political beliefs (e.g., for Leftists, oppressive occupation of the out-group) and that it is driven by fusion (or a feeling of oneness) with distant others with whom one does not share any common social category such as nationality, ethnicity or religion. In Study 1, being politically Leftist predicted European-Americans' willingness to engage in extreme protest on behalf of Palestinians, which was mediated by fusion with the out-group. Next, in Study 2, we examined whether this pattern was moderated by out-group type. Here, Norwegian Leftists fused more with Palestinians (i.e., a group that, in the Norwegian context, is perceived to be occupied in an asymmetrical conflict) rather than Kurds (i.e., a group for which this perception is less salient). In Study 3, we experimentally tested the underlying mechanism by framing the Kurdish conflict in terms of an asymmetrical occupation (vs. symmetrical war or control conditions) and found that this increased Leftist European-Americans' fusion with Kurds. Finally, in Study 4, we used a unique sample of non-Kurdish aspiring foreign fighters who were in the process of joining the Kurdish militia YPG. Here, fusion with the out-group predicted a greater likelihood to join and support the Kurdish forces in their fight against ISIS, insofar as respondents experienced that their political orientation morally compelled them to do so (Study 4). Together, our findings suggest that politically motivated fusion with out-groups underpins the extreme solidary action people may take on behalf of distant out-groups. Implications for future theory and research are discussed.
While conspiracy theories about COVID-19 are proliferating, their impact on health-related responses during the present pandemic is not yet fully understood. We meta-analyzed correlational and ...longitudinal evidence from 53 studies (N = 78,625) conducted in 2020 and 2021. Conspiracy beliefs were weakly associated with more reluctance toward prevention measures both cross-sectionally and over time. They explained lower vaccination and social distancing responses but were unrelated to mask wearing and hygiene responses. Conspiracy beliefs showed an increasing association with prevention responses as the pandemic progressed and explained support for alternative treatments lacking scientific bases (e.g., chloroquine treatment, complementary medicine). Despite small and heterogenous effects, at a large scale, conspiracy beliefs are a non-negligible threat to public health.
In times of the coronavirus, complying with public health policies is essential to save lives. Understanding the factors that influence compliance with social distancing measures is therefore an ...urgent issue. The present research investigated the role of political and social trust for social distancing using a variety of methods. In Study 1 (
= 301), conducted with a sample from the United Kingdom in the midst of the virus outbreak (i.e., the first wave), neither political nor social trust had main associations with self-reported social distancing tendencies. However, both factors interacted such that social trust was associated with lower social distancing tendencies among participants with low levels of political trust. In Study 2, using an experimental longitudinal design and again conducted with a sample collected from the UK (
= 268) during the first wave of the pandemic, social distancing practices increased over time, independent of an experimental manipulation of political trust. Moreover, while the interaction between political and social trust from the first study could not be conceptually replicated, social trust was positively related to social distancing intentions. Moving from the individual to the country level and assessing actual behavior at both the first and second wave of the pandemic, in Study 3 (
= 65 countries), country-level political trust was related to less social distancing during the first wave. Social trust was related to a higher growth rate of infections. Against the background of these inconsistent findings, we discuss the potential positive and unexpected negative effects of social trust for social distancing.
Muslims in the U.K. who maintain their religious culture are often viewed as a suspect community. This pre-registered experimental research examined the mediating role of perceived (dis)loyalty as ...underlying process and the moderating role of acculturation expectations. A total of 334 non-Muslim White British participants in Study 1 and 810 in Study 2 were asked to indicate their acculturation expectations towards Muslims. They were then randomly assigned to read a text that described Muslims in a fictional town as either (a) maintaining their religious culture or (b) adopting the mainstream British culture, or they read (c) a neutral control text. As expected, in Study 1, when Muslims were presented as maintaining their religious culture, trust decreased compared to the control group. Conversely, when described as adopting the mainstream culture, trust increased while support for surveillance of Muslims decreased. Both effects were mediated by the perception of Muslims being disloyal or loyal to the U.K in both studies, respectively. Perceived loyalty to their religious group did not significantly mediate any effect. We replicated these findings in Study 2. Moreover, we showed that describing Muslims as maintaining their religious culture decreased trust and increased support for surveillance especially among participants who expected Muslims to give up their religious culture. Moderated mediation analysis showed that these effects were partly mediated by perceived loyalty to the U.K. We discuss the societal implications of the findings for policymakers and Muslim leaders along with recommendations for future research.
In many Western countries, the public has extensively debated factors potentially leading Muslim minority-group members to support violence by foreign extremist states or to commit violence ...themselves. Here, one central question has been whether their acculturation orientations may play a role. Combining perspectives from intergroup threat theory and acculturation psychology, the present study investigated whether one reason for why threat perceptions lead to higher violent behavioral intentions among Muslims, as evidence by previous research, may be that they are related to distinct acculturation orientations. It tested this proposition in two samples comprising of Norwegian (N = 253) and British Muslims (N = 194). The more Norwegian Muslims perceived realistic threat, the more violent behavioral intentions they showed, but this relation was not mediated by acculturation. Among British Muslims, mainstream acculturation orientation was related to more violent intentions, while threat was not. In both samples, symbolic threat was associated with more support for Muslim military violence and this relationship was mediated by religious acculturation in the U.K. In contrast to previous research, symbolic threat was linked with less personal intentions to commit violence in the U.K., mediated by religious acculturation. Complementary analyses calculating acculturation strategies indicated that assimilated, and to some extend integrated, Muslims in both countries tended to show the highest violent behavioral intentions. By contrast, separated individuals showed the highest level of support for Muslim military violence. Ways in which these findings can be used to counter violence and improve intergroup relations in Western ethnically diverse societies are discussed.
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