Marcin Bukowski and team on control and outgroup attitudes for EJSP!

posted in: Papers | 0

Marcin Bukowski from our Centre, together with colleagues, tested an alternative prediction that the salient lack of personal control (vs. having control) experienced in the context of unemployment can lead to connectedness and more positive perception of similar others (e.g. the members of groups affected by unemployment or the economic crisis). In two European countries (Poland and Spain), they found correlational and experimental evidence that a lowered sense of control of unemployed people was related to more favorable intergroup evaluations. Furthermore, when lack of control related to unemployment threat was experimentally induced, Spanish participants perceived a Greek outgroup more positively, and this effect was mediated by identification with and similarity to this group. A shared experience of collective uncontrollability seems to play a key role in promoting positive intergroup relations.

You may get familiar with the paper published in the ‘European Journal of Social Psychology’ >>HERE<<