Who Works Harder? Separating Claims of Conscientiousness from Nation-level Response Tendencies
Image courtesy of Jannoon028/Free Digital Photos.net
By René Mõttus, University of Tartu, Estonia
Is there a kernel of truth at the root of people’s beliefs about “national character?” For example, are the English really more stalwart than Italians? Are the Spanish, as a people, more affable than Bulgarians? Do people’s personalities differ depending on the culture where they were raised?
In the last decade or so researchers have started to compare one nation to another to understand how nation-level or culture-level variables affect personality traits and vice versa: How personality traits may contribute to such phenomena as economic success or health. To this end, researchers administer standardized personality questionnaires in different countries, having translated them into proper languages beforehand. Possible issues with this type of research, however, are quite obvious: in addition to the biases in personality self-reports that researchers encounter when studying people only within particular cultures (e.g., responding in socially desirable ways), differences in questionnaire translations and cultural differences in the meaning of questionnaire items sometimes create quite unexpected findings.
One of the personality traits that demonstrates replicable, yet surprising, national rankings is Conscientiousness—the tendency to be orderly, diligent, disciplined, determined, and cautious. Guess, what nations score highest on these characteristics? Heard of Germans and Japanese being disciplined and working hard and everything being well organized in Switzerland? Wrong on that one. Its often residents of African and South-East Asian nations that report themselves being high in Conscientiousness, whereas Japanese, Koreans and Hong-Kong Chinese tend to be at the bottom of the rankings. And Germans and Swiss do not report exceptionally high levels of Conscientiousness either. When national rankings of Conscientiousness are compared to rankings of national wealth and longevity, the associations are strong but inverse, such that higher Conscientiousness goes with poverty and low longevity. This is exactly the opposite of what one would intuitively expect and what is usually seen at the level of individual people.
These findings suggest that the national rankings of Conscientiousness may be in some ways biased. For example, it may be that Japanese have very high standards for being conscientious and, judging themselves according to the high standards, they only appear to score low (Heine, Buchtel, & Norenzayan, 2008; see, however, Mõttus et al, 2012). Recent research published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, in contrast, points to a different source: cross-cultural differences in what is called extreme responding—a tendency to prefer extremes of subjective ratings scales to more neutral response options regardless of what exactly is being rated.
What distinguished this study from the previous ones was how the extreme responding was operationalized. Typically, studies have tried to derive it from self-ratings, for example, by calculating the ratio of extreme responses to more moderate ones. However, an obvious problem with this approach is that true differences between people and possible biases are hopelessly confounded. One can prefer extreme responses because he or she is high on the trait that the questions tap, in which case there is no extreme responding bias. Or one may prefer extreme responses simply because he or she likes more extreme responses, in which case there is the bias. Researchers have attempted to get by this problem in various ways but have rarely managed to completely separate self-reported trait levels from response biases.
This study did something different in that it attempted to quantify extreme response style on the basis of something that was designed to be independent of true individual differences. In particular, nearly 3,000 participants in 20 countries were presented the same list of 30 short vignettes describing people with various levels of Conscientiousness-related traits and asked to rate these people using six bipolar rating scales that were designed to measure Conscientiousness. On the basis of these ratings, extreme response style—the proportion of extreme responses to the more moderate ones—was calculated. The crucial thing to note here is that the vignettes were the same for everyone (assuming equivalence of translations, of course) and therefore any variance in ratings was inherently due to biases. As a result, the likelihood of mixing up true individual difference and response biases was low compared to the studies that attempt to guess both from the same ratings. There simply were not any true individual differences.
Country-averages for the proportion of extreme ratings over more moderate ones were calculated. It appeared that respondents from Hong Kong, South-Korea, Germany and Japan were the least likely to prefer extreme responses, whereas members of several African and South-East Asian countries as well as Poland and a mainland Chinese sample demonstrated the highest rates of extreme responses.
Participants also provided self-ratings using the same six ratings scales, which allowed us to calculate country-level scores for self-reported Conscientiousness. The two rankings appeared to be in a relatively strong positive correlation, suggesting that high self-reported Conscientiousness levels characterized the samples that had preferred more extreme responses whilst rating the the vignettes. We interpreted this as potential evidence that tendency to use more extreme response categories of the rating scales may have contributed to—inflated, to be precise—the Conscientiousness scores. Based on this interpretation we then corrected national rankings of self-reported Conscientiousness for national differences extreme responding. The effect of this correction was not massive but it was notable and, to the extent that we can rely on national stereotypes, it made intuitively sense. For example, Hong Kong Germany, South-Korea, Mauritius, Sweden, Beijing (China), and Japan moved upward in terms of mean Conscientiousness scores.
Therefore, we concluded that cross-cultural differences in the tendency to prefer extreme responses of subjective rating scales may to some extent confound national rankings of mean self-reported personality trait levels. And we thought that this might be partly responsible for the unexpected national rankings of Conscientiousness. However, as ever, we need to acknowledge alternative explanations for our findings. For example, we might have got the causal direction wrong: perhaps it may be high Conscientiousness that makes people prefer extreme responses? Clever experiments will tell.
Author Information
René Mõttus is a Senior Researcher at the Department of Psychology, Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology, University of Edinburgh, UK, and at the Department of Psychology, University of Tartu, Estonia. His research interests span several areas in the broad field of human individual differences, including psychometrics, personality traits and processes, cognitive abilities, health and genetics.
References
Heine, S. J., Buchtel, E. E., & Norenzayan, A. (2008). What do cross-national comparisons of personality traits tell us?: The case of conscientiousness. Psychological Science, 19, 309-313.
Claimed Inclusion: Not Quite as Good as You May Have Hoped
Image courtesy of Danilo Rizzuti / Free Digital Photos.net
By Wendy de Waal-Andrews and Ilja van Beest, Tilburg University
Teenagers often try to be part of groups they admire by dressing in certain ways, by listening to certain music, or even by engaging in damaging behaviors like smoking, drinking or drug abuse. Later in life, people may work equally hard to be included, whether it is at social gatherings, by colleagues at work, or by other moms at the local playground. In other words, our own behavior is often of fundamental importance for attaining inclusion. This doesn’t mean that others don’t play an important role in ensuring we are included. They do: when people invite us to a birthday they include us; when we are not welcome they exclude us. However, sometimes our own behavior is more important for ensuring inclusion, and other times other people’s behavior is more important. The outcome may be the same in both cases – you end up included or alone – but the route is very different. The question then is, does this matter?
We investigated this question in two studies recently published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (De Waal-Andrews & Van Beest, 2012). If people are prepared to go to great lengths to be included, we asked, does that mean that people also enjoy inclusion more when they “claim” it for themselves? Or will they enjoy it less, because inclusion that is “granted” by others is somehow valued more? We predicted the latter.
Satisfying our need to belong may require having both ongoing interactions with others and relationships marked by concern and caring (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). We reasoned that claimed and granted inclusion are equally viable ways of securing ongoing interactions. After all, how one attains inclusion does not affect the frequency with which one interacts. However, when someone is granted inclusion they may perceive this as a sign that they are appreciated, possibly even cared about, whereas it seems difficult to attribute such feelings to interaction partners when inclusion is claimed for oneself. Exclusion, on the other hand, we predicted would be equally painful if someone failed to claim it or if it was not granted. Here we built on the idea that human beings are social animals who react immediately to signs of exclusion. Given the potential threat of exclusion to survival such a “reflexive” (Williams, 2009) initial reaction makes sense: how you ended up excluded does not matter at this stage. All that matters is that you are alone, and therefore potentially in danger.
We tested these predictions by letting students either play a virtual game of ball toss called “cyberball” (Willliams, Cheung, & Choi, 2000), or a new version of this game we called “claimball”. In both games, participants are led to believe they are playing a virtual ballgame with two other players, depicted as schematic figures on their screen (see Figure 1). However, the rules of the games differ in an important way. In cyberball players throw the ball to another player by clicking their figure on the screen, and they are told that the other players do the same. Therefore, participants’ inclusion or exclusion in the game allegedly results from other players’ willingness to throw them the ball. In claimball, in contrast, players are told they can “claim” the ball by being the first to click on the figure on the screen of the player who has the ball. In other words, inclusion or exclusion in the game allegedly results from a player’s own success at claiming the ball. In reality the students were not playing with other people, but their computer determined the number of ball-tosses they received. Students randomly assigned to the inclusion condition received the ball about as often as other players. Students assigned to the exclusion condition only received a couple of throws.
In our first study, students (n = 136) were either included or excluded in one of the two games and then reported the extent to which their fundamental needs were satisfied during the game. As predicted, we found that people’s immediate reactions to exclusion did not differ between the two games, but their reactions to inclusion did: people felt more satisfied when inclusion was granted than when they claimed it for themselves. In a second study, we followed the same procedure. However, this time the students (n = 113) also reported how much they thought the other players liked them and considered them to be a warm person. Moreover, they were then asked to divide a sum of money between themselves and each of the other players. Again people’s immediate reactions to exclusion did not differ across the two games, and again, people were more satisfied following granted inclusion than following claimed inclusion. However, this time we also found that people gave less money to interaction partners than when they claimed inclusion than when inclusion was granted. Moreover, additional analyses revealed that these differences occurred because people who were granted inclusion thought the other players liked them more than people who claimed inclusion for themselves, and therefore felt more satisfied and behaved more generously.
In short, the broad implication of our results is that the lack of warmth associated with claimed inclusion reduces its benefits. Sadly, the more people crave belonging the more they may be motivated to try and claim it for themselves. Paradoxically, the resulting inclusion may never quite be as satisfying as inclusion that is effortlessly received.
Author Information
Wendy de Waal-Andrews is a lecturer in social psychology at Tilburg University. Her research examines social outcomes (e.g. inclusion, status, and power) in groups and organizations, and the self as a motivational source. More information about her work is available at: http://www.tilburguniversity.edu/webwijs/show/?uid=w.g.dewaal-andrews.
Ilja van Beest is a professor of social psychology at Tilburg University. His research program examines coalition formation, social exclusion, negotiation, emotions, and symptom attribution. More information about his work can be found at: http://www.tilburguniversity.edu/webwijs/show/?uid=i.vanbeest.
References
Baumeister, R.F., & Leary, M.R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497-529.
De Waal-Andrews, W., & Van Beest, I., (2012). When you don’t quite get what you want: psychological and interpersonal consequences of claiming inclusion. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 1367- 1377.
Williams, K. D. (2009). Ostracism: A temporal need-threat model. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 41, pp. 275-314). Burlington, MA: Academic Press.
Williams, K. D., Cheung, C. K. T., & Choi, W. (2000). Cyberostracism: Effects of being ignored over the Internet. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 748-762.
Image Credit:
Image (ID: 10032050) courtesy of Danilo Rizzuti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
What is a Good Society? Taxation and Happiness
by Shige Oishi, University of Virginia
Image courtesy of Arvind Balaraman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
What is a good society? What is an ideal society? Every four years, the presidential election makes Americans think of this philosophical question. In the end, the choice of president reflects which America is the ideal America: the (pseudo-) meritocratic, winner-take-all, “strong” America or the egalitarian, “compassionate” America.
One of the central debates to this end is concerned with taxation: who should pay and how much? President Obama thinks that the rich should pay more, whereas Governor Romney does not. Beyond the rhetoric of “tax relief” versus “tax cut”, there is one fundamental aspect missing from the debate on taxation: namely, what is the purpose of taxation to begin with?
Of course, the main purpose of taxation is to pay for public and common goods. In a modern society, residents expect to have access to clean water and air, reliable roads, primary education, parks and green space, personal safety, and services such as garbage pick-up, sewage disposal, and recycling. The government, both local and federal, is responsible for the basic infrastructure, so that its citizens can live healthy lives.
Even a libertarian might agree that people’s quality of life would suffer if residents do not have reliable police, clean water, safe roads, good schools, or garbage pick-up and recycling, and that public and common goods are necessary. Ultimately, then, the optimal taxation system is the system that allows the society to function well, while minimizing the burden (tax) to its citizens.
One way we can decide what the taxation system is optimal is to measure the quality of public and common goods across various societies with different taxation systems, and identify the tax system that maximizes the quality of public and common goods. Where do you see the best public transportation, public education, public space, and social welfare?
Another way to address the issue of the best taxation policy is to see which citizens are the happiest. If the taxation is to provide good public and common goods to citizens, and if providing good public and common goods is important to the quality of citizens’ lives, then we might as well measure citizen’s perceived quality of life directly, and identify the taxation system in which citizens are the most satisfied with their lives in general.
Uli Schimmack (U of Toronto), Ed Diener (U of Illinois), and I took the latter approach, and examined whether a certain taxation policy was associated with the happiness of the nations. Considering the main political debate has been between progressive taxation (the rich pays the higher rate of tax) and flat taxation (everyone pays the same rate of tax), we examined the relation between the degree of progressive taxation and the average happiness of citizens across 54 nations (see Oishi, Schimmack, & Diener, 2012, Psychological Science for details).
The bottom line: The residents of the nations with more progressive taxation were happier than those of the nations with less progressive taxation. The correlation coefficient was non-trivial: r = .33 with general life satisfaction and r = .46 with daily positive experiences (e.g., enjoying, smiling, doing something interesting, feeling well-rested).
The nations with the most progressive taxation among the 54 nations were Sweden (the top income bracket’s tax rate is 57%, whereas the lowest income bracket’s tax rate is 0%, i.e., a 57% difference), the Netherlands (52% difference), and Japan (45% difference). The U.S. ranked #34 among 54 nations with 20% difference (the top income bracket rate is 35%, the lowest is 15%). The nations with the least progressive taxation were Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia and other countries that have flat tax rates. The first observation is that rich Americans do not pay as much as rich Swedish, Dutch, or Japanese people in absolute terms as well as relative terms (relative to non-rich). So, the argument that rich Americans are already paying too much seems inaccurate at least from a global perspective.
Some might worry that the “official” tax rate is different from the “actual” tax rate (the tax that residents actually pay after various deductions). We checked, therefore, the “effective” tax rate (published by OECD, which is close to the “actual” tax rate). The results were virtually the same (r = .36 with general life satisfaction, r = .46 with daily positive experiences).
Of course, the above correlations are, well, simple correlations. Thus, third variables could account for this association. To our surprise, however, progressive taxation was not associated with GDP per capita (r = .15) or income inequality, Gini coefficient (r = .13). Statistically controlling for these variables did not reduce the original correlations.
More interestingly, the degree of progressive taxation was associated with higher levels of satisfaction with public and common goods (r = .54, p < .01). Finally, we showed that the association between progressive taxation and the subjective well-being of the nations was mediated (explained) by citizens’ satisfaction with public and common goods. That is, the citizens of the nations with progressive taxation were more satisfied with public and common goods such as transportation, education, and clean water, and also satisfied with their lives in general and reported smiling, enjoying life, being well-rested, and doing something interesting on a daily basis.
Some readers might also wonder if our findings mean that the bigger the government, the better (another important political issue in the U.S.). We checked whether larger government (higher % of GDP spent on the government) was also associated with greater satisfaction with public and common goods and greater life satisfaction and well-being in general. To our surprise, that was NOT the case. The government spending as a percentage of GDP was NEGATIVELY associated with general life satisfaction (r = -.46) and daily positive experiences (r = -.45): the greater the government spending as a percentage of GDP, the LOWER citizens’ life satisfaction and positive daily experiences were (FYI, the U.S. is relatively a “small” government at this point, ranked #49 out of 73 nations in government spending per GDP).
So, the second observation from our analyses was that it is not the amount of government spending per se, but the progressive taxation that is associated with higher levels of well-being. I suspect that the greater spending is not always translated into better public or common goods, in part because some governments spend a lot of money on public and common goods, but due to various factors (labor cost, pension, bribes, who knows?), that type of spending does not result in better roads, better transportation, better police, better housing or better education. For some reason, the nations with progressive taxation are doing better in the public and common goods department (the “why” is an important future research question).
Going back to the presidential debate on taxation, I wish President Obama and Governor Romney debated about the tax policy in the context of citizens’ happiness. There are relevant scientific data and findings here. When our paper was published in Psychological Science this January, a Japanese journalist from NHK (Japanese version of BBC) called and asked me “Has your paper changed the discussion of the tax policy in Congress?” I must admit that was the most astonishing question that I have ever received from a journalist. I just laughed and said “No way!” I bet no one on Capitol Hill has ever heard about our paper on taxation and happiness. I have never heard any politicians talk about our paper, let alone newspapers or news magazines seriously talking about our findings in the context of the presidential debate. I wish our paper had such an impact on real politics! Maybe someday…
Author Information
Dr. Shige Oishi is a professor in psychology at the University of Virginia. His research centers on culture, social ecology, personality, and well-being. His primary research goals are (a) to uncover the causes and consequences of subjective well-being, and (b) to delineate how social ecology and human psyche make each other up. Specific research topics include residential mobility, life satisfaction, feeling understood and misunderstood, relationship satisfaction, self-concepts, pro-community behaviors, goals and values, and emotion. He is a regular contributor to Personality and Social Psychology Connections (click here to read his previous posts).
Reference
Oishi, S., Schimmack, U., & Diener, E. (2012). Progressive taxation and the subjective well-being of nations. Psychological Science, 23, 86-92.
Acknowledgements
I thank Jordan Axt, Matt Motyl, Minha Lee, Thomas Talhelm, Yishan Xu, and Casey Eggleston for their comments.
Image Credit:
Image (ID: 10013658) courtesy of Arvind Balaraman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Negating Is NOT an Easy Thing to Do
by Kathryn Lynn Boucher, Indiana University
Image courtesy of digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Imagine that you are on a blind date that is going quite well. Through your engaging and easy-flowing conversation, you find out that the two of you have much in common: shared hobbies, similar life goals, and compatible values. You find this person to be attractive, interesting, and warm-natured. When asked about a possible second date, you quickly answer with an emphatic “I would love to.” You later rave about your date to your roommate, who you had not told about the date in advance, and you are surprised at your roommate’s look of concern. Your roommate then discloses that your date has a reputation for being unfaithful to significant others and has had several run-ins with the law. Given that you trust your roommate to be truthful, how do you think about your date now? Would your impression change? Would you decide to cancel your second and all future dates?
When we are told that information we once believed to be true is in fact false, we have to negate this previous information in order to come to the correct conclusion. For example, when you are thinking about your date, you have to mentally reverse thoughts of honesty that you formerly had. Instead of describing your date as honest, you generate a new depiction of your date as dishonest. This new information is stored in memory and can be later recalled and used to inform future behavior toward your date.
Although people tend to be successful at negation, this process can be difficult and require a great amount of cognitive effort (e.g., Gilbert, 1991). When people do not have ample cognitive resources or are not willing to expend cognitive effort, negations may not be extensively processed, and the initial information and the negation may be stored separately in memory. This separate storage of information can lead people to later recall only the initial information, not that it was negated (e.g., Mayo, Schul, & Burnstein, 2004). For example, the positive thoughts you had about your date and the information from your roommate that nullified these thoughts could be stored separately in memory. When thinking about this date years later, you may only remember the positive aspects of your date, not that this information was later falsified.
Over the past few decades, psychologists have examined closely the process of negation in order to understand how information can persist in its un-negated form. This work has compared the evaluations people hold on two different types of measures: explicit and implicit attitude measures. While explicit attitude measures gauge preferences that people can consciously report on tasks like surveys, implicit attitude measures capture the accessibility of concepts related to preferences for the individual through reaction time tasks. For instance, an explicit attitude measure may ask participants to rate the extent to which they like the target of impression formation, and an implicit attitude measure may record how long it takes to categorize positive and negative words. Past research using these two types of measures show that successful negation is usually found on explicit attitude measures as people are able to report their revised evaluations on a survey. However, implicit attitude measures often capture mental associations in line with the original information that may be just as accessible or more accessible than the negation (e.g., DeCoster, Banner, Smith, & Semin, 2006; Deutsch, Kordts-Freudinger, Gawronski, & Strack, 2009). When this occurs, it is possible that the original information, despite being negated, can continue to influence people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Thus, implicit attitude measures provide a means through which the success of negating false information can be examined.
Given that it is usually beneficial for us to negate information once we know it is false, it is important to explore ways to process negated information in order for successful negation to be captured on both explicit and implicit attitude measures. In our work, recently published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (Boucher & Rydell, 2012), we tested one possible method to encourage successful negation: increasing the visual salience of negations. By increasing the font size of negations, we predicted that participants would be more efficient at revising their initial evaluations. In a series of studies that echo the above scenario, we tested this hypothesis by presenting participants with information about a novel individual named Bob. This information was either all positive or negative. For some participants, each piece of information was followed by a negation (i.e., Bob would NOT do this.) This negation was either presented in a really large font size or in a relatively smaller font size. After participants received all of the information about Bob, their evaluations of him were measured on explicit and implicit attitude measures.
We found that when negations were less visually salient, explicit but not implicit attitude measures reflected the intended valence of the negations. When negations were more visually salient, both explicit and implicit attitude measures reflected the intended valence of the negations. These findings suggest that attracting people’s attention to the negating information even in subtle ways like font size can lead people to more efficiently process the presented information and store it in its correct form in memory. This work has implications for any domain in which false information is presented and can influence evaluations. For instance, political advertisements containing inaccurate information about a candidate or court testimony that is found to be based on faulty evidence may be more likely to be successfully negated and stored in memory in their correct form when the information that includes the negation is presented in a manner that emphasizes the negation. Further, considering that increased visual salience encourages the storage of the negation with the original information in memory, it is less likely that the original information will be later recalled without also recalling that it was negated. This means that the current and enduring influence of false political ads, inadmissible evidence, and inaccurate first impressions, as in the date scenario, could be lessened by increasing the attention paid to negations.
Author information
Kathryn L. Boucher is a Ph.D. candidate at Indiana University, working primarily with Dr. Robert J. Rydell. Her work focuses on the processes that underlie the formation and change of evaluations, impressions, and other knowledge structures. This research informs a second focus of her work: examining how stereotypes negatively impact individuals, how people respond to them, and how stereotypes can be changed.
References
Boucher, K. L., & Rydell, R. J. (2012). Impact of negation salience and cognitive resources on negation during attitude formation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 1329-1342. doi:10.1177/0146167212450464
DeCoster, J., Banner, M. J., Smith, E. R., & Semin, G. R. (2006). On the inexplicability of the implicit: Differences in the information provided by implicit and explicit tests. Social Cognition, 24, 5-21.
Deutsch, R., Kordts-Freudinger, R., Gawronski, B., & Strack, F. (2009). Fast and fragile: A new look at the automaticity of negation processing. Experimental Psychology, 56, 434-446.
Gilbert, D. T. (1991). How mental systems believe. American Psychologist, 46, 107-119.
Mayo, R., Schul, Y., & Burnstein, E. (2004). “I am not guilty” vs. “I am innocent”: Successful negation may depend on the schema used for its encoding. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 433-449.
Men, Women, and Authoritarianism: A Cross-Cultural Analysis
by Mark Brandt, Tilburg University and P.J. Henry, New York University–Abu Dhabi
Authoritarianism–subordination of personal needs and values in the service of the group’s requirements–makes most people’s list of negative interpersonal qualities. The independent free-thinker and dissenting protestor garner praise and admiration, but the ever-obedient authoritarian: pity and disdain. Researchers, too, have affirmed this negative view by tracing many of society’s most pernicious social problems–prejudice, discrimination, and stereotyping–to qualities that are characteristic of an authoritarian outlook.
Recent findings reported by social psychologists Mark Brandt and P.J. Henry (2012), however, challenge this simplistic conception of authoritarianism. Rather than viewing authoritarianism as a dysfunctional interpersonal orientation, these researchers seek to understand who adopts authoritarian values and what psychological benefit might accrue through an authoritarian view of the world. Rather than portraying authoritarianism as a psychologically problematic set of values, this work recognizes the value of both dissent and respect for the status quo.
Authoritarian values encourage support and obedience to social groups and their leaders. In a sense, authoritarianism represents an extreme version of solidarity and identification with one’s important social groups (for example, family, religious congregation, ethnic group; Duckitt, 1989; Stenner, 2005). When people feel rejected or excluded from their social circles, they may be especially likely to affirm authoritarian values in order to cope with the aversive feelings of social rejection.
Brand and Henry tested this hypothesis in a simple experiment. They asked the participants in the experimental condition to relive and write a paragraph about a personal experience of rejection and exclusion. Those in the control condition, in contrast, relived and wrote about a neutral event (their most recent commute to school or work). Following this experimental manipulation, participants completed a measure of authoritarian values. Consistent with expectations, people who were reminded of their experience of rejection expressed more authoritarian values than people who thought about their commute to work. That is, a reminder of rejection was enough to increase authoritarian values. Authoritarian values can be psychologically reassuring.
Brandt and Henry took the idea that authoritarian values can be psychologically reassuring and applied it to groups that typically are disadvantaged in society, that is, groups that have less power (economic or political). Previous research has found that disadvantaged groups experience rejection and exclusion because their society does not value them. Brandt and Henry proposed that authoritarianism, which helps give people a sense of connection to others, might be one way to compensate for the devaluing that is associated with being a member of a disadvantaged group.
This logic was applied to one specific group that experiences disadvantage globally, women. However, the inequality that women face (compared to men) from one country to the next is not uniform. In some countries, women face greater disadvantage than in other countries, whether that be through lower incomes, fewer educational opportunities, or less representation in politics. The prediction is pretty straightforward: The greater the gender inequality in a country, the greater the devaluing of women, and therefore the greater the endorsement of authoritarianism by women compared to men. In other words, Brandt and Henry expected the greater endorsement of authoritarianism by women to be a function of their disadvantage in a society.
The hypothesis was tested using data from the publically available World Values Survey (http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/), which contains data including measures of authoritarian values and gender from well over 100,000 people in countries from all over the world. The United Nations Human Development Report (http://hdr.undp.org/) provided a measure of gender inequality across a wide range of countries across the world.
The results supported the prediction that women were more authoritarian than men in countries with higher levels of gender inequality. However, this prediction does not hold across every country in the world. Countries that are more collectivistic seem to be exempt from this inequality-authoritarianism relationship for women. Why? Research in collectivistic contexts has shown that endorsing authoritarian-type beliefs (e.g., following the norms of a society) is a normal thing to do for both men and women, regardless of gender inequalities that may exist. In other words, both men and women in collectivistic societies are likely to endorse authoritarian beliefs, a pattern that seems to obscure any effect of gender inequality.
But for individualistic countries, gender inequality seems to matter for determining the greater endorsement of authoritarianism by women compared to men. These results contribute to a growing social psychological literature attempting to understand why people hold onto authoritarian values and beliefs and suggest that authoritarianism may arise in part because of the basic human desire for social connection. Moreover, the results of this study join a growing literature on the effects of inequality, social status, and stigma on a variety of consequential attitudes and behaviors. To truly understand a person, we must also understand their place in their society.
Author Information
Mark Brandt is an assistant professor of social psychology at Tilburg University. His research program investigates the causes and consequences of ideological and moral beliefs, including religious fundamentalism, authoritarianism, political ideology, and moral conviction. More information about his work can be found at sites.google.com/site/brandtmj/
PJ Henry is an associate professor of psychology at New York University – Abu Dhabi. His research program examines prejudice and intergroup relations, with a focus on the justifications people create for prejudice and discrimination and the consequences of stigmatization. His website is http://nyuad.nyu.edu/academics/faculty/pj-henry.html.
References
Brandt, M. J., & Henry, P. J. (2012a). Gender inequality and gender differences in authoritarianism. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 1301-1315.
Duckitt, J. (1989). Authoritarianism and Group Identification: A New View of an Old Construct. Political Psychology, 10(1), 63-84.
Stenner, K. (2005). The authoritarian dynamic. New York, NY:Cambridge University Press.
Is Religious Belief Motivated by Death Awareness
by Kenneth Vail, University of Missouri-Columbia
Masjid al-Haram panorama
What is the psychological function of religion? Countless religious and supernatural beliefs have emerged over the course of history. In today’s world, a majority of people are devoted, for example, to the deities of Islam, Christianity, and Hinduism, among many others; but, at the same time, a considerable number of people also reject religions or doubt religious claims to know god (Ipsos/Reuters, 2011; Pew, 2012).
Such convictions, both religious and skeptical, raise important questions about the function of religion. What motivates faith in the supernatural? And, when that motivation is triggered, how might our prior beliefs – whether religious or skeptical – determine which god(s), if any, will become the sacred objects of devotion?
With new research published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (PSPB), my colleagues and I at University of Missouri (USA) and Islamic Azad University (Iran) help shed some light on the answers to these questions.
To explore that first question – what motivates religious belief? – we started with an idea with a long history: that religious belief is motivated, at least in part, by the awareness of death. In the last 25+ years, social psychological research inspired by terror management theory (TMT; Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986) has illuminated a variety of ways in which people use their cultural identifications to help quell the subtle, and often not conscious, awareness of mortality. From this view, religious beliefs help people manage the awareness of death by directly denying death with supernatural beliefs about literalimmortality. Religions commonly involve some form of spiritual afterlife—each offering its own version of the transcendent realm, from the Islamic gardens of delight, to Hindu salvation, to the Christian heaven—and promise eternity for those adhering to the religions’ specific viewpoints and customs.
Philosophers have emphasized the psychological importance of this death-denying theme for centuries, and recent correlational and experimental research attests to its importance as well (Landau, Greenberg, & Solomon, 2004; Norenzayan & Hansen, 2006). But careful experimental work was still needed to provide a clear answer about its causation, so we designed a set of controlled experiments to study whether supernatural belief can be a motivated response to the awareness of death.
We also explored that second question, how individuals’ prior beliefs, whether religious or skeptical, might influence the patterns of such motivated religiosity and faith in supernatural agents. On this point, three different theoretical perspectives offered three different predictions (see Norenzayan and Hansen, 2006).
One perspective was basically the “no Atheists in foxholes” argument; that awareness of mortality makes people believe in any supernatural agent (e.g., God, Allah, Krishna), regardless of whether one was initially Christian, Muslim, Atheist, or Agnostic.
A second perspective basically argued the same, but allowed for the fact that Atheists simply don’t accept supernatural concepts as valid.
A third perspective was grounded in a coping mechanism proposed by TMT called “worldview defense,” by which people can manage the awareness of death by taking part in cultural worldviews that offer the opportunity for literal (e.g., heaven) or symbolic (i.e., perceiving oneself part of a valuable legacy, be it in sports, nationhood, academics, etc.) immortality. This worldview defense hypothesis predicts that the awareness of mortality should increase people’s faith in their initial beliefs, and increase rejection of alternative belief systems that might undermine the legitimacy or superiority of those beliefs. So, if a person followed a particular religion, let’s call it “Religion-X,” then reminding that person of death should motivate increased faith in the beliefs and deity(s) of Religion-X and rejection of alternative belief systems (Religion-Y or Religion-Z). Similarly, Atheists, who reject the supernatural, would be expected to remain squarely invested in their secular pursuits and thus not increase faith in religious/supernatural beliefs.
We tested these ideas across a series of studies with distinct samples of Christians, Muslims, and Atheists. In each study, all participants were first reminded either of death or of a control topic. Then, they reported their general religiosity (how religious they believed themselves to be and their faith in a higher power) and responded to a series of questions assessing their faith in God/Jesus (Christian beliefs), Allah (Muslim beliefs), and Buddha (Buddhist beliefs).
The Atheist sample flatly rejected all religious and supernatural beliefs regardless of whether or not they were reminded of mortality, reflecting the idea that Atheists are instead more invested in secular pursuits. This result conflicted with the “no Atheists in foxholes” hypothesis, but was consistent with observations that there are, in fact, Atheists in foxholes (see e.g., Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, 2011; Military Atheists and Secular Humanists, 2011; Military Religious Freedom Foundation, 2011). This finding was also consistent with research examining Atheists’ end-of-life preferences, in which Atheists were adamant that healthcare workers respect their rejection of religion (e.g., no bedside proselytizing) and recognize their secular value as “moral and caring individuals, committed to their families, humanity and nature” (Smith-Stoner, 2007, p. 926).
Figure 1. Death reminders increased Christians’ faith in Christian beliefs and decreased faith in Islamic and Buddhist beliefs; also increased Muslims’ faith in Islamic beliefs and decreased faith in Christian and Buddhist beliefs. Atheists did not express faith in any religious beliefs in the death reminder or control condition
But among the sample of Christians, those reminded of death (vs. control topic) increased general religiosity, strengthened their Christian faith in God/Jesus, and increased rejection of the Muslim and Buddhist faiths. A parallel process occurred in the Muslim sample. Muslims reminded of death (vs. control topic) increased general religiosity, strengthened their Islamic faith in Allah, and increased rejection of the Christian and Buddhist faiths. These findings are consistent with TMT’s worldview defense hypothesis, in which individuals’ pre-existing worldviews guide their patterns of motivated religiosity and supernatural agent beliefs. In contrast, these results conflicted with the two alternative hypotheses that death awareness would lead both Christians and Muslims alike to not only enhance their religiosity and belief in a higher power, but to broadly increase faith in all three Christian, Islamic, and Buddhist beliefs. So at least among the Christian and Muslim samples, as Nietzsche (1895/2003) observed, “One demands that no other kind of perspective shall be accorded any value after one has rendered one’s own sacrosanct with the names ‘God,’ ‘redemption,’ ‘eternity’” (p. 132).
Author Information: Kenneth Vail is a researcher and PhD candidate at University of Missouri-Columbia, working with Dr. Jamie Arndt. Mr. Vail received his BA in psychology at University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and his MA in social psychology at University of Missouri-Columbia. His work focuses primarily on understanding the nature of existentially motivated actions and attitudes in political, religious, and health domains. Correspondence: Kenneth E. Vail III, Department of Psychological Sciences, McAlester Hall, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, email: vail.kenneth@gmail.com
References
Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1986). The causes and consequences of a need for self-esteem: a terror management theory. In R. F. Baumeister (Ed.), Public self and private self (pp.189-212). New York: Springer-Verlag.
Ipsos/Reuters (2011). Supreme being(s), the afterlife and evolution. Retrieved on April 25, 2011, from http://www.ipsos-na.com/news-polls/pressrelease.aspx?id=5217
Landau, M. J., Greenberg, J., & Solomon, S. (2004). The motivational underpinnings of religion: Comment. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27, 743-744.
Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers (2011). Retrieved on May 20, 2011, from http://www.militaryatheists.org/
Military Atheists and Secular Humanists (2011). Retrieved on May 20, 2011, from http://usamash.org/
Military Religious Freedom Foundation (2011). Retrieved on May 20, 2011, from http://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/
Nietzsche (1895/2003). Twilight of the idols and The anti-Christ. New York, NY: Penguin Classics.
Norenzayan, A., & Hansen, I. G. (2006). Belief in supernatural agents in the face of death. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 174-187.
Pew (2012). “Nones” on the rise: One in five adults have no religious affiliation. Retrieved on October 11, 2012, from http://www.pewforum.org/Unaffiliated/nones-on-the-rise.aspx
Smith-Stoner, M. (2007). End-of-life preferences for Atheists. Journal of Palliative Medicine, 10, 923-928.
When People Prefer Injustice for All
By Jan-Willem van Prooijen, VU University Amsterdam
Photo Credit: The Profit
Most of us care a great deal about how we are treated by decision-makers. Whether it is a boss deciding on a possible promotion, a teacher deciding whether a student passes or fails an exam, or a judge deciding on a suspect’s guilt or innocence—people want decision-makers to use fair and just procedures when making important decisions. We expect, in particular, that decision-makers will make an effort to listen to our concerns, a phenomenon that psychologists refer to as “voice”. If we are allowed an opportunity to voice our opinion, we feel more fairly treated than if the decision-maker renders a judgment without first soliciting our input. Even when the decision does not go our way, we are more accepting of this unfavorable decision so long as we received voice, and believe that our views were taken seriously (Brockner & Wiesenfeld, 1996).
But, how much do we care about the way others are treated by decision-makers? When a decision-maker’s choices influence other people, do we still monitor his or her fairness, and judge the decision to be a fair one if others’ voice are heard? Or, do we judge a decision to be a fair one only if our voice is heard?
Fairness is in the eye of the beholder, and hence, personality matters in the question how people value fairness for themselves and others. Past research frequently distinguished between proselfs—a category of people who are mainly interested in maximizing self-interest, regardless of the consequences for others—versus prosocials, a category of people who value justice and equality between self and others. These previous studies were mostly in the context of dividing valuable resources, such as money, goods, or services. This literature reveals that, across many situations, proselfs make choices that offer the best prospects of maximizing profit for themselves, and prosocials make choices that may lead to fairness and equality between themselves and others (e.g., Van Lange, 1999). The general consensus is that prosocials are more concerned about justice—and thus more likely to care about the interests of others—than proselfs.
It makes intuitive sense that prosocials are also more likely to desire that decision-makers treat others fairly, and give them voice, when making decisions that are important to these others. But a recent study by Van Prooijen, Ståhl, Eek, and Van Lange (2012) shows that things are not that simple. Although prosocials certainly are more concerned about how others are treated than proselfs, this is not always in the best interest of these others: When it conflicts with their desire for equality, prosocials have a preference for their peers to not get an opportunity to voice their opinion.
In an experiment, participants were either given voice about how much of a valuable resource they should receive (i.e., lottery tickets to win a cash prize), or they were denied such a voice opportunity. Participants also received information about how another participant was treated by the experimenter: Participants read that this other participant similarly was either given or denied a voice opportunity (see also Van den Bos & Lind, 2001). There were thus four conditions, two in which the participants was treated the same as the other (both received voice, or both did not receive voice), and two in which the participant was treated differently than the other (the participant received voice and the other did not; or, the participant did not receive voice but the other did). Participants were then asked questions about how fair they believed the experimenter’s behavior was.
Participants who were classified as proselfs responded in a predictable way: How fair they believed that the experimenter behaved was determined mostly by how the experimenter behaved towards themselves. If proselfs received voice, they saw the experimenter more positively than when they were denied voice, and what happened to the other participant had little influence on their judgments. But perhaps more informative was how prosocials responded to this situation. Prosocials clearly cared more about what happened to the other participant: After having received voice, they found the experimenter fairer when the other received voice as well than if the other participant was denied voice. But more interesting was how prosocials responded when they were denied voice: In that situation they felt substantially better when the other participant was denied voice as well. After all, being both denied voice is equal, and hence according to prosocials, not entirely unfair.
The conclusion provides a new perspective to the question how personality influences people’s responses to the way others are treated. Proselfs do not desire that another person receives voice, nor do they necessarily desire that the other is denied voice; they simply are indifferent about how others treated. Prosocials, in contrast, are more concerned about the way others are treated, but this does not always have consequences that are conducive to the other persons’ interests. They want decision-makers to be consistent: Everyone should be treated the same, and hence, prosocials can accept a denial of voice provided that others are denied voice as well. Prosocials thus value equality, even when this implies “injustice for all”.
Author information:Dr. Jan-Willem van Prooijen is an associate professor at the Department of Social and Organizational Psychology of VU University Amsterdam. He is also affiliated as senior researcher with the NSCR (the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement). He completed his PhD in 2002 at Leiden University. His research focuses on the psychological factors that influence whether or not people evaluate social situations as fair or unfair .
Web Link for the Published Report at Sage Publications, Van Prooijen, J.-W., Ståhl, T., Eek, D., & Van Lange, P. A. M. (2012). Injustice for all or just or me? Social value orientation predicts responses to own versus other’s procedures. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 1247-1258.
References
Brockner, J., & Wiesenfeld, B. M. (1996). An integrative framework for explaining reactions to decisions: Interactive effects of outcomes and procedures. Psychological Bulletin, 120, 189-208.
Van den Bos, K., & Lind, E. A. (2001). The psychology of own versus other’s treatment: Self-oriented and other-oriented effects on perceptions of procedural justice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 1324-1333.
Van Lange, P. A. M. (1999). The pursuit of joint outcomes and equality in outcomes: An integrative model of social value orientation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 337-349.
Van Prooijen, J.-W., Ståhl, T., Eek, D., & Van Lange, P. A. M. (2012). Injustice for all or just or me? Social value orientation predicts responses to own versus other’s procedures. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 1247-1258.
