Browsing by Author "Bastian, Brock"

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    High economic inequality is linked to greater moralization
    (2024) Kirkland, Kelly; Van Lange, Paul A. M.; Gorenz, Drew; Blake, Khandis; Amiot, Catherine E.; Ausmees, Liisi; Baguma, Peter; Barry, Oumar; Becker, Maja; Bilewicz, Michal; Boonyasiriwat, Watcharaporn; Booth, Robert W.; Castelain, Thomas; Costantini, Giulio; Dimdins, Girts; Espinosa, Agustin; Finchilescu, Gillian; Fischer, Ronald; Friese, Malte; Gomez, Angel; Gonzalez, Roberto; Goto, Nobuhiko; Halama, Peter; Hurtado-Parrado, Camilo; Ilustrisimo, Ruby D.; Jiga-Boy, Gabriela M.; Kuppens, Peter; Loughnan, Steve; Mastor, Khairul A.; McLatchie, Neil; Novak, Lindsay M.; Onyekachi, Blessing N.; Rizwan, Muhammad; Schaller, Mark; Serafimovska, Eleonora; Suh, Eunkook M.; Swann Jr, William B.; Tong, Eddie M. W.; Torres, Ana; Turner, Rhiannon N.; Vauclair, Christin-Melanie; Vinogradov, Alexander; Wang, Zhechen; Yeung, Victoria Wai Lan; Bastian, Brock
    Throughout the 21st century, economic inequality is predicted to increase as we face new challenges, from changes in the technological landscape to the growing climate crisis. It is crucial we understand how these changes in inequality may affect how people think and behave. We propose that economic inequality threatens the social fabric of society, in turn increasing moralization-that is, the greater tendency to employ or emphasize morality in everyday life-as an attempt to restore order and control. Using longitudinal data from X, formerly known as Twitter, our first study demonstrates that high economic inequality is associated with greater use of moral language online (e.g. the use of words such as "disgust", "hurt", and "respect'). Study 2 then examined data from 41 regions around the world, generally showing that higher inequality has a small association with harsher moral judgments of people's everyday actions. Together these findings demonstrate that economic inequality is linked to the tendency to see the world through a moral lens.
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    Moral Expansiveness Around the World: The Role of Societal Factors Across 36 Countries
    (SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC, 2022) Kirkland, Kelly; Crimston, Charlie R.; Jetten, Jolanda; Rudnev, Maksim; Acevedo-Triana, Cesar; Amiot, Catherine E.; Ausmees, Liisi; Baguma, Peter; Barry, Oumar; Becker, Maja; Bilewicz, Michal; Boonyasiriwat, Watcharaporn; Castelain, Thomas; Costantini, Giulio; Dimdins, Girts; Espinosa, Agustin; Finchilescu, Gillian; Fischer, Ronald; Friese, Malte; Gastardo-Conaco, Maria Cecilia; Gomez, Angel; Gonzalez, Roberto; Goto, Nobuhiko; Halama, Peter; Jiga-Boy, Gabriela M.; Kuppens, Peter; Loughnan, Steve; Markovik, Marijana; Mastor, Khairul A.; McLatchie, Neil; Novak, Lindsay M.; Onyekachi, Blessing N.; Peker, Mujde; Rizwan, Muhammad; Schaller, Mark; Suh, Eunkook M.; Talaifar, Sanaz; Tong, Eddie M. W.; Torres, Ana; Turner, Rhiannon N.; Van Lange, Paul A. M.; Vauclair, Christin-Melanie; Vinogradov, Alexander; Wang, Zhechen; Yeung, Victoria Wai Lan; Bastian, Brock
    What are the things that we think matter morally, and how do societal factors influence this? To date, research has explored several individual-level and historical factors that influence the size of our 'moral circles.' There has, however, been less attention focused on which societal factors play a role. We present the first multi-national exploration of moral expansiveness-that is, the size of people's moral circles across countries. We found low generalized trust, greater perceptions of a breakdown in the social fabric of society, and greater perceived economic inequality were associated with smaller moral circles. Generalized trust also helped explain the effects of perceived inequality on lower levels of moral inclusiveness. Other inequality indicators (i.e., Gini coefficients) were, however, unrelated to moral expansiveness. These findings suggest that societal factors, especially those associated with generalized trust, may influence the size of our moral circles.
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    Social mindfulness predicts concern for nature and immigrants across 36 nations
    (2022) Kirkland, Kelly; Van Lange, Paul A. M.; Van Doesum, Niels J.; Acevedo-Triana, Cesar; Amiot, Catherine E.; Ausmees, Liisi; Baguma, Peter; Barry, Oumar; Becker, Maja; Bilewicz, Michal; Boonyasiriwat, Watcharaporn; Castelain, Thomas; Costantini, Giulio; Dimdins, Girts; Espinosa, Agustin; Finchilescu, Gillian; Fischer, Ronald; Friese, Malte; Gomez, Angel; Gonzalez, Roberto; Goto, Nobuhiko; Halama, Peter; Ilustrisimo, Ruby D.; Jiga-Boy, Gabriela M.; Kuppens, Peter; Loughnan, Steve; Markovik, Marijana; Mastor, Khairul A.; McLatchie, Neil; Novak, Lindsay M.; Onyishi, Ike E.; Peker, Mujde; Rizwan, Muhammad; Schaller, Mark; Suh, Eunkook M.; Swann, William B., Jr.; Tong, Eddie M. W.; Torres, Ana; Turner, Rhiannon N.; Vauclair, Christin-Melanie; Vinogradov, Alexander; Wang, Zhechen; Yeung, Victoria Wai Lan; Bastian, Brock
    People cooperate every day in ways that range from largescale contributions that mitigate climate change to simple actions such as leaving another individual with choice - known as social mindfulness. It is not yet clear whether and how these complex and more simple forms of cooperation relate. Prior work has found that countries with individuals who made more socially mindful choices were linked to a higher country environmental performance - a proxy for complex cooperation. Here we replicated this initial finding in 41 samples around the world, demonstrating the robustness of the association between social mindfulness and environmental performance, and substantially built on it to show this relationship extended to a wide range of complex cooperative indices, tied closely to many current societal issues. We found that greater social mindfulness expressed by an individual was related to living in countries with more social capital, more community participation and reduced prejudice towards immigrants. Our findings speak to the symbiotic relationship between simple and more complex forms of cooperation in societies.
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    What Makes a Group Worth Dying for? Identity Fusion Fosters Perception of Familial Ties, Promoting Self-Sacrifice
    (2014) Swann, William B., Jr.; Buhrmester, Michael D.; Gomez, Angel; Jetten, Jolanda; Bastian, Brock; Vazquez, Alexandra; Ariyanto, Amarina; Besta, Tomasz; Christ, Oliver; Cui, Lijuan; Finchilescu, Gillian; Gonzalez, Roberto; Goto, Nobuhiko; Hornsey, Matthew; Sharma, Sushama; Susianto, Harry; Zhang, Airong
    We sought to identify the mechanisms that cause strongly fused individuals (those who have a powerful, visceral feeling of oneness with the group) to make extreme sacrifices for their group. A large multinational study revealed a widespread tendency for fused individuals to endorse making extreme sacrifices for their country. Nevertheless, when asked which of several groups they were most inclined to die for, most participants favored relatively small groups, such as family, over a large and extended group, such as country (Study 1). To integrate these findings, we proposed that a common mechanism accounts for the willingness of fused people to die for smaller and larger groups. Specifically, when fused people perceive that group members share core characteristics, they are more likely to project familial ties common in smaller groups onto the extended group, and this enhances willingness to fight and die for the larger group. Consistent with this, encouraging fused persons to focus on shared core characteristics of members of their country increased their endorsement of making extreme sacrifices for their country. This pattern emerged whether the core characteristics were biological (Studies 2 and 3) or psychological (Studies 4 - 6) and whether participants were from China, India, the United States, or Spain. Further, priming shared core values increased the perception of familial ties among fused group members, which, in turn, mediated the influence of fusion on endorsement of extreme sacrifices for the country (Study 5). Study 6 replicated this moderated mediation effect whether the core characteristics were positive or negative. Apparently, for strongly fused persons, recognizing that other group members share core characteristics makes extended groups seem "family like" and worth dying for.