Browsing by Author "Swann, William B., Jr."

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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.