Open research questions in Social and Intergroup Psychology

What the literature leaves open

• Based on the findings of this study, the following recommendations can be developed for policymakers, educational administrators, teacher education institutions, and researchers. First, the findings show that educators’ levels of organizational dissent are high and that articulated dissent, in particular, is a constructive process that contributes to institutional development. Accordingly, school administrators are advised to consider dissent not as a behavior that should be suppressed but as a part of organizational learning and development. A participatory and democratic organizational climate should be established in schools where teachers can express their opinions freely. Strengthening open communication channels, improving feedback mechanisms, and increasing teachers’ participation in decision-making processes are important in this regard. According to the findings, union membership has a significant effect on both political socialization and organizational dissent. Therefore, it is recommended that teacher unions take a more active role as stakeholders in the processes of developing and implementing educational policies. Dialogue mechanisms that will strengthen cooperation between school administrations and unions should be developed to support a culture of shared decision-making in educational institutions. In line with the finding that age and professional experience increase both political socialization and organizational dissent, mentoring programs and professional learning communities should be established where experienced teachers can share their professional knowledge and critical perspectives with younger teachers. Such practices may contribute to the development of organizational awareness and constructive feedback skills among novice teachers. The lack of significant differences based on contextual variables such as school type, location, transportation conditions, and education individual awareness and organizational consciousness are more decisive. Therefore, in-service training programs should place greater emphasis on democratic leadership, critical thinking, organizational communication, and conflict management. Such training may contribute to the development of a culture of constructive dissent across different school contexts. level suggests that teachers’ Considering the finding that teachers with higher levels of political interest display more constructive dissent behaviors, teacher education programs should include more courses and practices aimed at developing civic awareness, democratic participation, and critical thinking skills. In this way, teachers may be encouraged to demonstrate constructive, solution-oriented dissent behaviors that support institutional development. Finally, future research should examine political socialization and organizational dissent across different educational levels, in different cultural contexts, and through the use of qualitative research methods. Such studies may increase the generalizability of the findings and provide a deeper understanding of the topic.

  Examining the Relationship Between Educators' Political Socialization and Organizational Dissent · 2026 · DOI

• As one limitation of the current research, the temporal distance between the measurement time points (two and six months) was rather short for examining processes such as convergence, changes in relationship satisfaction, and relationship dissolution. Second, both samples had a high mean relationship duration, which made it difficult to examine the role of convergence in the beginning of relationships. Third, there was some non-random attrition in regard to conspiracy mentality across both studies. Fourth, the sample was mainly from western Europe, specifically Germany and the UK, leaving open the possibility of cultural differences in the extent and consequences of ideological homophily. Fifth, although we corrected for some demographic traits such as age and education level, it may also have been interesting to include economic variables such as income, wealth, or economic status. Finally, is moving quickly and methodological more sophisticated RSA-based models such as cubic response surface analysis (Humberg et al. 2022) would allow testing more complex hypotheses such as leveldependent congruence effects. This approach could be especially promising in examining if and how variables differ in the optimal level of congruence depending on their relational implications. innovation the present In addition to the ideas discussed as part of the limitations, research offers multiple pathways for future studies. Having established that partners exhibit substantial similarity in generalized political attitudes, future research could investigate its origins. As this study obtained no support for most of the proposed alternative explanations, it may be especially worthwhile focusing on the mechanism of active assortment. Such research should establish when and through which specific processes ideological similarity influences relationship formation. To examine these questions, experimental paradigms like the manipulation of fictitious dating profiles or speed-dating events could be employed. Additionally, research could investigate why individuals would prefer to enter a relationship with others who share their ideological attitudes. Does it provide them with psychological benefits or is it simply the result of an information processing heuristic that assumes that others who share our attitudes must be more reasonable people than those who do not? Moreover, future research should be dedicated to the consequences of ideological congruence in relationships on the level of the dyad and society as a whole. For instance, this research could examine whether partner similarity in these dimensions influences relationship Miculka and Imhoff International Review of Social Psychology DOI: 10.5334/irsp.1102 outcomes such as relationship dissolution or childrearing results. At societal level, its contribution to political polarization deserves research attention. further Moreover, there may also be reciprocal causal effects, such as growing political polarization causing an increase in partner similarity. Homophily research across other cultures or over longer timeframes could provide further insight into this question. In summary, addressing the context-dependency of the results found in this study would substantially enrich the understanding of ideological homophily.

  Dyadic Dynamic in Generalized Political Attitudes: Homophily, Relationship Satisfaction, and Convergence · 2026 · DOI

• Although the goal of the present research was to explore the wide variety of ways individuals might reduce dissonance when exposed to belief disconfirming information, we should note that the samples were not representative of the US population, and results might differ with a more representative sample. They might also differ during the midst of an election, where partisans’ passions may further fuel dissonance discomfort and dissonance reduction when their dear leader acts in ways that violate standards (e.g., morals, laws). Also, their leader’s opponent may provide additional consonant Journal of Social and Political Psychology 2026, Vol. 14(1), 33–56 https://doi.org/10.5964/jspp.16085 Harmon-Jones, Willardt, Denson, & Harmon-Jones 53 cognitions that bolster support for their preferred candidate (e.g., the opponent is old and incoherent). In addition, researchers have noted that some MTurk participants might provide low quality data (Hauser et al., 2019). Studies 1 and 2 used MTurk participants but Study 3 used Prolific participants, who generally provide higher quality data (Douglas et al., 2023). The results from Study 3 were very similar to those obtained in Studies 1 and 2. Also, we carefully read the open-ended responses from participants and all participants (included in the analyses) provided sensible answers, suggesting that their responses were not of low quality. When this research was initiated, we assumed that supporters of Trump would perceive his sexual assaults, abuses of power, and incitement of insurrection as immoral and/or illegal. However, this may not be the case, and these studies do not provide any direct evidence of this. Our assumption, however, is supported by other research that has found that over 74% of Americans regard the issue of sexual assault as very important (Pew Research, 2017). In addition, many of Trump’s supporters are Christians (73% of our sample), and 2 of their 10 commandments (i.e., adultery, coveting neighbor’s wife) concern sexual behaviors that seem much less immoral/harmful than sexual assault. With regard to Trump’s illegal behaviors, we trust that most Americans find acting in illegal ways to be dissonant with their beliefs. Indeed, for the question we asked about following rules, the mean was 5.92 (SD = 1.12) on a 7-point scale, suggesting that most participants believe in following the rules and laws. Future research should more directly test this assumption.

  Responses to belief-conflicting information: Justification of support for Donald Trump · 2026 · DOI

• corporating additional perspectives, such as media representation or dissemination studies, to provide a more comprehensive understanding and to test The corpus of 25 empirical articles, published bethe robustness of the observed deficit orientation.

  Reviewing the Stigma: A Critical Analysis of Conspiracy Belief in Social Science Research · 2026 · DOI

• The current study has several limitations. First, the study was conducted during a time when hate crimes against Asian Americans were on an uptick (Pillai et al., 2021). As racial relations and social structure change over time (Perry, 2002), it is important to continue to monitor how the public’s reactions to hate crimes may change longi- tudinally. Second, the use of a vignette may reduce the realism of the incident and introduce concerns about artificiality. The use of experimental conditions without a clear control group may also limit the conclusions that may be drawn from the results. Third, while the current study focuses on one common type of crime targeting Asian women, Asian women are also frequent victims of other types of hate crimes, such as physical assault and verbal harassment (Pillai et al., 2021); research should also consider how people respond to different forms of victimization. Fourth, while 1 3To conform or not to conform: Experimental evidence on stereotypes… we manipulated traits associated with passivity due to their relevance to perceptions of hate crime victims (e.g., Erentzen & Schuller, 2024), this design means that we were unable to assess the possible effects of other stereotypes, including those that may imply other, less “passive” characteristics (e.g., perceptions of Asian women as high-achieving or manipulative). Future research should thus examine congruence with a wider variety of stereotypes. Fifth, as the country of origin manipulation did not specify the ethnicity of the U.S.-born victim, respondents may have assumed the victim was of a “prototypical” Asian background (i.e., East Asian rather than South Asian; Goh & McCue, 2021), perhaps informing perceived congruence. Sixth, and relatedly, while a goal of the study was to explore responses to victims of different Asian (American) backgrounds, the scenario described in the vignette may have been better aligned with East Asian rather than South Asian stereotypes or victimization experiences (e.g., it may be unlikely that someone would refer to an Indian women using “Oriental” as a slur)—although supplemental analyses comparing only East Asian-born to U.S.-born victims returned similar results to those examining all four categories. Along similar lines, while we assumed that foreign-born status reflected “perpetual foreigner” stereotypes, this is an empirical question, particularly for mem- bers of less “prototypical” groups (e.g., the Indian-born victim). Finally, the top- down framing of the vignette, in which the offense is identified as an assault and the characters as “defendant” and “victim,” may have informed respondents’ perceptions of the scenario; future research should explore how alternative framings of the events (e.g., presenting the information without naming an offense, or referring to the char- acters without labeling them as defendant and victim) might be associated with differ- ent responses to the offense, defendant, or victim. This may be especially important given that relatively few hate crimes are reported to the police or prosecuted.

  To conform or not to conform: Experimental evidence on stereotypes and stereotype congruence in the context of hate crime against Asian women · 2026 · DOI

• It should be noted that we confined confirmatory hypothesis tests to the female sample. This decision reflects the limited research on men’s experiences of gender discrimination making it difficult to formulate firm a priori hypotheses for the male sample. Nevertheless, we aimed to ensure the measure’s relevance across genders from the outset of the development process, for instance, by qualitatively collecting the experiences of both women and men. Similarly, little is known about how advantaging gender discrimination is related to mental health outcomes and working conditions and so, a priori hypotheses were also not posited regarding the relationships of the GENDEX-Adv with these variables. In light of the present exploratory findings, future research, could provide further insights into the complex pattern of associations with psychological distress and self-esteem. We also note that the item development and validation samples were drawn exclusively from Western, English-speaking countries. The application of the GENDEX in other cultural contexts should therefore be approached with caution. Prior to broader use, future studies should perform cross-cultural validations or, if necessary, undertake cultural adaptations of the instrument. As with other self-report measures, responses to the GENDEX can be influenced by perceptual, memory, and response biases. While asking for exact event counts is considered a reliable method for assessing event frequencies—due to its lower evaluative component compared to relative frequency judgments (Schaeffer & Presser, 2003)—it may pose cognitive DISADVANTAGING AND ADVANTAGING GENDER DISCRIMINATION 36 challenges for respondents. In this regard, high correlations between some items (see Supplementary Material) may indicate that respondents refer to the same broader experience when endorsing those items. This does not necessarily indicate item redundancy, as distinct discriminatory acts may be likely to co-occur while remaining conceptually distinguishable (e.g., “being ignored”, item 16, and “interrupted”, item 17; reflecting more passive versus active forms of exclusion and reported independently in our qualitative survey for item development). Similarly, in trauma research, co-occurring events are counted separately as part of cumulative exposure (e.g., car accident and sudden death of loved one; Kubany et al., 2000). At the same time, we acknowledge that some conceptual overlap between items is possible, reflecting the complexity of capturing real-world discrimination experiences. Beyond situational co- occurrence, person-based factors such as individual vigilance may also contribute to inter-item correlations (see Measure Development). Regarding perceptual biases, we argued that individual differences in interpreting ambiguous events as discriminatory are inherent to the construct of gender discrimination experience, rather than mere confounds. Still, for researchers seeking a more direct assessment of gender discrimination frequency, the GENDEX can serve as a checklist, for instance in experience sampling designs. A further consideration concerns the length of the GENDEX. Considerable efforts were made to achieve high content validity (e.g., inductive item generation, expert review). This is particularly critical for formative measures, in which items are distinct and non-redundant, and therefore indispensable for adequate coverage of the latent construct (Diamantopoulos & Winklhofer, 2001). Accordingly, the relatively large number of GENDEX items is a direct consequence of the conceptual breadth of the construct gender discrimination experiences, and eliminating items (e.g., for feasibility reasons) is not recommended from a validity perspective. This is further underscored by the observed prevalence rates (see Supplementary Material), as for DISADVANTAGING AND ADVANTAGING GENDER DISCRIMINATION 37 each event, at least 15% of respondents reported having experienced it. Nevertheless, future research may explore purpose-driven adaptions of the GENDEX. If researchers are primarily interested in highly prevalent forms of gender discrimination, item selection could be guided by the observed prevalence rates. For instance, selecting only items for which both the disadvantaging and advantaging event was reported by more than 30% of respondents would result in the elimination of several items (i.e., 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14, 19, 21, and 31). However, this selection would exclude all items of the Opportunities facet, highlighting that such reductions inevitably narrow the scope of the construct—a notable limitation.

  Are We Only Telling Half the Story? Measuring Experiences of Disadvantaging and Advantaging Gender Discrimination · 2026 · DOI

• Using data from a large national sample (N ~ 30,000) of Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and Buddhists in the rarely studied context of India, we found that an inclusive and tolerant conception of Indian national identity was strongly endorsed among all groups, while an exclusive Hindu national identity was more strongly endorsed by the Hindu majority than religious minorities.

  Conceptions of national identity and interreligious contact avoidance in differing domains: A multigroup analysis of majority and minority religious groups in India · 2026 · DOI

• Despite its limitations, the present research has important implications for understanding the relationships among lin- guistic framing, social cognition, and moral reasoning. Victimhood has become central to political and moral debate, with competing groups claiming victim status to elevate their grievances and delegitimize their opponents [41]. Our results show that explicit victim framing is more than a rhetorical flourish: across five diverse scenarios, the victim label genuinely shaped how a substantial proportion of people evaluated moral disputes, even when controlling for preexisting attitudes that strongly predicted evaluations on their own. These findings sit at the intersection of three broader themes. First, they add to a growing literature on the power of basic lexical choices to influence attitudes and decision-making [11]. Second, they align with the view that pragmatic inference plays a key role in how people interpret language and, consequently, how subtle linguistic choices shape social judg- ments [2,9–11,44]. And third, they carry practical stakes: understanding when, how, and why labeling someone a victim shapes observer reactions is directly relevant to journalists, advocates, and policymakers who discuss morally charged issues. That said, real-world communication about allegations of wrongdoing typically includes narrative repetition, visual and social media, source credibility information, and contextual factors that our studies could not capture. Therefore, our findings should be understood as demonstrating the potential influence of one specific linguistic strategy within a broader communicative ecosystem. Looking ahead, several lines of future research would strengthen and extend the present findings. First, directly manip- ulating pragmatic cues such as source credibility would help test whether the effects of victim framing track predictions of the social-pragmatic account specifically. Relatedly, future work could assess individual differences in pragmatic sensitivity to victim labeling and examine whether such sensitivity predicts the magnitude of victim framing effects, as in recent work on grammatical framing [44]. This would provide a more direct test of the role of pragmatic inference in victim framing than the post-hoc citer classification used here. Additionally, a longitudinal study design with multiple sessions could test whether the modest victim framing effects we observed accumulate or attenuate with repeated exposure to the framing narrative. Finally, extending the paradigm to other languages and non-U.S. samples would help determine whether victim framing operates similarly in cultural contexts where norms about victimhood, authority, and gender differ. Ongoing work in our labs is beginning to address several of these questions. In the meantime, the present findings serve as a reminder to all who communicate about morally charged issues: language choices matter, even seemingly small ones.

  Victim framing shapes attitudes across diverse contexts · 2026 · DOI

• A limitation of this study is the fact that although the split‑half reliabilities were acceptable and the pattern of results replicated those obtained with the full four‑item subscales in Study 1, the shortened format of the social identification scale employed in this 18 study inevitably narrows the content domain.

  When the Nation is Too Important to You. Collective Narcissism Mediates the Relationship Between National Identity Centrality and Negative Intergroup Outcomes · 2026 · DOI

• Our studies, although they include large representative nationwide samples and experiments, have certain limitations. In Study 1, which was a reanalysis of previous findings, we observed relatively low reliability for the centrality subscale, which may have affected the results. In the next three studies, however, this problem did not occur, and all reliabilities were satisfactory. In Study 2, in turn, only Cameron’s shortened identification scale (two items instead of four for each component) was used. Future studies shall employ full-scale measurements of identification. A key limitation of Studies 1 and 2 lies in their correlational design. This limitation is not unique to our work but reflects a broader issue in the field, as most research on collective narcissism relies on correlational data. Accordingly, the mediation models we tested in these 30 studies should be interpreted as describing statistical associations rather than causal relationships. To address this limitation, we subsequently conducted two experiments, which confirmed our hypotheses and provided evidence for a causal link. As a result, we can characterize national collective narcissism as a consequence of cognitive centrality of national identity. We did not aim to experimentally examine the relationship between national collective narcissism and negative social outcomes, as these relationships are already widely described in the literature (e.g., Golec de Zavala & Cichocka, 2012; Górska et al., 2022). Another limitation of all our studies is that although we found that the centrality of national identity is associated with national collective narcissism, this association may depend on the normative content of that identity – that is, what people identify with. We focused on two nations – the Poles and the Greeks. Currently, these nations have a lot in common. For example, both have elected populist governments in recent decades (e.g., Aslanidis & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2016; Stanley & Cześnik, 2019). Because collective narcissism is associated with support for populist parties (see Cichocka & Cisłak, 2020), the relationship between centrality of national identity and national collective narcissism may look different in countries where support for populist parties is less common, as well as in other historical periods. Future research should therefore replicate and extend our model across diverse contexts to clarify the factors that shape this relationship and assess the extent to which it is universal. Moreover, previous methodological work on social identity emphasizes that identification strength, even within the same category, does not capture what group membership means to individuals, and that identity content can vary across people. In particular, Jugert et al. (2024) argue that social identities are cognitively organized around subjective group prototypes that help demarcate perceived boundaries of belonging. Public narratives likely influence these representations. Consequently, associations between identification strength and intergroup outcomes can differ depending on the content attached to national identity (e.g., more civic/value-based vs more ancestry-based/ethnocultural), and individuals may hold identity conceptions that combine both inclusive and exclusionary features. In the current studies, we measured components of national identification but we did not directly assess the content of national identity. Future research could integrate content-sensitive approaches into survey designs, for example, by adding open-ended questions on what it means to be a Pole / Greek, followed by systematic content coding (see Jugert et al., 2024).

  When the Nation is Too Important to You. Collective Narcissism Mediates the Relationship Between National Identity Centrality and Negative Intergroup Outcomes · 2026 · DOI

• Therefore, the persistence and stability of the intervention effect over time remain unclear. Future research is needed to empirically verify this integrated hypothesis by integrating hormonal assays, neurophysiological measurements, and assessments of gender role beliefs into the experimental design.

  The Intervention Effects of Self-Perspective Imaginative Empathy on Mental Illness Stigma in Chinese Undergraduates · 2026 · DOI

• Our studies are not without limitations and caveats. One important point to draw to the reader’s attention is that, although we interpreted the IAT D-score zero point as reflecting the presence or absence of intergroup bias, we recognize that this assumption has been subject to criticism (e.g., Blanton et al., 2009, 2015). Moreover, IAT results are not universally understood as directly assessing effects driven by stereotypes. Accordingly, it could be argued that differences in results across tasks may arise because each is configured to assess related but distinct constructs. Nevertheless, it should be emphasized that both tasks have been widely described as experimental measures of implicit racial or intergroup bias (see Lai & Wilson, 2021), even though their underlying processes only partially overlap (Ito et al., 2015; Volpert-Esmond et al., 2019, 2020). An important caveat in our results is that we lack data to explain why, despite reduced control over their responses, participants in the WIT did not show evidence of increased bias in the presence of others compared to the isolated condition. Another result that warrants further investigation is that, in the alone condition, we did not observe the typical overlap of control for both primes associated with the WIT (see Payne, 2001, 2005). These two unexpected results may be related, as it appears that only in the alone condition does the prime modulate the levels of control exerted over stereotypic responses. In this isolated context, intergroup bias did not depend on control failures over the activated response but rather on reduced control activation for Black faces compared to White faces. Future studies should aim to clarify these potentially relevant cues regarding how our isolated minds exert cognitive control differently. 13 In future studies, more detailed process measures can be incorporated. The procedures of the IAT could be adapted to allow for the reliable calculation of the PDP components (e.g., Ito et al., 2015) or even broader approaches such as the Quad model (Conrey et al., 2005) and the ReAL model (Meissner & Rothermund, 2013) for both tasks. However, evidence has also suggested differences in how well these models fit the performance data for the two target tasks. For instance, the Quad model appears to provide a better fit for IAT data, while the PDP model offers a better fit for WIT data (Payne & Bishara, 2009). Although merely fitting these models does not yield meaningful insights into the validity of the conceptualization – since each model parameter must be independently validated for psychological significance (see Hütter & Klauer, 2016) – these analytic approaches may, in the future, provide greater insight into the mechanisms underlying the apparent differences between the two experimental conditions. In conclusion, our studies investigate the replication of evidence for intergroup bias in contexts where individuals are isolated from others. The results suggest that stereotypes do indeed bias our responses, even when we are alone. However, the data also indicate that this bias may be less pronounced in social isolation than in the presence of others, where we tend to respond more quickly and may show less control over the content of our responses. To better understand these social facilitation and inhibition effects, further research is necessary.

  Social presence and isolation effects on intergroup bias: Task matters · 2026 · DOI

• The present experiments are not without limitations (Table 2). Out of necessity, all experiments relied on somewhat contrived setups to induce dissociations between implicit and explicit Running head: UNCONSCIOUS CONTENT IN IMPLICIT EVALUATION 61 evaluations of novel targets. Such dissociations are atypical: Manipulations that shift one type of evaluation usually shift the other in the same direction (Kurdi et al., 2022). In fact, in our search for paradigms capable of producing the required dissociation, we conducted no fewer than 17 unsuccessful pretests — a set of findings that we hope to report separately in future work. So, although inducing an implicit–explicit dissociation was a necessary precondition for a meaningful test of the present hypotheses, such dissociations are the exception rather than the rule and appear to require rather artificial conditions. A further limitation concerns the generalizability of these findings from novel to familiar targets. The processes underlying predictions of implicit evaluations may differ when the targets are well-known rather than newly encountered. For example, in the case of familiar social categories like racial groups, participants may already have reflected on their implicit evaluations prior to assessment, perhaps through exposure to implicit bias education or related activities (Lai et al., 2023). Introspective access to the mental contents underlying implicit evaluations may therefore depend on extended reflection, repeated experience, or deliberate training, and may not be achievable within the confines of a brief experimental session. If so, introspective access might emerge with sufficient time and motivation, potentially combined with targeted interventions to enhance introspective ability. Finally, no empirical data can, in principle, definitely rule out the existence of introspective access under some conditions or for some individuals. One reason is that awareness cannot be assessed directly; rather, it can only be inferred from behavioral responses. The responses observed here — namely, inaccurate predictions under conditions designed to block as many nonintrospective routes to accuracy as possible — are at odds with consistent introspective access, but do not necessarily entail its absence. A second reason is methodological: Like virtually all Running head: UNCONSCIOUS CONTENT IN IMPLICIT EVALUATION 62 experimental work in psychology, our inferences are drawn at the level of samples embedded in specific experimental contexts, not at the level of individual participants under all possible conditions. It therefore remains possible that some participants introspectively accessed the mental contents underlying their implicit evaluations, or that such access would emerge in other contexts not examined here. For these reasons, we see the present work as continuing — not concluding — the quest to understand whether the mental contents underlying implicit evaluations are accessible to conscious introspection, and if so, when, to what extent, and for whom. At present, however, we — including those of us who started this project with strong priors favoring the possibility of introspective access — see the accumulated evidence as most consistent with the classic conceptualization of implicit evaluations as arising from “introspectively unidentified (or inaccurately identified) traces of past experience” (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995, p. 8).

  Unconscious mental content in implicit evaluation: Evidence from misprediction · 2026 · DOI

• While existing research documents shifts in spending patterns and increased price sensitivity during geopolitical uncertainty, the psychological mechanisms driving these changes remain underexplored.

  Geopolitical Uncertainty and Spending Behavior: Examining the Roles of Consumer Risk Perception, Coping Appraisal, and Resilience · 2025 · DOI

• Abstract Although performative activism is often disparaged as actions meant to increase the participant's social status rather than make real social change, not much is known about what defines it, and who, why, and where people participate in performative activism, and indeed, if it is a bad thing.

  Is performative activism always bad? A qualitative case study · 2025 · DOI

• We test our hypotheses in two nationally representative conjoint experiments during the COVID‐19 pandemic, focusing on people with disabilities (PWD), a significant and understudied marginalized group.

  Who Deserves Scarce Health and Education Resources? How Policy Context Shapes Target Group Deservingness · 2025 · DOI

• Despite extensive research on personality and demographic factors influencing far-right support, the role of ethnic-racial socialization (ERS) remains under-explored, particularly in white families.

  Ethnic-Racial Socialization and Far-Right Support Among White Young Adults · 2025 · DOI

• Prior work has used and expanded on the IAT to capture implicit status beliefs, but tests of the specific images and words used to denote status and gender are lacking.

  Measuring Gender Status Beliefs · 2024 · DOI

• Criminological research consistently supports that reflected appraisals in various domains predict delinquency, yet, extant work has not fully explored theoretical nuances outlined in traditional symbolic interactionism, specifically concerning how conditioning factors are involved in role-taking among peers.

  Symbolic interactionism, role-identities, and delinquency: examining the moderating role of social rewards · 2023 · DOI

• Abstract Deliberation is widely believed to enhance democracy by helping to refine the ‘public will’, moving its participants' policy attitudes closer to their ‘full-consideration’ policy attitudes – those they would hypothetically hold with unlimited information, to which they gave unlimited reflection.

  Deliberative Distortions? Homogenization, Polarization, and Domination in Small Group Discussions · 2022 · DOI

• Contrary to our predictions, we found evidence that interoceptive sensitivity may instead predict greater political liberalism (versus conservatism), although this association was primarily limited to the American sample.

  Sensitive liberals and unfeeling conservatives? <i>Interoceptive sensitivity predicts political liberalism</i> · 2022 · DOI

• Discussions of controversial political issues (CPI) provide opportunities to examine the interplay between emotional and cognitive components, the former having rarely been studied.

  Beyond allowing ventilation: How to connect the social-emotional and the cognitive in teachers’ handling of controversial political issues (CPI)? · 2021 · DOI

• Does life satisfaction (LS) predict people’s likelihood of participating in politics? Although the relationship between LS and political participation (PP) has been widely debated, its correlation and causality remain inconclusive.

  Life satisfaction and the conventionality of political participation: The moderation effect of post-materialist value orientation · 2021 · DOI

• In this study, we build on Harrison and Michelson's (2017) theory of dissonant identity priming (TDIP) and examine an understudied topic, the effectiveness of National Football League (NFL) elite pro‐immigration statements in shifting individuals’ perspectives on immigration topics.

  Sports elites, counter‐stereotypical statements, and immigration attitudes · 2021 · DOI

• We tested whether ideological differences are more likely to emerge in attitudes characterized by threat, complexity, morality, political ideology, religious ideology, or harm (as compared to objects not characterized by these domains) using both explicit and implicit measures of 190 attitude objects.

  Identifying the domains of ideological similarities and differences in attitudes · 2020 · DOI

Most-cited papers in Social and Intergroup Psychology

• Social Desirability Bias and the Validity of Indirect Questioning · Journal of Consumer Research · 1993 · 2,049 citations
• Threatened egotism, narcissism, self-esteem, and direct and displaced aggression: Does self-love or self-hate lead to violence? · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · 1998 · 1,354 citations
• Prejudice Reduction: What Works? A Review and Assessment of Research and Practice · Annual Review of Psychology · 2008 · 879 citations
• Comments on the motivational status of self‐esteem in social identity and intergroup discrimination · European Journal of Social Psychology · 1988 · 827 citations
• The essence of innocence: Consequences of dehumanizing Black children. · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · 2014 · 806 citations
• Two ways to the top: Evidence that dominance and prestige are distinct yet viable avenues to social rank and influence. · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · 2012 · 788 citations
• Stalking the perfect measure of implicit self-esteem: The blind men and the elephant revisited? · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · 2000 · 704 citations
• The Personal Sense of Power · Journal of Personality · 2011 · 622 citations
• Culture and Identity‐Protective Cognition: Explaining the White‐Male Effect in Risk Perception · Journal of Empirical Legal Studies · 2007 · 621 citations
• Does Venting Anger Feed or Extinguish the Flame? Catharsis, Rumination, Distraction, Anger, and Aggressive Responding · Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin · 2002 · 580 citations

Most recent work

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• How Mega-threats Influence Workplace Cooperation: Effect of #BlackLivesMatter Salience on Cooperation among and between Black and White Coworkers · Academy of Management Journal · 2026
• Measuring neoliberal individualism, instrumentality, and competition: Development and validation of the Neoliberal Ideological Beliefs Questionnaire (NLBQ) · Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy · 2026
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• Fat people’s expectations of prejudice: predictors of anticipated prejudice from various groups · Fat Studies · 2026
• Utilizing restorative justice to address ongoing conflicts: the roles of malleability beliefs, hope, and civic engagement · International Journal of Conflict Management · 2026
• Unconscious mental content in implicit evaluation: Evidence from misprediction · 2026
• Men talk less than women during multitasking · Psychological Research · 2026

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