Kimberly Rios Morrison

Predicting Whether Multiculturalism Positively or Negatively Influences White Americans’ Intergroup Attitudes: The Role of Ethnic Identification

Multiculturalism, or the belief that racial and ethnic differences should be acknowledged and appreciated, has been met with both positive reactions (e.g., decreased prejudice) and negative reactions (e.g., perceptions of threat) from dominant group members. The present research proposes that multiculturalism can either positively or negatively influence White Americans’ intergroup attitudes depending on their degree of ethnic identification. In Studies 1 and 2, White Americans primed with multiculturalism exhibited higher social dominance orientation (Study 1) and greater prejudice (Study 2), especially when they identified strongly with their ethnicity. In Study 3, perceptions of threat to group values were found to mediate the relation between multiculturalism, ethnic identification, and prejudice among White Americans. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for threat perceptions, ethnic identification, and conceptions of diversity.

A Spiral of Silence for Some: Attitude Certainty and the Expression of Political Minority Opinions:

Spiral of silence theory does not assume a simple relationship between opinion climate and opinion expression. In fact, the notion of hardcore individuals (who express their opinions regardless of the climate) embraces the idea that there are some people for whom this relationship does not hold true. However, this idea has not been put to a direct empirical test. In this article, the authors propose that attitude certainty is a key variable in identifying the hardcore. Data from three surveys demonstrate that the climate of opinion only determines opinion expression when individuals hold their attitudes with low or moderate attitude certainty. For individuals with high attitude certainty, no such effect can be found. Thus, there is a spiral of silence only for some but not for all members of the public.

When What You Have Is Who You Are: Self-Uncertainty Leads Individualists to See Themselves in Their Possessions:

Four studies tested whether uncertainty about the self-concept can motivate people, particularly individualists who define themselves in terms of their personal traits and characteristics, to perceive their material possessions as extensions of themselves (i.e., as self-expressive). In Study 1, European American participants rated their favorite pair of blue jeans as more self-expressive after being induced to feel self-uncertain, whereas Asian American participants did not. In Study 2, participants who scored high on a measure of individualism rated their cars as more self-expressive following a self-uncertainty manipulation. In Study 3, individualists (but not collectivists) rated their favorite possessions as more self-expressive after being subject to self-uncertainty; a manipulation of self-irrelevant uncertainty did not produce these results. In Study 4, thinking about a self-expressive (relative to utilitarian) possession bolstered self-certainty among individualists, but not collectivists. Implications for research on culture, the self-concept, and possessions are discussed.

Nonconformity Defines the Self: The Role of Minority Opinion Status in Self-Concept Clarity

Drawing on distinctiveness and social identity theories, the present studies tested whether minority opinion holders would have a more clearly defined sense of self than majority opinion holders. In Study 1, participants who were induced to believe that they held a minority opinion on a controversial issue had higher subsequent self-concept clarity scores than did those who were induced to believe that they held a majority opinion, controlling for self-esteem. Furthermore, the relationship between minority opinion status and self-concept clarity was strongest among participants whose opinions were highly expressive of their values (Studies 2 and 3), as well as among participants who identified strongly with the group in which they were a minority (Study 3). Theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.

Significant Other Primes and Behavior: Motivation to Respond to Social Cues Moderates Pursuit of Prime-Induced Goals

Significant others can automatically activate a variety of goals, including goals that significant others have for an individual and the individuals personal goals that are associated with the significant others. Across three studies, this article shows that the effects of significant other primes (i.e., mother, roommate) on behavior depend on individual differences in both personal goals and responsiveness to social cues (i.e., self-monitoring, need to belong). Specifically, individuals who are motivated to respond to social cues assimilate to a goal that their primed significant other has for them, regardless of whether they personally hold the goal. Individuals not so motivated, on the other hand, assimilate to the goal only when it is one that they also personally hold. Implications of these findings for research on the prime-to-behavior relationship and interpersonal goal pursuit are discussed.

Self-Ambivalence and Resistance to Subtle Self-Change Attempts

Recent research has demonstrated the malleability of self-views to subtle situational influence but has not uncovered features of the self-concept representation that make it susceptible to such change. Using research on attitude ambivalence as a foundation, the current article predicted that the self would be most likely to respond to a subtle change induction when the targeted self-beliefs were objectively ambivalent (e.g., possessed both positive and negative features). Using self-esteem conditioning (Experiment 1) and outgroup stereotype priming (Experiment 2), it was found that people were more susceptible to subtle change inductions as objective self-ambivalence increased. Notably, the consistency between dominant self-views (positive or negative) and the change induction did not influence these results. These effects held for objective ambivalence, but not subjective ambivalence, and only when the objective ambivalence measure was relevant to the change induction. Mechanisms of the observed moderation and the implications of self-ambivalence for understanding self-change are discussed.

Not all selves feel the same uncertainty: Assimilation to primes among individualists and collectivists

Three experiments and a pilot study demonstrated that uncertainty about the self is uncomfortable (Pilot Study) and causes people to change their self-concepts in response to primes (Experiments 1–3), depending on both the nature of the uncertainty and how the self is defined. In Experiment 1, Asian Americans assimilated to a stereotype prime when made to feel uncertain about their collective selves, whereas European Americans assimilated to the prime when made to feel uncertain about their individual selves. Experiments 2 and 3 replicated the assimilation effect with a trait prime, and using individualism–collectivism instead of ethnicity as the moderator.

Gender, Intimacy, and Risky Sex: A Terror Management Account

Three studies tested whether mortality salience would lead men to be more sexually risky than women. In Study 1, men reported greater intentions to engage in risky sexual behaviors than did women after a mortality prime, but not after a control prime. In Study 2, men desired more future sexual partners and had a lower need for intimacy than did women, but again, only when mortality was salient. Furthermore, need for romantic intimacy mediated the relationship between mortality salience, gender, and desired number of future partners. Using a behavioral rather than a self-reported dependent measure, Study 3 showed that men primed with mortality were less likely than women to select a package of condoms (versus a pen) as a free gift after the experiment. Implications for gender differences in responses to mortality salience, as well as for how to design effective safe-sex interventions, are discussed.

The social prediction dynamic: A legacy of cognition and mixed motives

Part I. Introduction and Foundations. von Hippel, Haselton, Forgas, Evolutionary Psychology and Social Thinking: History, Issues, and Prospects. Dunbar, The Social Brain Hypothesis and Its Relevance to Social Psychology. Gangestad, Thornhill, The Evolution of Social Inference Processes: The Importance of Signaling Theory. Kenrick, Delton, Robertson, Vaughn Becker, Neuberg, How the Mind Warps: A Social Evolutionary Perspective on Cognitive Processing Disjunctions. Part II. The Evolutionary Psychology of Affect and Cognition. Ellsworth, Appraisals, Emotions, and Adaptation. Buck, The Evolutionary Bases of Social and Moral Emotions: Dominance, Submission, and True Love. Forgas, The Strange Cognitive Benefits of Mild Dysphoria: On the Evolutionary Advantages of Not Being Too Happy. Badcock, Allen, Evolution, Social Cognition, and Depressed Mood: Exploring the Relationship between Depression and Social Risk-taking. Part III. The Evolutionary Psychology of Mate Selection. Todd, Coevolved Cognitive Mechanisms in Mate Search: Making Decisions in a Decision-shaped World. Simpson, LaPaglia, An Evolutionary Account of Strategic Pluralism in Human Mating: Changes in Mate Preferences across the Ovulatory Cycle. Lieberman, Aligning Evolutionary Psychology and Social Cognition: Inbreeding Avoidance as an Example of Investigations into Categorization, Decision Rules, and Emotions. Fletcher, Overall, The Self in Intimate Relationships: A Social Evolutionary Account. Part IV. The Evolutionary Psychology of Interpersonal Processes. Buunk, Massar, Dijkstra, A Social Cognitive Evolutionary Approach to Jealousy: The Automatic Evaluation of Ones Romantic Rivals. Van Vugt, Kurzban, Cognitive and Social Adaptations for Leadership and Followership: Evolutionary Game Theory and Group Dynamics. Halberstadt, Proximate and Ultimate Origins of a Bias for Prototypical Faces: An Evolutionary Social Cognitive Account. Ybarra, Keller, Chan, Baron, Hutsler, Garcia, Sanchez-Burks, Rios Morrison, The Social Prediction Dynamic: A Legacy of Cognition and Mixed Motives. Spoor, Williams, The Evolution of an Ostracism Detection System. Schaller, Duncan, The Behavioral Immune System.