Lucía López-Rodríguez

The devoted actor’s will to fight and the spiritual dimension of human conflict

Frontline investigations with fighters against the Islamic State (ISIL or ISIS), combined with multiple online studies, address willingness to fight and die in intergroup conflict. The general focus is on non-utilitarian aspects of human conflict, which combatants themselves deem ‘sacred’ or ‘spiritual’, whether secular or religious. Here we investigate two key components of a theoretical framework we call ‘the devoted actor’—sacred values and identity fusion with a group—to better understand people’s willingness to make costly sacrifices. We reveal three crucial factors: commitment to non-negotiable sacred values and the groups that the actors are wholly fused with; readiness to forsake kin for those values; and perceived spiritual strength of ingroup versus foes as more important than relative material strength. We directly relate expressed willingness for action to behaviour as a check on claims that decisions in extreme conflicts are driven by cost–benefit calculations, which may help to inform policy decisions for the common defense.The study by Gómez et al. of frontline fighters and non-combatants shows that a willingness to fight and die in intergroup conflict is associated with the sacrifice of material concerns for sacred values, and the perceived spiritual strength of in-groups and adversaries.

Aplicación extendida del Modelo del Contenido de los Estereotipos (MCE) hacia tres grupos de inmigrantes en España

Resumen Este trabajo pretende aplicar y ampliar el Modelo del Contenido de los Estereotipos (MCE) en España, con el fin de conocer los estereotipos de una muestra de españoles sobre los tres principales grupos de inmigrantes en dicho país. Se incluyó la moralidad y la sociabilidad como dimensiones separadas, frente a la dimensión unitaria de calidez. Los participantes evaluaron a marroquíes (N = 140), rumanos (N = 134) y ecuatorianos (N = 139) en diferentes características (estereotipos), así como en el estatus y la competición con las que los percibían. Un Análisis Factorial Confirmatorio reveló que el modelo formado por tres dimensiones presentaba un mejor ajuste que otros modelos más sencillos, confirmando que moralidad, sociabilidad y competencia son dimensiones diferentes en la percepción exogrupal. Los resultados se discuten abordando la utilidad del MCE, considerando la dimensión de moralidad, y la ambivalencia de los estereotipos hacia diferentes grupos inmigrantes.

Gulliver’s Politics Conservatives Envision Potential Enemies as Readily Vanquished and Physically Small

Political conservatives have been widely documented to regard out-group members as hostile, perceive individuals of ambiguous intent as malevolent, and favor aggressive solutions to intergroup conflict. A growing literature indicates that potential violent adversaries are represented using the dimensions of envisioned physical size/strength to summarize opponents’ fighting capacities relative to the self or in-group. Integrating these programs, we hypothesized that, compared to liberals, conservatives would envision an ambiguous out-group target as more likely to pose a threat, yet as vanquishable through force, and thus as less formidable. Participants from the United States (Study 1) and Spain (Study 2) assessed Syrian refugees, a group that the public widely suspects includes terrorists. As predicted, in both societies, conservatives envisioned refugees as more likely to be terrorists and as less physically formidable. As hypothesized, this “Gulliver effect” was mediated by confidence in each society’s capacity to thwart terrorism via aggressive military or police measures.

Parental Support Buffering the Effect of Violence on Adolescents’ Depression Gender Differences

In Mexico violence across the country has increased in recent years and has become a social problem of great importance. The continuous exposure to all types of interpersonal violence leads adolescents to cope with experiences and challenges of great risk of development deviations. Trying to find a more comprehensive understanding of violence outcomes on Mexican adolescents and its moderators, the present quantitative, non-experimental, cross-sectional correlation study was performed. Parental support (vs. other sort of social support) was proposed to be a relevant moderator factor for decreasing the negative outcomes of violence exposure on depression, and gender was predicted to play a role in this process. A two-way interaction between violence exposure and parental support was only significant in the case of adolescent girls, whereas there was no evidence of such moderation for adolescent boys. The effect of exposure to violence on girls’ depression was stronger when their parental support was relatively low than when their parental support was relatively high. Parental support may serve as a protective factor of depression after violence exposure especially for girls, whereas more research should be conducted in order to detect an efficient protective mechanism for boys who are exposed to violence.

Psychological consequences of collective violence in childhood: the case of Monterrey, Mexico / Consecuencias psicológicas de la violencia colectiva en la niñez: el caso de Monterrey, México

Abstract During the last years, different types of violence have severely damaged Mexico. In this paper we examine the consequences that violence could have in children, one of the most vulnerable segments of society. In short, we predict that exposure to any type of violence will lead to higher depression and that this could be explained through the effects of violence on childhood well-being. Our hypothesis was supported in two studies, showing that exposure to street violence (Study 1, N = 607) and exposure to collective violence (Study 2, N = 172) can increase childhood depression. Moreover, in both studies, this effect was explained by the decrease of childhood well-being caused by violence exposure. The implications of these results are discussed.

I will help you because we are similar: Quality of contact mediates the effect of perceived similarity on facilitative behaviour towards immigrants

This research aimed to analyse interpersonal behaviour towards immigrants by exploring related psychosocial variables such as intergroup similarity and quality of intergroup contact. A new interpersonal behavioural tendencies scale was developed. In Study 1, Spanish participants reported their willingness to take different actions towards a Moroccan (i.e. a devalued target, n = 132) or an Ecuadorian (i.e. a valued target, n = 138), perceived intergroup similarity and quality of intergroup contact. Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis identified the expected dimensions: active facilitation (AF), passive facilitation (PF), passive harm (PH) and active harm (AH). Participants reported less similarity, less pleasant contact, less AF and less PF, and more PH with respect to Moroccans relative to Ecuadorians. Quality of contact mediated the effect of perceived similarity on interpersonal behaviour (especially facilitative behaviour) towards immigrants. Study 2 (N = 134) confirmed that this mediation effect also applied to Romanian immigrants, and tested a serial mediation pathway, in which perceived similarity affected symbolic threat, which in turn affected quality of contact, which finally affected behaviour. Changing perceived intergroup similarity might be a way of improving the quality of contact with minority groups, and this would be expected to increase pro-social behaviour towards such groups.

Battle of Wits: Warfare Cues and Political Orientation Modulate the Perceived Intellect of Allies Versus Adversaries

Political conservatism and threat salience have been consistently associated with intergroup bias. However, prior research has not examined potential effects of conservatism and/or threat on the attribution of relative in-group/out-group intelligence. In a cross-cultural study conducted in Spain and the United Kingdom, priming violent conflict with ISIS led participants to view an in-group ally as relatively more intelligent than an out-group adversary, in an effect mediated by feelings of anger (but not fear or general arousal). Conservatism similarly predicted biased perception of the ally’s relative intellect, a tendency that was driven by militaristic (not social/fiscal) political attitudes but was not explained by associated increases in state anger following conflict cues. This overall pattern indicates that conflict cues and militaristic political orientation heighten assessments of relative intergroup intellect during warfare via distinct affective and attitudinal pathways.

Percepción de justicia y actitudes hacia inmigrantes

Resumen La investigación sobre justicia ha demostrado que en ocasiones los individuos prefieren conseguir resultados peores para ellos pero justos, más que resultados beneficiosos pero injustos. La presente investigación explora los efectos de la percepción de justicia sobre las actitudes intergrupales, manipulando la cantidad de recursos asignados a autóctonos e inmigrantes de forma proporcional al número de habitantes en un lugar determinado. En la condición de justicia, el número de inmigrantes fue proporcional a la cantidad de recursos asignados, mientras en la condición de injusticia el número de inmigrantes y los recursos asignados no fueron proporcionales. El Estudio 1 (N = 149) mostró que en la condición de justicia, en comparación con la condición de injusticia, se redujo el prejuicio y el apoyo hacia políticas anti inmigración. En el Estudio 2 (N = 82) se replicaron algunos de los resultados del Estudio 1 en un contexto y con un exogrupo diferentes. Además, los participantes en la condición de justicia mostraron un mayor apoyo a un partido político pro-inmigración que los de la condición de injusticia. Se discuten las implicaciones de estos resultados.