Samuel Pehrson

National identification and anti-immigrant prejudice: Individual and contextual effects of national definitions

In this study, we examined the relationship between national identification and anti-immigrant prejudice in a multilevel analysis of ISSP survey data from 37,030 individuals in 31 countries. We argue that this relationship depends on how national groups are defined by their members. Across the 31 national samples, the correlation between national identification and prejudice ranged from weakly negative (-.06) to moderately positive (.37). The relationship was significantly stronger in countries where people on average endorsed a definition of national belonging based on language, and weaker where people on average defined the nation in terms of citizenship. These effects occurred at a national rather than individual level, supporting an explanation in terms of the construction of nationality that prevails in a given context. Endorsement of the ancestry-based criteria for nationality was positively associated with prejudice, but only at the individual level.

What do national flags stand for? An exploration of associations across 11 countries

We examined the concepts and emotions people associate with their national flag, and how these associations are related to nationalism and patriotism across 11 countries. Factor analyses indicated that the structures of associations differed across countries in ways that reflect their idiosyncratic historical developments. Positive emotions and egalitarian concepts were associated with national flags across countries. However, notable differences between countries were found due to historical politics. In societies known for being peaceful and open-minded (e.g., Canada, Scotland), egalitarianism was separable from honor-related concepts and associated with the flag; in countries that were currently involved in struggles for independence (e.g., Scotland) and countries with an imperialist past (the United Kingdom), the flag was strongly associated with power-related concepts; in countries with a negative past (e.g., Germany), the primary association was sports; in countries with disruption due to separatist or extremist movements (e.g., Northern Ireland, Turkey), associations referring to aggression were not fully rejected; in collectivist societies (India, Singapore), obedience was linked to positive associations and strongly associated with the flag. In addition, the more strongly individuals endorsed nationalism and patriotism, the more they associated positive emotions and egalitarian concepts with their flag. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Reconstructing apology: David Cameron's Bloody Sunday apology in the press

While there is an acknowledgement in apology research that political apologies are highly mediated, the process of mediation itself has lacked scrutiny. This article suggests that the idea of reconstruction helps to understand how apologies are mediated and evaluated. David Camerons apology for Bloody Sunday is examined to see how he constructs four aspects of apology: social actors, consequences, categorization, and reasons. The reconstruction of those aspects by British, Unionist, and Nationalist press along with reconstructions made by soldiers in an online forum are considered. Data analysis was informed by thematic analysis and discourse analysis which helped to explore key aspects of reconstruction and how elements of Camerons apology are altered in subsequent mediated forms of the apology. These mediated reconstructions of the apology allowed their authors to evaluate the apology in different ways. Thus, in this article, it is suggested that the evaluation of the apology by different groups is preceded by a reconstruction of it in accordance with rhetorical goals. This illuminates the process of mediation and helps to understand divergent responses to political apologies.

Beyond 'old' and 'new': For a social psychology of racism

In 1950, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) issued a paper entitled The Race Concept that had been drafted by a group of prominent biological and social scientists (reproduced in UNESCO, 1952). The statement used the term ‘racism’ – then a relatively new term – to refer to a faulty and illegitimate science of human categories. It denounced racism in terms of two related elements: scientifically, it was seen to rest on beliefs about the attributes of social groups that were unsubstantiated by available evidence; morally, it debased human dignity by relating to people in terms of their ascribed ‘race’, rather than simply as human beings. It was therefore an aberration from the liberal project based on a false pseudoscience of ‘race’. The Race Question set the agenda for an anti-racist programme consisting of undermining the scientific validity of the notion of ‘race’ and combating ignorance about such matters through education. This agenda became known as the UNESCO tradition, and has gone on to form the basis for most top-down forms of anti-racism (Lentin, 2005). In a similar vein, a statement had been issued in 1938 by the American Psychological Association (APA; reproduced in Benedict, 1942/1983), repudiating theories of genetic inequality of races. The APA statement suggests an ‘emotional’, rather than factual, basis for such theories. This, along with the publication of The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno et al., 1950) and The Nature of Prejudice (Allport, 1954), marks a shift in focus within psychology away from the study of racial differences towards the question of why beliefs in such differences arise and persist despite being false (Billig, 1985; Duckitt, 1992; Pettigrew, 2007; Reicher, 2007; Reicher and Hopkins, 2001). Unlike the UNESCO tradition, which deals directly with racial theories and challenges the biological reality of racial categories, the psychology of prejudice leaves the ontological status of racial categories unexamined. The agenda has been to explain when and how certain racially defined groups come to feel a certain way about others. Thus, while psychology (with some exceptions) gave up the notion of race superiority, it has rarely

Beyond group engagement : multiple pathways from encounters with the police to cooperation and compliance in Northern Ireland

In a sample of young people in Northern Ireland (N = 819), we examine the relationships between the quality of experience with police officers and police legitimacy. We examine potential pathways through which experiences may either support or undermine the legitimacy of the police, and thus cooperation and compliance with them. We find evidence that perceptions of the police as having goals that align with those of wider society, and as being fair in general, mediate relations between the quality of encounters and legitimacy, which in turn mediates the relation with cooperation and compliance. Identification with wider society was not a reliable mediator, contrary to our predictions based on the Group Engagement Model. Moreover, our analysis of the structure of police fairness perceptions finds no support for the distinction between procedural and distributive police fairness as usually conceived. Implications for the social psychological understanding of legitimate authority are discussed.