Silvia Krauth-Gruber

Embodiment in Attitudes, Social Perception, and Emotion

Findings in the social psychology literatures on attitudes, social perception, and emotion demonstrate that social information processing involves embodiment, where embodiment refers both to actual bodily states and to simulations of experience in the brains modality-specific systems for perception, action, and introspection. We show that embodiment underlies social information processing when the perceiver interacts with actual social objects (online cognition) and when the perceiver represents social objects in their absence (offline cognition). Although many empirical demonstrations of social embodiment exist, no particularly compelling account of them has been offered. We propose that theories of embodied cognition, such as the Perceptual Symbol Systems (PSS) account (Barsalou, 1999), explain and integrate these findings, and that they also suggest exciting new directions for research. We compare the PSS account to a variety of related proposals and show how it addresses criticisms that have previously posed problems for the general embodiment approach.

Affect and Stereotypic Thinking: A Test of the Mood-and-General-Knowledge Model

Happy, sad, or neutral participants evaluated the likelihood of a suspect’s guilt. The suspect’s membership was or was not stereotypically associated with the misconduct of which he was accused. Participants also were provided with specific case information that varied in its implications (ambiguous implying either the suspect’s guilt or innocence). The results show that when stereotypes clearly contradict specific information, happy people rely on the latter and no longer use stereotypes. The general assumption of a greater reliance on stereotypes under happiness was found to be restricted to “slight inconsistency.” Overall, this study supports the mood-and-general-knowledge (MAGK) model. In contrast, even though sadness decreases reliance on stereotypes, it does not increase careful processing of incoming information, as is generally assumed in the literature.

Belief in school meritocracy as a system-justifying tool for low status students

The belief that, in school, success only depends on will and hard work is widespread in Western societies despite evidence showing that several factors other than merit explain school success, including group belonging (e.g., social class, gender). In the present paper, we argue that because merit is the only track for low status students to reach upward mobility, Belief in School Meritocracy (BSM) is a particularly useful system-justifying tool to help them perceive their place in society as being deserved. Consequently, for low status students (but not high status students), this belief should be related to more general system-justifying beliefs (Study 1). Moreover, low status students should be particularly prone to endorsing this belief when their place within a system on which they strongly depend to acquire status is challenged (Study 2). In Study 1, high status (boys and high SES) were compared to low status (girls and low SES) high school students. Results indicated that BSM was related to system-justifying beliefs only for low SES students and for girls, but not for high SES students or for boys. In Study 2, university students were exposed (or not) to information about an important selection process that occurs at the university, depending on the condition. Their subjective status was assessed. Although such a confrontation reduced BSM for high subjective SES students, it tended to enhance it for low subjective SES students. Results are discussed in terms of system justification motives and the palliative function meritocratic ideology may play for low status students.

Emotional reactions to the French colonization in Algeria: The normative nature of collective guilt:

Fifty years after the end of the Algerian war of independence, French colonization in Algeria (1830–1962) is still a very controversial topic when sporadically brought to the forefront of the public sphere. One way to better understand current intergroup relationships between French of French origin and French with Algerian origins is to investigate how the past influences the present. This study explores French students’ emotional reactions to this historical period, their ideological underpinnings and their relationship with the willingness to compensate for past misdeeds, and with prejudice. Results show that French students with French ascendants endorse a no-remorse norm when thinking about past colonization of Algeria and express very low levels of collective guilt and moral-outrage related emotions, especially those students with a right-wing political orientation and a national identification in the form of glorification of the country. These group-based emotions are significantly related to pro-social behavioral intentions (i.e. the willingness to compensate) and to prejudice toward the outgroup.

Gender stereotype–consistent memories: How system justification motivation distorts the recollection of information related to the self

ABSTRACT Research based on system justification theory has shown that women’s self-perceptions may be altered by the motivation to justify the system and its inequalities. Self-perceptions being built on past experiences, the present study aimed to explore how system justification motivation induced through a system dependency manipulation may alter both women’s recall of autobiographical memories and their behavior. Women who were led to feel highly dependent on the social system perceived themselves as more competent and recalled memories of higher competence in the verbal domain compared with the negatively stereotyped scientific domain. Women’s behavioral choices (between doing a verbal or a math exercise) also revealed a higher preference for the gender stereotype–consistent verbal exercise in the high–system dependency condition, as compared with the low–system dependency condition. These results suggest that gender stereotypes may not only satisfy self- or group-serving motivation but also the need to perceive the system in a positive light.

The two sides of disgust: A lexical and thematic content analysis of narratives of personally experienced physical and moral disgust

The present study examined narratives about situations in which individuals experience physical and/or moral disgust, and the similarities and differences between them. A thematic content analysis of participants’ narratives of personal physically or morally disgusting experiences as well as a lexical analysis using the computer program ALCESTE revealed that physical disgust emerges in an instantaneous reflex-like way during situations in which the individual is directly exposed to physical disgust elicitors. Physically disgusting events are described from an actor’s perspective and induce predominantly ‘pure’ disgust in the absence of other negative emotions. Furthermore, physical disgust, which strongly involves sensory modalities such as vision, odor, touch and taste, leads to more bodily reactions (e.g. nausea, tremor) and impels avoidance behavior. Morally disgusting events relate primarily to the observation of others as the victims of violence, betrayal and injustice (observer perspective), and involve judgments and reflections about the event, suggesting more in-depth cognitive elaboration. Morally disgusting events were found also to induce other negative emotions, such as anger and sadness. Our results suggest that these two types of disgust are sufficiently distinct to anticipate that they might differentially affect individuals’ social and moral judgments.