Sven Zebel

The Past and the Pending: The Antecedents and Consequences of Group-Based Anger in Historically and Currently Disadvantaged Groups

Two studies investigated the role of domain relevance in the experience of group-based anger among disadvantaged groups using structural equation models. In the first study, Surinamese people to whom the slavery past was more relevant made stronger attributions of outgroup-blame and experienced more anger. This effect was above and beyond the influence of group identification. In the second study relevance of women’s status position in society predicted outgroup-blame and group-based anger. In both studies domain relevance and anger were predictive of the tendencies to engage in action demanding reparation, as well as of the desire for the outgroup to engage in reparation. The role of domain relevance for intergroup emotions is considered.

Vessels with Gold or Guilt: Emotional Reactions to Family Involvement Associated with Glorious or Gloomy Aspects of the Colonial Past

In two studies we examined whether forging a psychological bond with a nation’s colonization past facilitates the experience of positive and negative group-based self-conscious emotions as a function of a positive or negative manipulation of this past. Because people need to belong, we hypothesized that stronger family involvement in a nation’s colonization past (i.e. involved ancestors) evokes stronger a positive self-conscious emotions after positive descriptions of the nation’s colonizing past, and stronger negative self-conscious emotions after negative descriptions. In Study 1, we found support for these hypotheses in a real-life setting in which Dutch people actually found out whether their ancestors were involved in the colonization of Indonesia or not. In Study 2, we manipulated family involvement and valence of the past. Results offered support for the tested hypotheses. Implications of the results are discussed in relation to theories on identity and emotion.

Psychological determinants of financial buffer saving: The influence of financial risk tolerance and regulatory focus

With governments redistributing more responsibilities unto citizens, individuals have an increasing need for financial resources acting as a buffer against life’s setbacks and unexpected expenditures. The purpose of this study was to examine psychological determinants of saving for a financial buffer, for which a theoretical model was formulated based on the theory of planned behaviour with three new, domain-specific psychological constructs: financial risk tolerance, regulatory focus and perceived saving barriers. Data were collected with an online questionnaire that utilised convenience and snowball sampling to target both students and working individuals (N = 272). Regression analyses offered support for the proposed model, showing that participants’ financial risk tolerance (i.e. an individual’s attitude towards financial risk taking) was significantly associated with their subjective financial knowledge and regulatory focus. Furthermore, perceived financial self-efficacy and financial risk tolerance both predicted participants’ intention to save for a financial buffer. In turn, perceived financial self-efficacy and saving intention predicted self-reported saving behaviour. Importantly, perceived saving barriers mediated the relationship between saving intention and self-reported saving behaviour. In line with the proposed model, results also showed that a specific attitude-based construct (financial risk tolerance) is a considerably better predictor of saving intention than general measures of attitude towards saving. This study is also the first to demonstrate that regulatory focus influences financial risk tolerance. Implications of these findings for stimulating saving behaviour are discussed.

Crime Seriousness and Participation in Restorative Justice: The Role of Time Elapsed Since the Offense.

Restorative justice policies and programs aimed at facilitating victim–offender mediation (VOM) are part of many criminal justice systems around the world. Given its voluntary nature and potential for positive outcomes, the appropriateness and feasibility of VOM after serious offenses is subject to debate in the literature. In light of this discussion, this study first aimed to unravel the prevalence of serious offenses in cases registered for VOM and examined whether crime seriousness predicts whether mediated contact is reached between victims and offenders. Second, it tested the hypothesis that victims of increasingly serious, harmful crimes are more willing to participate when more time has elapsed since the offense—in contrast to victims of less serious, harmful crimes. We analyzed 199 cases registered for VOM in the Netherlands and coded the perceived wrongfulness, harmfulness, and average duration of incarceration of an offense as 3 distinct indicators of crime seriousness in these cases. The findings revealed that cases registered for VOM (a) are, in terms of the incarceration duration, on average more serious than all offenses in the population, and (b) resulted in mediated contact (or not) independently of the 3 seriousness indicators. In addition, empirical support was found for the hypothesis that victims’ willingness to participate in VOM increased over time after more harmful offenses, whereas it decreased when offenses inflicted less harm. These findings suggest that when VOM programs operate irrespectively of the time elapsed after crime, mediated contact between parties may be as likely after minor and serious offenses.

Integrating social media features into a cell phone alert system for emergency situations

In times of emergency, people include social networking sites (SNS) in their search for information and support. An online survey with an embedded experiment with two conditions focused on understanding whether and how SNS functions have a positive influence on perceived self-efficacy, risk perception, and reported information sufficiency when integrated into a current emergency alert system like NL-Alert. Participants were randomly assigned to a control condition showing the classical format of NL-Alert or the expanded condition with added SNS functions (a newsfeed and marking oneself as safe). Results show that self-efficacy and risk perception did not differ between conditions. Significantly higher degrees of information sufficiency were reported in the expanded condition. Consequences for emergency risk communication are discussed.