Tibor Pólya

Narrative Language as an Expression of Individual and Group Identity: The Narrative Categorical Content Analysis

Scientific Narrative Psychology integrates quantitative methodologies into the study of identity. Its methodology, Narrative Categorical Analysis, and its toolkit, NarrCat, were both originally developed by the Hungarian Narrative Psychology Group. NarrCat is for machine-made transformation of sentences in self-narratives into psychologically relevant, statistically processable narrative categories. The main body of this flexible and comprehensive system is formed by Psycho-Thematic modules, such as Agency, Evaluation, Emotion, Cognition, Spatiality, and Temporality. The Relational Modules include Social References, Semantic Role Labeling (SRL), and Negation. Certain elements can be combined into Hypermodules, such as Psychological Perspective and Spatio-Temporal Perspective, which allow for even more complex, higher level exploration of composite psychological processes. Using up-to-date developments of corpus linguistics and Natural Language Processing (NLP), a unique feature of NarrCat is its capacity of SRL. The structure of NarrCat, as well as the empirical results in group identity research, is discussed.

Revisiting the measurement of anomie

Sociologists coined the term “anomie” to describe societies that are characterized by disintegration and deregulation. Extending beyond conceptualizations of anomie that conflate the measurements of anomie as ‘a state of society’ and as a ‘state of mind’, we disentangle these conceptualizations and develop an analysis and measure of this phenomenon focusing on anomie as a perception of the ‘state of society’. We propose that anomie encompasses two dimensions: a perceived breakdown in social fabric (i.e., disintegration as lack of trust and erosion of moral standards) and a perceived breakdown in leadership (i.e., deregulation as lack of legitimacy and effectiveness of leadership). Across six studies we present evidence for the validity of the new measure, the Perception of Anomie Scale (PAS). Studies 1a and 1b provide evidence for the proposed factor structure and internal consistency of PAS. Studies 2a-c provide evidence of convergent and discriminant validity. Finally, assessing PAS in 28 countries, we show that PAS correlates with national indicators of societal functioning and that PAS predicts national identification and well-being (Studies 3a & 3b). The broader implications of the anomie construct for the study of group processes are discussed.

Regaining In-Group Continuity in Times of Anxiety About the Group’s Future: A Study on the Role of Collective Nostalgia Across 27 Countries

Collective nostalgia for the good old days of the country thrives across the world. However, little is known about the social psychological dynamics of this collective emotion across cultures. We predicted that collective nostalgia is triggered by collective angst as it helps people to restore a sense of in-group continuity via stronger in-group belonging and out-group rejection (in the form of opposition to immigrants). Based on a sample (N = 5,956) of individuals across 27 countries, the general pattern of results revealed that collective angst predicts collective nostalgia, which subsequently relates to stronger feelings of in-group continuity via in-group belonging (but not via out-group rejection). Collective nostalgia generally predicted opposition to immigrants, but this was subsequently not related to in-group continuity.

Cultural Values Moderate the Impact of Relative Deprivation

Relative deprivation (RD) is the judgment that one or one’s ingroup is worse off compared with some relevant standard coupled with feelings of dissatisfaction, anger, and resentment. RD predicts a wide range of outcomes, but it is unclear whether this relationship is moderated by national cultural differences. Therefore, in the first study, we used national assessments of individual-collectivism and power distance to code 303 effect sizes from 31 different countries with 200,578 participants. RD predicted outcomes ranging from life satisfaction to collective action more strongly within individualistic nations. A second survey of 6,112 undergraduate university students from 28 different countries confirmed the predictive value of RD. Again, the relationship between individual RD and different outcomes was stronger for students who lived in more individualistic countries. Group-based RD also predicted political trust more strongly for students who lived in countries marked by lower power distance. RD effects, although consistent predictors, are culturally bounded. In particular, RD is more likely to motivate reactions within individualistic countries that emphasize individual agency and achievement as a source of self-worth.

A kollektív bűntudat skála magyar nyelvű adaptációja

Jelen tanulmany a kollektiv bűntudat tobbdimenzios meresere alkalmas Kollektiv Bűntudat Skala (Collective Guilt Scale) magyar nyelvű adaptaciojat mutatja be. A Branscombe, Slugoski es Kappen (2004) altal publikalt eredeti, harom alskalat tartalmazo skalat egy tovabbi alskalaval kiegeszitve egy negy alskalabol allo, osszesen husz allitast tartalmazo kerdőivet adaptaltunk. A Kollektiv Bűntudat Elfogadasa alskala a sajat csoport altal elkovetett multbeli igazsagtalansagok nyoman atelt bűntudat meresere szolgal; a Kollektiv Bűntudat Elvarasa alskala a kulső csoportoktol elvart bűntudat merteket mutatja; a Csoport Felelőssegrevonhatosaga alskala a kollektiv bűnosseg elvevel valo egyetertes indikatora; vegul a Sajat Csoport Iranti Szemelyes Felelősseg Elutasitasa alskala a sajat csoport altal elkovetett igazsagtalansagokert vallalt egyeni felelősseg relativ hianyat mutatja. A feltaro es a megerősitő faktorelemzesek eredmenyei szerint magyar mintan az eredeti negy alskalabol az előbbi ket alskala hasznalhato megbizhatoan. A diszkriminans ervenyessegre vonatkozo eredmenyek a szakirodalommal osszhangban azt mutatjak, hogy az egyes alskalakon kapott pontszamok nem magyarazhatok a szemelyes bűntudatatelesi hajlammal, a szemelyes onbecsulessel es a jo benyomasra valo torekvessel. A konvergens ervenyesseg vizsgalata szinten a szakirodalom alapjan vart osszefuggeseket mutatta ki. A magyar nemzettel valo azonosulas ket modjat tekintve, a kollektiv bűntudat elfogadasa a kotődessel korrelal pozitivan, melyre a magyar csoport iranti kritikus lojalitas jellemző, mig a kollektiv bűntudat kulső csoportoktol valo elvarasa a magyarok felsőbbrendűseget hirdető glorifikacioval mutat pozitiv korrelaciot. A kollektiv bűntudat elvarasa tovabba pozitivan korrelal a tarsas dominancia orientacioval. Vegul a magyar–szlovak csoportkozi viszony kontextusaban vegzett vizsgalatunk demonstralta, hogy a kollektiv bűntudat elvarasa pozitiv prediktora a csoportkozi konfliktus eszlelt megoldatlansaganak. This study presents the adaptation of the English-language Collective Guilt Scale to Hungarian language which enables the multidimensional measurement of collective guilt. The three subscales of the original scale published by Branscombe, Slugoski and Kappen (2004) was completed by a fourth subscale and the obtained scale comprising a total of twenty items was adapted to Hungarian. The Acceptance of Collective Guilt subscale measures ones willingness to experience guilt for the past wrongdoings of ones ingroup; the Assignment of Collective Guilt subscale is an indicator of the extent one expects outgroups to display guilt; the Whole Group Accountability subscale assesses the degree of agreement with the principle of collective guilt; finally, the Denial of Responsibility for Ones Group subscale indicates the relative lack of individual responsibility undertaken for the wrongdoings of ones ingroup. Results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis suggest that the former two subscales can be applied reliably in Hungarian samples. Results obtained for discriminant validity show in harmony with the literature that scores obtained on each subscale cannot be explained by the willingness to experience personal guilt, by personal self-esteem or by the motivation to make socially desirable impressions. Convergent validity tests also revealed results consistent with predictions based on the literature. Regarding the two modes of identification with the Hungarian nation, acceptance of collective guilt correlates positively with attachment which is characterized by critical loyalty to the national ingroup, while assignment of collective guilt to outgroups shows positive correlation with glorification which claims that Hungarians are superior to outgroups. Furthermore, assignment of collective guilt is also positively correlated with social dominance orientation. Finally, a study done in the context of the Hungarian-Slovak intergroup relation demonstrated that assignment of collective guilt is a positive predictor of the perception of an unresolved intergroup conflict.

Beyond Sentiment: Social Psychological Analysis of Political Facebook Comments in Hungary

This paper presents the methodology and results of a project for the large-scale analysis of public messages in political discourse on Facebook, the dominant social media site in Hungary. We propose several novel social psychology- motivated dimensions for natural language processing-based text analysis that go beyond the standard sentiment-based analysis approaches. Communion describes the moral and emotional aspects of an individual’s relations to others, while agency describes individuals in terms of the efficiency of their goal- orientated behavior. We treat these by custom lexicons that identify positive and negative cues in text. We measure the level of optimism in messages by examining the ratio of events talked about in the past, present and future by looking at verb tenses and temporal expressions. For assessing the level of individualism, we build on research that correlates it to pronoun dropping. We also present re- sults that demonstrate the viability of our measures on 1.9 million downloaded public Facebook comments by examining correlation to party preferences in public opinion poll data.