Societal inequality has been found to harm the mental and physical health of its members and undermine overall social cohesion. Here, we tested the hypothesis that economic inequality is associated with a wish for a strong leader in a study involving 28 countries from five continents (Study 1, N = 6,112), a study involving an Australian community sample (Study 2, N = 515), and two experiments (Study 3a, N = 96; Study 3b, N = 296). We found correlational (Studies 1 and 2) and experimental (Studies 3a and 3b) evidence for our prediction that higher inequality enhances the wish for a strong leader. We also found that this relationship is mediated by perceptions of anomie, except in the case of objective inequality in Study 1. This suggests that societal inequality enhances the perception that society is breaking down (anomie) and that a strong leader is needed to restore order (even when that leader is willing to challenge democratic values).

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.

Abstract. 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.

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.

Shot scale in film, that is the apparent spatial distance of characters from the camera, is one of the most important compositional elements in a film shot guiding media audiences' attention. The primary aim of the present study was to investigate the extent to which apparent spatial distance of fictional characters can evoke theory of mind responding in film viewers. Theory of mind, referring to the capacity of attributing mental states to others, is considered fundamental in audiences' character involvement and narrative understanding, and it presumably mediates narrative effects. Four short animated movies were annotated for shot scale distribution and presented to participants (N = 52) in a within-subject design.Participants were asked to retell the story of the films and fill in questionnaires on narrative experience. Skin conductance was also measured during exposure. Story-descriptions were content analysed for theory of mind responses. In a Poisson-regression model average spatial

Does the narrative perspective people adopt when describing important life events convey any hidden information to audiences about their social identities? In this experiment, participants (who were either professional psychotherapists, or laypersons) formed impressions about, and judged the identities of narrators who described important identity-related life events (being Jewish, being gay, being infertile) from one of three different narrative perspectives (retrospective, experiencing and re-experiencing). Results showed that narrative perspective had a highly significant influence on impression formation and identity judgments even when the same events were described. Narrators using the retrospective perspective were generally judged to be better adjusted, more socially desirable and less anxious and dynamic than were narrators describing the same events from the experiencing or re-experiencing perspectives.

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.

The present study addresses antecedents and consequences of collective victimhood in the context of World War I (WWI) across 15 European nations (N = 2423 social science students). Using multilevel analysis, we find evidence that collective victimhood is still present a hundred years after the onset of the war and can be predicted by WWI‐related objective indicators of victimization at national and family levels. This suggests that collective victimhood is partly grounded in the actual experience of WWI. In addition, we show that sense of collective victimhood positively predicts acknowledgment of the suffering inflicted by one's nation on other countries during WWI. This is consistent with a social representation of WWI as involving a vast massacre in which nations were both victim and perpetrator. Finally, we find that objective indicators of victimization predict pacifism in divergent ways, with an indicator at the national level associated with more pacifist attitudes and an indicator at the family level being associated with less pacifist attitudes. This finding suggests that war‐torn societies may have developed social representations favouring peaceful coexistence whereas, at the family level, victimization may still foster retaliatory tendencies.