| 1. |
- Gustafsson Sendén, Marie, 1966-, et al.
(author)
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Biases in news media as reflected by personal pronouns in evaluative contexts
- 2014
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In: Social Psychology. - : Hogrefe Publishing Group. - 1864-9335 .- 2151-2590. ; 45:2, s. 103-111
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper examines whether pronouns in news media occurred in evaluative contexts reflecting psychological biases. Contexts of pronouns were measured by computerized semantic analysis. Results showed that self-inclusive personal pronouns (We, I) occurred in more positive contexts than self-exclusive pronouns (He/She, They), reflecting self- and group-serving biases. Contexts of collective versus individual pronouns varied; Weoccurred in more positive contexts than I, and He/She in more positive contexts than They. The enhancement of collective relative to individual self-inclusive pronouns may reflect that media news is a public rather than private domain. The reversed pattern among self-exclusive pronouns corroborates suggestions that outgroup derogation is most pronounced at the category level. Implications for research on language and social psychology are discussed.
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| 2. |
- Andrén, Victoria, et al.
(author)
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Gender and arson : psychosocial, psychological, and somatic offender characteristics at the time of the crime
- 2023
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In: Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1478-9949 .- 1478-9957. ; 34:1, s. 113-130
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Deliberate fire-setting, such as the crime of arson, can have devastating, even lethal, consequences. This study compared factors at the time of arson by female and male offenders in Sweden between 2000–2010. The women (n = 100), and men (n = 100) included in this study were randomly chosen from among all individuals who had been convicted for arson during this period and who underwent forensic psychiatric investigations. Information regarding psychiatric and somatic characteristics, their psychosocial situation, and whether they were in contact with health or social services before the arsons were examined. The results showed that both women and men have complex psychiatric and somatic characteristics, as well as psychosocial situations. Women showed more self-destructive behaviour, lower Global Assessment of Functioning scores, and had been in contact with psychiatric health services to a greater extent than men. More women than men had children. These findings suggest that specific actions may be needed for preventing and treating women compared with men at risk for committing arson.
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| 3. |
- Bäck, Emma A., 1981-, et al.
(author)
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Defending or Challenging the Status Quo : Position Effects on Biased Intergroup Perceptions
- 2014
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In: The Journal of Social and Political Psychology. - : Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID). - 2195-3325. ; 2:1, s. 77-97
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The default ideological position is status quo maintaining, and challenging the status quo is associated with increased efforts and risks. Nonetheless, some people choose to challenge the status quo. Therefore, to challenge the status quo should imply a strong belief in one’s position as the correct one, and thus efforts may be undertaken to undermine the position of others. Study 1 (N = 311) showed that challengers undermined, by ascribing more externality and less rationality, the position of defenders to a larger extent than defenders did of challengers’ position. Studies 2 (N = 135) and 3 (N= 109) tested if these effects were driven by the implied minority status of the challenging position. Results revealed no effects of experimentally manipulated numerical status, but challengers were again more biased than defenders. Study 3 also revealed that challengers felt more negatively toward their opponents (possibly due to greater social identification with like-minded others), and these negative emotions in turn predicted biased attributions. Results are important as they add to the understanding of how intergroup conflict may arise, providing explanations for why challengers are less tolerant of others’ point of view.
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| 4. |
- Bäck, Emma A., 1981-, et al.
(author)
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Post-decision consolidation in large group decision-making
- 2011
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In: Scandinavian Journal of Psychology. - : Wiley. - 0036-5564 .- 1467-9450. ; 52:4, s. 320-328
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Decision-makers tend to change the psychological attractiveness of decision alternatives in favour of their own preferred alternative after the decision is made. In two experiments, the present research examined whether such decision consolidation occurs also among individual group members in a large group decision-making situation. High-school students were presented with a decision scenario on an important issue in their school. The final decision was made by in-group authority, out-group authority or by majority after a ballot voting. Results showed that individual members of large groups changed the attractiveness of their preferred alternative from a pre- to a post decision phase, that these consolidation effects increased when decisions were made by in-group members and when participants identified strongly with their school. Implications of the findings for understanding of group behavior and subgroup relations are discussed.
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| 5. |
- Bäck, Emma A., 1981-
(author)
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Social and cognitive biases in large group decision settings
- 2011
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The present thesis consists of three studies on the effects of group membership in large group decisions. The overall aim was to contribute to understanding how individuals react when decisions are made in large groups. We explored consequences of procedural justice concerns within such groups. In Study I we investigated how different decision procedures and issue importance affect perceptions of others who agree and disagree with the individual on a potentially important issue. Individuals attributed more positive reasons for attitudes of those who agree as opposed to disagree with themselves, whereas disagreers were attributed more negative reasons. The asymmetry was moderated by decision form, and issue importance. The attitudes concerned attitudes towards potential new policies. In Study II we investigated differences in participants’ perceptions of others depending on own position towards the new policy. Challengers of the status quo advocating a change in the existing policy, were more biased when judging others than were defenders of the status quo. This suggests that challengers are less tolerant of defenders’ point of view. This effect was not affected by perceptions of minority status among the challengers. In Study III we looked at individual group members’ cognitive restructuring of a preferred decision alternative, and how it differs between decision conditions when the decision-maker is affiliated to own ingroup or not. Results showed that individuals restructure the attractiveness of their preferred alternative in group decisions similarly to what has been previously found in individual decision-making. The magnitude of restructuring was greatest when ingroup members decided for the group. However, this effect was moderated by identification with the ingroup, such that those who identified themselves with the ingroup restructured their preferred alternative more when ingroup members decided as opposed to when outgroup authorities decided.
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| 6. |
- Bäck, Emma, et al.
(author)
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Biased attributions regarding the origins of preferences in a group decision situation
- 2010
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In: European Journal of Social Psychology. - : Wiley. - 0046-2772 .- 1099-0992. ; 40:2, s. 270-281
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The current research investigated biases in attributions of the origins of others’ preferences in a group decision situation. In two experiments, students indicated their preferred alternative in a decision on an important issue in their school, and then explained the bases for preferences of those agreeing and disagreeing with them. Results showed that participants saw preferences of those who agreed as more rationally and less externally based than of those who disagreed. This effect increased with perceived issue importance, when the decision was made by in-group representatives, when the decision outcome was concordant with their own preference (Study 1), and, on the externality dimension, when their representatives were in the majority when deciding on an important issue (Study 2). Findings have important implications for our understanding of the tolerance of others and acceptance of group decisions, and ultimately, how group members behave and interact.
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| 7. |
- Gustafsson Sendén, Marie, 1966-
(author)
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Personal Pronouns in Evaluative Communication
- 2013
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Personal pronouns represent important social categories; they are among the most common words in communication and are therefore highly interesting in studying psychological perspectives and relations. The aim of this thesis was to investigate whether pronouns are used in semantic contexts in a way that reflect psychological biases. Specifically, I have tested whether self-, group-serving- and gender biases occur when pronouns are used in natural language. To study this, I developed a structure for pronouns in social categorization where the pronouns are categorized in a self-inclusive/exclusive, an individual/collective, and a gender dimension. New methods for examining pronouns usage in language were developed in the thesis, for use in experiments and in computerized studies of large data corpora of media news. The results of this thesis showed that self-inclusive pronouns (I, We) consistently were used in more positive contexts than self-exclusive pronouns (He, She, They) by participants who generated messages in the lab (Study I), and by journalists in written media news (Study II). Study I revealed that the evaluative context surrounding I and We varied according to the specific communicative situation. When individuals generated messages individually, more positive contexts were selected for I than We. However in a collaborative setting, We occurred in contexts of similar valence as I. An intergroup setting magnified the differences between self-inclusive and self-exclusive pronouns (e.g., between We and They and between I and He/She). In an analysis of 400 000 news media messages, We occurred in more positive context than I (Study II). In Study III, the contexts of He and She in these media news were examined. The results showed that He occurred nine times more often, and in more positive contexts than She. Moreover, words associated with She included more labels denoting gender, and were more uniform than words associated with He. In sum, this thesis shows that studying the use of pronouns is a fruitful way to investigate social psychology phenomena. The thesis contributes to the understanding of how pronoun use convey knowledge about social cognition, attitudes, gender stereotypes, as well as interpersonal and intergroup relations.
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| 8. |
- Gustafsson Sendén, Marie, 1966-, et al.
(author)
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Selection Bias in Choice of Words: Evaluations of ”I” and ”We” Differ between Contexts, but ”They” are Always Worse
- 2014
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In: Journal of Language and Social Psychology. - : Sage Publications. - 0261-927X .- 1552-6526. ; 33:1, s. 49-67
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In everyday life, people use language to communicate evaluative messages about social categories. We examine a selection bias in language across two social dimensions not previously integrated; a self-inclusive/self-exclusive dimension and an individual/collective dimension. We used pronouns as markers for social categories (I, We, He/she and They), and developed a new measure, the Evaluative Sentence Generating (ESG) task, to investigate the evaluative context selected for the pronouns. Results demonstrate that individuals select a more positive context for self-inclusive than self-exclusive pronouns, and a more positive contexts for individual than collective pronouns. However, in an interpersonal context, evaluative differences between I and We diminished, whereas in an intergroup condition the evaluative gap between self-inclusive and self-exclusive pronouns was magnified. The ESG-task shows how language is used to form evaluative differences between social categories even in the absence of explicit comparisons or descriptions of specified persons or groups, and that it constitutes a new, simple and effective tool for measuring such biases across a number of domains.
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| 9. |
- Gustafsson Sendén, Marie, et al.
(author)
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She and He in News Media Messages : Pronoun Use Reflects Gender Biases in Semantic Contexts
- 2015
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In: Sex Roles. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0360-0025 .- 1573-2762. ; 72:1-2, s. 40-49
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Previous research has shown a male bias in the media. This study tests this statement by examining how the pronouns She and He are used in a news media context. More specifically, the study tests whether He occurs more often and in more positive semantic contexts than She, as well as whether She is associated with more stereotypically and essential labels than He is. Latent semantic analysis (LSA) was applied to 400 000 Reuters' news messages, written in English, published in 1996-1997. LSA is a completely data-driven method, extracting statistics of words from how they are used throughout a corpus. As such, no human coders are involved in the assessment of how pronouns occur in their contexts. The results showed that He pronouns were about 9 times more frequent than She pronouns. In addition, the semantic contexts of He were more positive than the contexts of She. Moreover, words associated with She-contexts included more words denoting gender, and were more homogeneous than the words associated with He-contexts. Altogether, these results indicate that men are represented as the norm in these media. Since these news messages are distributed on a daily basis all over the world, in printed newspapers, and on the internet, it seems likely that this presentation maintains, and reinforces prevalent gender stereotypes, hence contributing to gender inequities.
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| 10. |
- Liuzza, Marco Tullio, et al.
(author)
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Body odour disgust sensitivity predicts authoritarian attitudes
- 2018
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In: Royal Society Open Science. - : The Royal Society. - 2054-5703. ; 5:2
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Authoritarianism has resurfaced as a research topic in political psychology, as it appears relevant to explain current political trends. Authoritarian attitudes have been consistently linked to feelings of disgust, an emotion that is thought to have evolved to protect the organism from contamination. We hypothesized that body odour disgust sensitivity (BODS) might be associated with authoritarianism, as chemo-signalling is a primitive system for regulating interpersonal contact and disease avoidance, which are key features also in authoritarianism. We used well-validated scales for measuring BODS, authoritarianism and related constructs. Across two studies, we found that BODS is positively related to authoritarianism. In a third study, we showed a positive association between BODS scores and support for Donald Trump, who, at the time of data collection, was a presidential candidate with an agenda described as resonating with authoritarian attitudes. Authoritarianism fully explained the positive association between BODS and support for Donald Trump. Our findings highlight body odour disgust as a new and promising domain in political psychology research. Authoritarianism and BODS might be part of the same disease avoidance framework, and our results contribute to the growing evidence that contemporary social attitudes might be rooted in basic sensory functions.
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