Emanuele Politi

KU Leuven | ku leuven · Center of Social and Cultural Psychology

In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, sustainable forms of collective resilience help societies coping cohesively with unprecedented challenges. In our empirical contribution, we framed collective resilience and cohesion in terms of prosociality. A study carried out in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak in the UK (N = 399) articulated basic individ...

Via naturalization procedures, immigrants have the opportunity to acquire rights and duties limited to nationals. Yet little is known about acculturative contexts and naturalization motives underlying immigrants' naturalization intentions. Employing a large sample of first-generation immigrants in Switzerland (N = 3928) and a multilevel approach, w...

Naturalization policies prescribe the conditions immigrants must fulfil to be legally recognized as national citizens in a receiving country. When changes in naturalization policies are publicly debated, divergent opinions on national boundary making reveal social representations of citizenship as spaces of political contention. This research offer...

In 2022, Europe experienced unprecedented citizen mobilizations to help Ukrainian refugees. Based on two parallel lines of scholarship, we examined individual prosocial dispositions and superordinate identities related to intentions to help Ukrainians. Employing a French-speaking student sample in Belgium (N = 374), in Study 1, we showed that dis-p...

Building up on pre-existing vulnerabilities and social exclusions, refugees and migrants are disproportionately suffering from the negative effects of the COVID-19 outbreak. Insecure legal status is an additional stressor that may accentuate social cleavages and ultimately impair their trust in host society and institutions. Based on a diverse samp...

Research offers evidence that younger generations suffered the most psychologically from the COVID-19 crisis. In this article, we look at the onset of the pandemic to understand the reasons for this increased vulnerability. We use the COVID-19 Multifaceted Threat Scale to explore potential mechanisms underlying generational differences in psycholog...

It is now well documented that school closures enforced at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic impaired teachers' well-being. Yet, only a few studies tracked changes in teachers' well-being during the subsequent phases of the pandemic, phases that were characterized by the discontinuous implementation of in-person teaching and distance learning....

Unlabelled: Prosociality is often considered as quintessential in coping with the threats of health emergencies. As previous research has suggested, prosocial behaviors are shaped by both dispositional factors and situational cues about the helping situation. In the present research, we investigated whether "bonding" types of prosociality, helping...

Refugees often leave behind perilous journeys to enter Europe and lengthy asylum procedures that jeopardize their long-term integration trajectory. Therefore, adequate and tailored social support by host society members is key. Although classical social support theories are frequently used in the framework of refugee resettlement and integration, t...

In the context of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, teachers faced unprecedented challenges and threats while implementing distance learning. Consequently, teachers may have experienced emotional exhaustion. The aim of our study was threefold: To explore teachers' threat appraisals, to investigate the relation between teachers' threat ap...

The COVID-19 pandemic constitutes an unprecedented threat for individuals and societies, revealing stark inequalities in preparedness, exposure, and consequences. The present systematic literature review complements extant knowledge on disasters and pandemic diseases with programmatic research on the COVID-19 pandemic. Building upon an integrative...

The COVID-19 pandemic represents an unprecedented threat for individuals worldwide. This paper reports the initial psychometric properties for the recently developed COVID-19 Multifaceted Threat Scale. Across three studies the construction and initial psychometric evidence is presented. In Study 1 (n = 194, 11 national groups), we adopted an induct...

Following increased flexibilization of labour market and related decline of traditional labour unionism over the last few decades, studying mobilization processes of precarious workers has become particularly timely. While localized forms of organization and union-ization are gradually emerging, little is known about why workers intend to join thes...

Following increased flexibilization of labour market and related decline of traditional labour unionism over the last few decades, studying mobilization processes of precarious workers has become particularly timely. While localized forms of organization and union- ization are gradually emerging, little is known about why workers intend to join the...

This UNHCR funded analytical report was aimed at a) understanding the main stressors experienced by refugees and migrants during the virus outbreak; b) identifying how to overcome the virus outbreak via social support and community building. Based on our findings, we urge local authorities and service providers to a) address side effects of the p...

Présentation de nos recherches s'intéressant au processus de naturalisation en tant que trajectoire de mobilité sociale ascendante. La capsule vidéo est consultable à l'adresse suivante : https://osf.io/vkfw9/?view_only=773e613c7f6c449895cdb8f672958fd5&fbclid=IwAR0H79UTYM8XHHM3Olm5iYD3hKpj9DOGNMCKXIliA3AJynfOXMkG4YMCxGk (vidéo en français)

A growing body of research has shown that naturalized citizens’ attitudes towards immigration worsen following citizenship acquisition. Accordingly, these socially mobile individuals tend to distance themselves from their former immigrant ingroup. The present contribution explains such self–group distancing coping strategy in terms of an “ironic” p...

This chapter examines people’s perceptions of welfare dependency and how these affect their support for the welfare state. The chapter starts off from the observation that the most significant effect of the 2008 crisis has been the widespread implementation of austerity politics, which had the greatest impact on the most vulnerable segments of the...

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, societies face the formidable challenge of developing sustainable forms of sociability-cumsocial-distancing-enduring social life while containing the virus and preventing new outbreaks. Accordant public policies often balance between retributive (punishment-based) and assistance (solidarity-based) measures to f...

Social psychological research has analyzed immigration attitudes mostly from the perspective of natives without an immigrant background. Nevertheless, an increasing number of migrants obtain national citizenship and take a stance towards immigration policies. By studying immigration policy attitudes reported by naturalized citizens, this paper deve...

A large body of research has demonstrated that intergroup contact is a powerful tool for reducing prejudice among majority group members. Yet, research among minority group members has revealed a more complex picture. The present contribution advances recent research on sedative effects of intergroup contact on support for ethnic activism, by inves...

Immigrant naturalization is a rite of passage, making assimilationist attitudes particularly pronounced among host nationals. Three experimental studies investigate whether heritage culture maintenance violates expectations that citizenship should be deserved by proving strong attachment to the host nation (i.e., neoliberal communitarianism). Stud...

Most social psychological research on anti-immigration prejudice has examined the point of view of the national ingroup-generally defined as the citizens of the country under consideration-toward immigrant outgroups. Threat perceptions related to immigration as well as national identification have been shown to underlie negative attitudes. Whether...

Extending Gabriel Mugny’s work on minority influence, this paper integrates models of minority influence with categorization and social identification processes. By doing so, we aim to understand how members of a national majority become willing to actively challenge political authority by showing solidarity with the refugee minority. In an experim...