Ernestine H Gordijn

University of Groningen | RUG · Department of Psychology

We examined the relationship between contact of police officers with citizens, their (meta-) stereotypes about citizens, and their work-related well-being. Ninety-three police officers from 4 police stations in low and high crime regions in France completed the questionnaire. As expected, negative well-being of police officers is predicted by negat...

Social interaction is pivotal to the formation of social relationships and groups. Much is known about the importance of interaction content (e.g., the transfer of information). The present review concentrates on the influence of the act of conversing on the emergence of a sense of solidarity, more or less independently of the content. Micro-charac...

Increasing outgroup empathy is an important first step toward reducing intergroup conflict. The communication of group-based anger has been found to increase outgroup empathy due to its presumed relational function (as it signals to the outgroup that they unfairly treat the ingroup, but also that the ingroup wants to maintain a positive intergroup...

Rejection can convey that one is seen as inferior and not worth bothering with. Is it possible for people to feel vicariously rejected in this sense and have reactions that are similar to those following personal rejection, such as feeling humiliated, powerless, and angry? A study on personal rejection was followed by two main studies on vicarious...

Two experiments investigated when perceivers can construe stereotype-inconsistent information abstractly (i.e., interpret observations as generalizable) and whether stereotype-consistency delimits the positive relation between abstract construal level and stereotyping. Participants (N1=104, N2=83) prepared for intragroup communication or formed an...

We investigated women's anger expression in response to sexism. In three studies (Ns = 103, 317, and 241), we tested the predictions that women express less anger about sexism than they experience-the anger gap-and that the anger expressed by women is associated with instrumental concerns, specifically perceived costs and benefits of confronting se...

Group growth is of fundamental importance to understanding social influence. How do passive bystanders become psychologically involved when observing a small group of actors? Our hypothesis was that the kind of solidarity displayed by the group shapes the bonds that emerge with an audience. We studied audience responses to modern dance performances...

In intergroup conflicts, expressed emotions influence how others see and react to those who express them. Here, we investigated whether this in turn implies that emotions may be expressed strategically. We tested whether emotion expression can differ from emotion experience, and whether emotion expression (more than emotion experience) is used to p...

Study 1 moderation analyses. This file contains a summary of exploratory analyses of identification as a moderator. (DOCX)

Study material. This file contains the exact wording of the study material. (DOCX)

Additional measures. This file contains short descriptions and summaries of the results of additional measures. (DOCX)

Study 1 and 2 descriptive statistics of additional emotions. (PDF)

Study 2 scatterplots calling for support and all significant predictors. (PDF)

Study 2 scatterplots out-group distancing and all significant predictors. (PDF)

Based on the interactive model of identity formation (Postmes, Haslam, & Swaab, 2005) we investigate whether displays of coordinated actions foster feelings of solidarity. Participants were randomly assigned to roles of actors and observers in two experiments (N = 191 and 276). Actors performed in an “airband” in which all played air-guitar (enacti...

Two experiments investigated the role of intragroup communication in intergroup conflict (de-)escalation. Experiment 1 examined the effects of intragroup communication (vs. individual thought) and anticipated face-to-face intergroup contact (vs. no anticipated face-to-face intergroup contact). The group discussions of stigmatized group members who...

We examine how different forms of co-action give rise to feelings of solidarity. We propose that (a) coordinated action elicits a sense of solidarity, and (b) the process through which such solidarity emerges differs for different forms of co-action. We suggest that whether solidarity within groups emerges from uniform action (e.g. synchronizing, a...

Conversations are susceptible to many disturbances: A speaker's hesitations, distractions, or, when communicating online, technical hiccups that may cause brief delays. Research among previously unacquainted individuals revealed that brief disruptions in conversational flow can have profound social consequences: Silences or delays in mediated commu...

How do group members cope with misconduct by members of their own group? Strong evidence for a positive bias in people's evaluations of their own group and its members suggests that an ingroup perpetrator is likely to be treated more leniently than an outgroup perpetrator. However, research has also demonstrated a “Black Sheep-Effect”, such that in...

Reviews our research on communication in conflict (de)escalation

Social interaction is fundamental to the development of various aspects of "we-ness". Previous research has focused on the role the content of interaction plays in establishing feelings of unity, belongingness and shared reality (a cluster of variables referred to as solidarity here). The present paper is less concerned with content, but focuses on...

In this article we suggest a mechanism for norm regulation that does not rely on explicit information exchange or costly reinforcement, but rather on the sensitivity of group members to social cues in their environment. We examine whether brief conversational silences can (a) signal a threat to one’s inclusionary status in the group and (b) motivat...

The communication of group-based anger in intergroup conflict is often associated with destructive conflict behavior. However, we show that communicating group-based anger toward the out-group can evoke empathy and thus reduce intergroup conflict. This is because it stresses the value of maintaining a positive long-term intergroup relationship, the...

In intractable intergroup conflicts, groups often try to frame intergroup violence as legitimate through the use of emotional appeals. Two experiments demonstrate that outsiders' perception of which emotion conflict parties communicate influences the extent to which they legitimize their violence. Results show that although outsiders typically give...

This study examines the process by which perceptions of conversational flow foster an emergent sense of group entitativity. We propose that conversational flow influences more than just the quality of interpersonal relations: it signals entitativity - social unity at the group level. We predicted that when conversations are intermitted by brief sil...

Five experiments investigated the effect of power on social distance. Although increased social distance has been suggested to be an underlying mechanism for a number of the effects of power, there is little empirical evidence directly supporting this claim. Our first three experiments found that power increases social distance toward others. In ad...

In two field studies, we examined whether voters overestimate support for their political party among nonvoters. In Study 1, voters estimated the percentage of votes their party would receive in an upcoming election, and this percentage increased when voters estimated the percentage of votes their party would receive if nonvoters also were to vote....

We propose that in intergroup conflict threat content is important in understanding the reactions of those who experience threats the most: the powerless. Studies 1 and 2 show that powerless groups experience more threat than powerful groups, resulting in the experience of both more anger and fear. Threat content determines which emotions elicit be...

In two experiments we examined the influence of meta-stereotypes (beliefs regarding stereotypes that the outgroup has about one's ingroup) in different contexts. In Study 1, we demonstrated that women have the same meta-stereotype about men in dating and work contexts, but experience the meta-stereotype as more positive when dating men, rather than...

We all know the awkward feeling when a conversation is disrupted by a brief silence. This paper studies why such moments can be unsettling. We suggest that silences are particularly disturbing if they disrupt the conversational flow. In two experiments we examined the effects of a single brief instance of silence on social needs, perceived consensu...

The aim of the current study was to show that the type of conflict behavior (constructive vs. unconstructive) groups use in conflicts depends on their power position as well as the likelihood that power determines victory and defeat. In an alleged online debate, we created a conflict between two opinion based groups. We then measured participant’s...

The aim of the current study was to show that the type of conflict behavior (constructive vs. unconstructive) groups use in conflicts depends on their power position as well as the likelihood that power determines victory and defeat. In an alleged online debate, we created a conflict between two opinion based groups. We then measured participant’s...

This research examined whether normal-weight people who believe they are overweight expect that other people negatively stereotype them when their appearance becomes relevant. moreover, it was examined whether these negative "meta-stereotypes" in turn make people feel worthless. Indeed, the first study showed that body weight dissatisfied women aut...

This research examined how Dutch Moroccan teenagers in the Netherlands deal with the negative stereotype that they believe the Dutch have about their group. We hypothesize that Moroccans act in line with this negative image when they are prejudiced against the Dutch and feel personally meta-stereotyped. A survey study among 88 Dutch Moroccan teenag...

The aim of this research was to examine the relation between locus of control, meta-stereotyping (expectancies about how one's group is stereotyped by another group), and loneliness among people who are HIV-positive. In line with expectations, a survey in the Netherlands among 122 people living with HIV revealed that there are positive and signific...

Women remain a minority in politics. In nearly all countries, including parliamentary democracies, women are still underrepresented in national parliament and other representative institutions. Research has argued that there is a bias against women in elections. Here we study the process behind this phenomenon by investigating the effect of a candi...

Can imitation lead to less liking? Previous research on mimicry and imitation suggests that imitation should lead to more liking, at least when it concerns neutral behaviours. In the present studies, we looked at behaviour with a clear message: Facial expressions. As predicted, we found in two studies that an affiliative facial expression (happines...

In this research we investigated whether feelings about an imagined potentially negative interaction with a member of another ethnic group was affected more by valence than content of stereotypes, and whether the differential influence of perception and meta-perception was similar for dominant and dominated groups within a given society. Prejudice,...

Across four experiments, we test the idea that power decreases metastereotyping, and that this effect is mediated by reduced perspective taking. Metastereotypes refer to the beliefs that members of group A share about the stereotypes that members of specific outgroup B typically have about ingroup A. We propose that the dominant psychological orien...

A wealth of research has found that power leads to behavioral approach and action. Four experiments demonstrate that this link between power and approach is broken when the power relationship is illegitimate. When power was primed to be legitimate or when power positions were assigned legitimately, the powerful demonstrated more approach than the p...

We investigated the idea that a charismatic leader with a controversial message is most likely to persuade people in times of terror, because in those times people have a high need for vision, and vision is what a charismatic leader provides. In addition, we argued that the leader's message should contain a pro-attitudinal position as well, as this...

Whether two people are presented as similar or different may have a strong impact on the outcome of their comparison. In the present research, we examined the counterintuitive hypothesis that activating dissimilarity increases the perception of similarities between people, in other words increases perceived feature overlap, during the comparison pr...

Across four experiments, we test the idea that power decreases metastereotyping, and that this effect is mediated by reduced perspective taking. Metastereotypes refer to the beliefs that members of group A share about the stereotypes that members of specific outgroup B typically have about ingroup A. We propose that the dominant psychological orien...

The aim of the present research was to investigate whether unconsciously presented affective information may cause opposite evaluative responses depending on what social category the information originates from. We argue that automatic comparison processes between the self and the unconscious affective information produce this evaluative contrast e...

The authors investigated the role of dissimilarity on context effects in person perception. Most research predicts similar people to be similarly evaluated and different people to be contrasted with each other. However, some research suggests that similarity may enhance comparison and contrast. To explain these opposite effects, the authors argue t...

In this paper, we examined reactions to situations in which, although one is not personally involved, one could see oneself connected to either the perpetrators or the victims of unfair behavior. We manipulated participants' similarity and measured their identification to either one of two groups which participants later learned was the victim or t...

Social comparison is a core element of human life (Festinger, 1954; Mussweiler, 2003; Tajfel, 1981; for a collection, see Suls and Wheeler, 2000). This is because comparing oneself to others is the most favored way people use to evaluate themselves. People choose to compare themselves to others with a variety of goals in mind. Obviously, a major co...

The research in this article explores the structure and content of attributed intergroup beliefs: to what extent do perceivers think others of their ingroup and their outgroup display intergroup evaluative bias and outgroup homogeneity? We report studies that address this question in ethnicity, gender, and nationality intergroup contexts. In all of...

Résumé : Dans cet article, nous rapportons deux recherches portant sur la structure et le contenu de stéréotypes attribués à autrui : dans quelle mesure pensons-nous que les membres de l'endogroupe et de l'exogroupe font preuve de favoritisme pro-endogroupe et de biais d'homogénéité de l'exogroupe ? Ces deux recherches menées dans le contexte des r...

Whereas previous research has shown automatic behavior conforming to outgroup stereotypes, the authors demonstrate automatic behavioral contrast away from a stereotype/trait associated with an outgroup (Study 1 and 2) and point to the importance of an "us-them" intergroup comparison in this process. In Study 1, participants colored pictures more me...

The present research studied the effects of suppression of stereotypes on subsequent stereotyping. Moreover, the moderating influence of motivation to suppress stereotypes was examined. The first three experiments showed that suppression of stereotypes leads to the experience of engaging in self-control (Study 1), to depleted regulatory resources a...

Two experiments were run in The Netherlands and Belgium 1 week after the terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001. The aim was to investigate whether social categorization affected emotional reactions, behavioral tendencies, and actual behaviors. Results showed that focusing participants' attention on an id...

Building upon the social emotion model (Smith, 1999), we examined the combined impact of categorization context and social identification on emotional reactions and behavioural tendencies of people confronted with the victims of harmful behaviour. Depending on conditions, participants were led to categorize the victims and themselves in the same co...

Three experiments examined how change in minority size influenced information processing and attitude change. Experiment 1 showed that when strong rather than weak arguments were presented, a message attributed to an expanding rather than shrinking minority elicited more issue-relevant thoughts and more related attitude change in the argued directi...

The present paper shows a process directly related with meta-stereotypes and that may influence intergroup relations: meta-prejudice. Meta-prejudice refers to the way in which people expect other groups to feel about their group. The main question is whether the obtained findings about meta-stereotypes are just the consequence of activated meta-ste...

This research examined whether people experience anger after perceiving intentional and unfair behavior of an outgroup which has negative consequences for others, but not for themselves. It was predicted that such outgroup behavior causes anger in the observer, dependent on the categorization of the victims as part of its own group or as part of an...

The impact of minority and majority support on attitude change is examined in a self-persuasion task. Two studies show that pro-attitudinal advocacy for the majority leads to more self-persuasion than does advocacy for the minority. In contrast, devil’s advocacy for a minority leads to stronger self-persuasion than for a majority. No differences ar...

The major aim of the present research was to examine if knowledge of cultural stereotypes about minority groups within society is virtually universal (3) or whether such knowledge is influenced by the perceiver's level of prejudice (cf. 9). In three studies, in which multiple measures of racial prejudice were used, it was shown that level of prejud...

This research concerned attitude change towards a majority or minority position as a function of convergent and divergent message processing. Results of a 2 (majority/ minority support for persuasive arguments) Â 3(convergent/divergent/no-processing instructions) experiment showed that recipients identi®ed more with a majority rather than minority,...

The studies reported in this paper address the predictions of the social identity model of deindividuation phenomena (SIDE; S. D. Reicher, et al, 1995), concerning the strategic effects of visibility to the in-group: increasing the visibility of in-group members to each other increases their ability to support each other against the out-group and h...

This chapter offers an analysis of majority vs. minority influence using the Heuristic-Systematic Model of persuasion (HSM). We evaluate evidence for and against leading perspectives such as Conversion Theory. Next, research and theory is reviewed suggesting that majority vs. minority influence differentially affect the processing of persuasive arg...