Fabrizio ButeraUniversity of Lausanne | UNIL · Laboratoire de Psychologie sociale (UNILaPS)
Fabrizio Butera
PhD in Psychology
Professor of Social Psychology, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
About
260
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Introduction
My research is concerned with the study of social change, from the structural processes founding social influence (power, norms, interdependence, ..) to the cognitive and motivational mechanisms that determine individual change. This work is intended to show that it is possible to introduce a change in all human activities and structures, and to show which are the specific processes that underlie specific forms of change. This view counters a representation of human functioning that considers that such phenomena as racism, competition, exclusion, are stable and inevitable phenomena, since they are anchored on stable structures of human "nature". This research programme aims at studying the mechanisms--in particular conflicts --undelying change.
Additional affiliations
September 2004 - present
Université de Lausanne
September 1997 - September 2004
September 1997 - August 2004
Position
- Professor of Social Psychology
Education
October 1989 - June 1994
Publications
Publications (260)
Satisfaction with academic studies is a subjective indicator of students’ well-being and experiences in the context of studies. However, evidence for the reliability and validity of academic satisfaction measures, particularly their French variants, is still limited, thus restricting the administration of evidence-based assessments of academic sati...
Agricultural landscapes play a crucial role in enhancing biodiversity because of their widespread presence over the Earth and their ability to encompass diverse ecosystems. Recognizing this, numerous governments are incentivizing farmers through direct payments to adopt sustainable practices, such as managing extensive pastures and meadows, plantin...
Considering the evolving and unpredictable job market, adaptability is an important skill for young adults. Such adaptability implies that schools need to teach key social competences, like communication, collaboration, or problem-solving. In this area, a gender gap has consistently been found, showing that boys display social competences less than...
Introduction
Preparing host-society children for contact with refugees coming into their classes poses a new and important challenge for countries with little prior experience in integration. Imagined contact is a prejudice-reduction intervention that can be particularly useful in this context. However, its long-term effects and potential age-relat...
Background
Although it is well established that students' adaptive reactions towards errors promote learning outcomes, little is still known about the role of error feedback in promoting these reactions.
Aim
Through a targeted intervention based on an online teaching unit, this study aimed at testing whether supportive error feedback promotes more...
The jigsaw classroom is a cooperative learning method designed in the late 1970s to improve the academic performance of minority children by reducing intergroup conflict and increasing self-evaluations. Despite its high popularity, the available evidence for the effectiveness of this method seems scant and mixed, with neither meta-analysis nor syst...
Existing research on the education of refugee children has been conducted in countries with a longstanding tradition of refugee integration. The aim of this study was to gain insight into the integration process of refugee children in Croatian schools. Croatia is a small EU country with limited experience in refugee integration. The phenomenologica...
Current approaches for deciding what science is covered in the media portray only a narrow slice of climate change research and aren’t well suited for stoking climate action.
Achievement goals have been defined as the purpose of competence-relevant behavior. In this respect they connect one of the basic human needs, i.e., competence, to one of society's core values, i.e., achievement. We propose to look at achievement goals through the lens of social influence. We review both the influence that cultural, structural, and...
Why are people willing to denounce or, contrarily, to keep silent on others’ misconduct? We hypothesized that people would be more likely to cheat, and consequently less likely to blow the whistle, when among an ingroup (vs. outgroup). In two experiments, participants witnessed a same nationality or a different nationality group member cheating dur...
In this chapter we delineate how competition circulates through education. First, we show how competitive ideologies, values and norms are transmitted from society to educational institutions, in particular ideologies and values such as meritocracy, the belief in a fair free market and neoliberalism, as well as norms such as productivism and employ...
First published as a special issue of the Policy and Politics journal, this book situates reforms known as 'nudges' or 'behavioural interventions' which have emerged in public policy and administration within a broader tradition of methodological individualism.
Teachers’ beliefs about students’ errors are influenced by structural factors and by other beliefs towards education and students that teachers may hold. The literature on this topic has provided some evidence and some mixed results. Furthermore, some structural aspects related to errors have not been considered in framing teachers’ beliefs about e...
Transdisciplinary sustainability science integrates multiple perspectives, promotes internal reflexivity and situated learning, and engages with multiple stakeholders to solve real-world sustainability challenges. Therefore, transdisciplinary approaches to teaching and learning for sustainability science have traditionally focused on promoting core...
Educational institutions are imbued with an institutional meritocratic discourse: only merit counts for academic success. In this article, we study whether this institutional belief has an impact beyond its primary function of encouraging students to study. We propose that belief in school meritocracy has broader societal impact by legitimizing the...
[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.899933.].
By growing awareness for and interest in climate change, media coverage enlarges the window of opportunity by which research can engage individuals and collectives in climate actions. However, we question whether the climate change research that gets mediatized is fit for this challenge. From a survey of the 51,230 scientific articles published in...
Collective cheating can have serious consequences in professional and educational settings. Existing data show that collective cheating is common and that individuals cheat more when they are in groups, highlighting the existence of some collective organisation in the endeavour. However, little is known about the emergence of this behaviour and the...
Errors are an integral part of the learning process and an opportunity to increase skills and knowledge, but they are often discouraged, sanctioned and derided in the classroom. This study tests whether students' perceptions of being part of an error-friendly classroom context (i.e., a positive classroom error climate) is positively related to stud...
In this 28-country study (N = 6112), we assessed how subjective perceptions and objective indicators of wealth were associated with majority group members’ perceptions of realistic threat related to immigration. Subjective wealth was assessed by individuals’ perceptions of their personal wealth (current/anticipated) and of their country´s wealth, w...
Higher education institutes (HEI) face considerable challenges in navigating how to respond to the escalating and intertwined socio-ecological sustainability crises. Many dedicated individuals working in the sector are already driving meaningful action through rigorous research, teaching, knowledge sharing, and public engagement, while there is a g...
If today the anthropogenic origin of climate change gathers almost total scientific consensus, human pro-environmental action is not changing with sufficient impact to keep global warming within the 1.5° limit. Environmental psychology has traditionally focused on the underlying barriers towards more pro-environmental behaviours. Emotions—like fear...
Errors are an integral part of the learning process and an opportunity to increase skills and knowledge, but they are often discouraged, sanctioned and derided in the classroom. This study tests whether students' perceptions of being part of an error-friendly classroom context (i.e., a positive classroom error climate) is positively related to stud...
“Jigsaw” is a peer learning procedure derived from social i nterdependence theory, which suggests that individuals positively linked by a common goal can benefit from positive and promotive social interactions (Aronson & Patnoe, 2011). Although jigsaw has often been presented as an efficient way to promote learning, empirical research testing its e...
“We are all in the same boat” are words heard from young climate activists, suggesting that all generations must engage together in the fight against climate change. However, because of their age and life situation, some young people may feel unable to change the situation and attribute the moral obligation to do so to older generations. Whether su...
Even though the meritocratic ideal is rarely fully attained in educational institutions, students’, teachers’, and parents’ belief that schools are meritocratic engines that maintain the legitimacy of these educational institutions. In this article, we study the belief in school meritocracy beyond the educational context and explore its pernicious...
The present research investigated the possibility to foster positive classroom climate, achievement emotions, and adaptive beliefs about errors by manipulating teachers' error handling strategies. Through a pre-post experimental design, teachers' error handling strategies were manipulated during a fictitious lesson in the primary school context. Th...
There is growing evidence in the literature of positive relationships between socio-emotional competencies and school performance. Several hypotheses have been used to explain how these variables may be related to school performance. In this paper, we explored the role of various school adjustment variables in the relationship between interpersonal...
Background:
A growing literature focuses on reasons behind achievement goal endorsement, and mastery-approach goals (MG) specifically, and how these reasons influence academic performance. Past research provides evidence that student-level social value-related reasons behind MG moderate the MG-performance link in adolescents and young adults. Howe...
A partner’s competence should logically favor cooperative learning. However, research in cooperative learning has shown that a partner’s competence may or may not activate a threatening social comparison and yields dual effects: It is beneficial when students work on complementary information while it is detrimental when students work on identical...
There is evidence that democracies are under threat around the world while the quest for strong leaders is increasing. Although the causes of these developments are complex and multifaceted, here we focus on one factor: the extent to which citizens express materialist and post-materialist concerns. We explore whether objective higher levels of demo...
The worldwide spread of a new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) since December 2019 has posed a severe threat to individuals’ well-being. While the world at large is waiting that the released vaccines immunize most citizens, public health experts suggest that, in the meantime, it is only through behavior change that the spread of COVID-19 can be controlled....
Teachers carry out a number of roles in the educational system. Their primary role is to help all students develop knowledge and skills, but, most of the time, they take on the role of gatekeepers: They evaluate students and exercise selection on the basis of performance. We analyze the roles of teachers through the lens of the literature on social...
This study combines the Behavioural Public Policies (BPP) and the Street-Level Bureaucrats (SLB) approaches; the main innovation is to focus on the potential effects of nudges on SLBs’ behaviour rather than on citizens’ behaviour, as previously done in most studies applying BPP. We conducted a field experiment to assess whether a system 2, thought-...
In this 28-country study (N = 6112), we assessed how subjective perceptions and objective indicators of wealth were associated with majority group members’ perceptions of realistic threat related to immigration. Subjective wealth was assessed by individuals’ perceptions of their personal wealth (current/anticipated) and of their country´s wealth, w...
L’évaluation n’est pas un exercice neutre qui consiste à quantifier les mérites de la production d’un élève : selon le type d’évaluation utilisée (p.ex., normative ou formative) et selon la fonction qu’on lui attribue (sélectionner ou former), les élèves se sentent plus ou moins menacés, et développent des représentations différentes de leur autono...
The present research investigated the possibility to foster positive classroom climate, achievement emotions, and adaptive beliefs about errors by manipulating teachers' error handling strategies. Through a pre-post experimental design, teachers' error handling strategies were manipulated during a fictitious lesson in the primary school context. Th...
The relationships between subjective status and perceived legitimacy are important for understanding the extent to which people with low status are complicit in their oppression. We use novel data from 66 samples and 30 countries (N = 12,788) and find that people with higher status see the social system as more legitimate than those with lower stat...
The relationships between subjective status and perceived legitimacy are important for understanding the extent to which people with low status are complicit in their oppression. We use novel data from 66 samples and 30 countries (N = 12,788) and find that people with higher status see the social system as more legitimate than those with lower stat...
préparation de ce manuscrit a été financée par le Fonds National suisse de la Recherche Scientifique.
Nel suo articolo bersaglio per il «Giornale Italiano di Psicologia», Monica Bucciarelli (2019) ci accompagna lungo un percorso che prima espone i meccanismi alla base del ragionamento deliberato, in particolare quelli che favoriscono la costruzione di modelli mentali multipli, e poi mette in luce le strutture della scuola che riducono la possibilit...
The school system is intended to offer all students the same opportunities, but most international surveys reveal an overall lower achievement for students from disadvantaged groups compared with more advantaged students. Recent experimental research in social psychology has demonstrated that schools as institutions contribute with their implicit c...
Research on attitudinal ambivalence started in the early 1970s, forty years after the first wave of research on attitudes. Ambivalent attitudes consist of both positive and negative evaluations of the same object. Early approaches proposed different measurement methods, and ambivalence can now be measured either directly (referred to as “felt ambiv...
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 s...
OBJECTIVE.
Scholars disagree on whether income inequality has incentive or disincentive effects. In the present research, we move beyond such debate and focus on the motivational processes that income inequality predicts. First, income inequality makes economic stratification salient, and therefore should promote perceived competitiveness. Second,...
Social interdependence theory has provided a conceptual framework to understand cooperation and competition through a common mechanism: Social interdependence, i.e., the mechanism whereby the outcomes of individuals in a group are affected by the actions of the other group members. Positive social interdependence is the set of rules, norms, or prac...
To understand the persistent social class achievement gap, researchers have investigated how educational settings affect lower vs. higher socio-economic status (SES) students’ performance. We move beyond the question of actual performance to study its assessment by evaluators. We hypothesized that even in the absence of performance differences, ass...
Sociocognitive conflict arises when people hold different views or ideas about the same object, and it has the potential to promote learning, cognitive development, and positive social relations. The promotion of these outcomes, however, depends on how the conflict is regulated and with what goals: Mastery goals predict epistemic conflict regulatio...
We adopted an achievement goal complex framework (studying achievement goals and reasons connected to goals) to determine when and why performance goals predict exploitation of others’ knowledge. We hypothesized that: (i) when selective assessment is used (exams aiming to select a limited number of individuals), the link between performance goals a...
Selection practices in education, such as tracking, may represent a structural obstacle that contributes to the social class achievement gap. We hypothesized that school’s function of selection leads evaluators to reproduce social inequalities in tracking decisions, even when performance is equal. In two studies, participants (students playing the...
This Editorial introduces the Special Collection “Conflicts in social influence: A Festschrift in honour of Gabriel Mugny”, which celebrates Gabriel Mugny’s pioneer role in developing a social psychological understanding of the structuring role of conflict. The article outlines Gabriel Mugny's contribution to social psychology in general, and to so...
The constructive role of conflict has been studied for more than forty years in research programs spanning such di!erent domains as social development, social influence, and the construction of knowledge. The study of conflict has provided tremendous impetus to the understanding of the mechanisms underlying individual and social change, and Gabriel...
Confirmation is a widespread tendency to seek, use, interpret or remember information in such a way as to corroborate one’s hypothesis. We review various conceptions of confirmation and classify them as a function of whether they depict this phenomenon as a cognitive failure, a form of motivational prioritisation, or a pragmatic strategy. Then, we...
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 be...
To understand the persistent social class achievement gap, researchers have investigated how educational settings affect lower versus higher socioeconomic status (SES) students’ performance. We move beyond the question of actual performance to study its assessment by evaluators. We hypothesized that even in the absence of performance differences, a...
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...
Research on attitudinal ambivalence is flourishing, but no research has studied how others perceive its expression. We tested the hypothesis that the expression of attitudinal ambivalence could be positively valued if it signals careful consideration of an issue. More specifically, ambivalence should be judged higher on social utility (competence)...
“Sharing is caring” the old adage goes, with its implied message that both are morally desirable. But what if it’s test answers that students are sharing with their friends? Integrating values, cheating, and in-group bias theory, we hypothesize that adherence to group-loyalty benevolence values—considered as some of the most moral values—positively...
Mugny and his colleagues have shown that conflict is sometimes detrimental for learning, but other times beneficial, depending on how it is regulated. Yet, it is assumed that laypeople perceive conflict as uniformly negative. We argue that the valence of these lay perceptions depends on the mode of conflict regulation. Epistemic and relational prot...
Previous research has shown that women eating small portions of food (vs. eating big portions) are perceived as more feminine, whereas men eating large portions are perceived as more masculine. The specific type of food items have also been shown to carry connotations for gender stereotyping. In addition, matching the co-eater's food quantity is al...
Social cryptomnesia is quite a widespread phenomenon whereby people’s acceptance and integration of values promoted by minorities (e.g., women’s rights) is often accompanied by obliviousness regarding the role played by minority groups (e.g., feminists), which results in the perpetuation of a negative image of minority groups. In the present chapte...
Recent years have seen an increased interest in understanding how high-stakes evaluative contexts, which are pervasive in the academic arena, may influence crucial outcomes such as performance and achievement. The salience of grades, as well as the importance to distinguish oneself in the eyes of teachers to have access to valued diplomas, encourag...
How are competitive goals transmitted over time? As most competence-relevant contexts (e.g., school) are hierarchy-relevant (e.g., teacher/students), supervisors’ performance-approach goals (desire to outperform others) should play a major role. We formulated a performance goals socialization hypothesis: The higher a supervisor’s performance-approa...
This research investigates a barrier faced by low-SES pupils who are on an upward social mobility trajectory: resistance to their high-achiever status. We hypothesize that, as they disconfirm the usual social-class academic disparities (i.e., high-SES on average outperform low-SES pupils), they threaten the status quo and induce restorative reactio...
According to the recent research, the educational system fulfills both an educational function (i.e., teaching and training students) and a selection function (i.e., determining students’ future position in the social hierarchy), particularly in higher education. It has been argued that in the university system the selection function provides a soc...
At school, pupils often cooperate on common projects and must coordinate their different individual actions. However, grades are pervasively used even in cooperative situations, which make the pupils’ differences in achievement and their relative rank salient and may reduce their inclination to work constructively with others. Thus, we hypothesized...
Fait marquant de la vie sociale, le conflit s’exprime de multiples façons : conflit entre différentes identités de l’individu, conflit entre des valeurs sociales incompatibles, conflit entre individus en compétition, conflit entre groupes minoritaires et majoritaires. En régulant les rapports entre individus et groupes, le conflit intervient contin...
The aim of the present chapter is to explain the processes through which minority points of view may, or may not, diffuse in society at large. The first section presents the rise in the 1970s of a new stream of research, that of minority influence, and summarizes early conceptions and the initial experimental works that allowed differentiating mino...