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38
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Introduction
I am a professor for social psychology at the Medical School Hamburg.
My research focusses on intergroup relations – more precisely attitudes towards diversity and multiculturalism, prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination, social identity processes, and intergroup contact.
Additional affiliations
Education
May 2009 - June 2012
September 2003 - April 2009
Publications
Publications (38)
The paper examined the effect of positive beliefs about the value of ethnic diversity (i.e. diversity beliefs) on discrimination due to foreign sounding names. It was hypothesized that pro-diversity beliefs reduce discrimination. Results from two studies (N = 29 and N = 104) confirmed this hypothesis. Practical implications of our results are discu...
Previous findings demonstrate that believing in the value of diverse groups is related to positive attitudes toward immigrants. Based on these results, we hypothesized that pro-diversity beliefs are negatively related to discrimination of immigrants. In a representative multinational survey study (Study 1; N = 6,500), we demonstrate that diversity...
We studied the influence of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) on the relationship between a multicultural ideology and attitudes about ethnic diversity and immigrants. We hypothesized that a multicultural ideology poses a threat to authoritarian individuals, which leads to a decrease in positive diversity beliefs and an increase in prejudice toward...
At the ICF Research Institute (at MSH Medical School Hamburg) multiprofessional experts collaborate on various research projects with a focus on bio-psycho-social health and education. Initially, the main goal was monitoring and evaluating the implementation of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) in clinical...
Expanding upon Duckitt's dual‐process motivational model of ideology and prejudice (DPM; Duckitt, 2001), this research explores the psychological underpinnings of the approval of hostile design (AoHD) measures. Hostile design measures are interventions designed to deter undesirable behaviours and specific social groups in urban areas. Across three...
More and more research is considering the effects of both positive and negative intergroup contact on intergroup attitudes. To date, little is known about what factors may differentially influence these effects. We propose that differentiating not only between positive and negative contact (i.e., its valence), but also considering the intensity (i....
Positive intergroup contact has not only been shown to be positively associated with favourable attitudes towards members of the contacted group but also with attitudes towards members of secondary outgroups (secondary transfer effect, STE). Only a few studies have addressed a potential STE of negative intergroup contact (i.e., a generalization of...
Healthcare has become more complex in recent years. Such complexity can best be addressed by interprofessional teams. We argue that to ensure successful communication and cooperation in interprofessional teams, it is important to establish interprofessional education in health-related study programs. More precisely, we argue that students in health...
Intergroup contact provides a reliable means of reducing prejudice. Yet, critics suggested that its efficacy is undermined, even eliminated, under certain conditions. Specifically, contact may be ineffective in the face of threat, especially to (historically) advantaged groups, and discrimination, experienced especially by (historically) disadvanta...
This study explores how researchers' analytical choices affect the reliability of scientific findings. Most discussions of reliability problems in science focus on systematic biases. We broaden the lens to emphasize the idiosyncrasy of conscious and unconscious decisions that researchers make during data analysis. We coordinated 161 researchers in...
The present work investigates whether the assumed religious background of a perpetrator in a carried out (Study 1) and attempted mass shooting (Study 2) influences attribution of the crime to mental health problems or terrorist motives as well as to evaluation of appropriate punishment. In two experimental studies (n = 113 and n = 340) participants...
Veröffentlicht in Report Psychologie (Januar 2022)
Die Diversität in unserer Gesellschaft nimmt stetig zu
und diese Entwicklung spiegelt sich auch in unseren
Schulen und Klassenräumen wider. Gleichzeitig sind Vorurteile,
also negative Einstellungen gegenüber anderen
sozialen Gruppen oder deren Mitgliedern, sowie diskriminierende
Verhaltensweisen i...
One of the most prominent social-psychological models describing the content of stereotypes about social groups is the Stereotype Content Model. The model assumes that social groups can be clustered along the dimensions of warmth (How well-intentioned is a group?) and competence (How capable is a group to implement its intentions?). We used this mo...
We investigated manifestations of ethnic and gender-based prejudice in a rather understudied high-status environment, that is we studied biased ratings of physicians with a migration background and female physicians. In a preregistered, archival study, we analyzed ratings of more than 140,000 physicians on a German rating website for medical profes...
The paper reports findings from a crowdsourced replication. Eighty-four replicator teams attempted to verify results reported in an original study by running the same models with the same data. The replication involved an experimental condition. A “transparent” group received the original study and code, and an “opaque” group received the same unde...
Findings from 162 researchers in 73 teams testing the same hypothesis with the same data reveal a universe of unique analytical possibilities leading to a broad range of results and conclusions. Surprisingly, the outcome variance mostly cannot be explained by variations in researchers’ modeling decisions or prior beliefs. Each of the 1,261 test mod...
Intergroup contact is an established pathway to improve intergroup relations. Research has long focused on mainly positive intergroup contact and its capability to improve intergroup relations. Yet, if members of different groups meet, they will not only make positive, but possibly also negative intergroup contact experiences. Recent research consi...
Modern societies and organisations are becoming increasingly diverse, leading many to argue that diversity should be valued because it can benefit teams, organisations and societies more widely. Considerable attention in both organisational and social psychological research has been devoted to so-called pro-diversity beliefs (i.e. the idea that div...
Replication studies in psychological science sometimes fail to reproduce prior findings. If these studies use methods that are unfaithful to the original study or ineffective in eliciting the phenomenon of interest, then a failure to replicate may be a failure of the protocol rather than a challenge to the original finding. Formal pre-data-collecti...
Compared to the impressive amount of research on consequences of intergroup contact, relatively little work has been devoted to predictors of intergroup contact. Although opportunities for intergroup contact are constantly growing in modern diverse societies, these contact opportunities are not necessarily exploited. In the present review article,...
As part of the Many Labs 5 project, we ran a replication of van Dijk, van Kleef, Steinel, and van Beest’s (2008) study examining the effect of emotions in negotiations. They reported that when the consequences of rejection were low, subjects offered fewer chips to angry bargaining partners than to happy partners. We ran this replication under three...
Instrumentality-based pro-diversity beliefs (i.e., beliefs that diverse groups outperform homogenous groups in terms of group functioning) have been shown to improve intergroup attitudes. However, such valuing of diversity due to its expected instrumentality holds the risk that outgroups may be devalued in situations when diversity ends up being de...
Bringing members of different social groups into contact is thought to be as one of the most promising approaches for improving intergroup relations. Indeed, a plethora of studies has shown that this intergroup contact is an effective means not only to reduce mutual prejudice but also to increase trust and forgiveness. In this chapter, we will firs...
In an era of mass migration, social scientists, populist parties and social movements raise concerns over the future of immigration-destination societies. What impacts does this have on policy and social solidarity? Comparative cross-national research, relying mostly on secondary data, has findings in different directions. There is a threat of sele...
In this article, we reflect on 50 years of the journal Social Psychology. We interviewed colleagues who have witnessed the history of the journal. Based on these interviews, we identified three crucial periods in Social Psychology's history, that are (a) the early development and further professionalization of the journal, (b) the reunification of...
In general, diversity beliefs are beliefs about the instrumentality of diversity for the functioning of groups. Focusing on a societal level, recent social-psychological research addressed pro-diversity beliefs as individuals’ beliefs that diversity is beneficial for the progress of society. Despite the growing interest in societal pro-diversity be...
Positive neighborhood norms, such as strong local networks, are critical to people’s satisfaction with, perceived disadvantage of, and intentions to stay in their neighborhood. At the same time, local ethnic diversity is said to be detrimental for these community outcomes. Integrating both frameworks, we tested whether the negative consequences of...
Previous research has shown negative effects of discrimination on ethnic minority members’ health and well-being. In this study, we examined cross-sectional and longitudinal effects of discrimination by members of the police and security personnel over and above other types of discrimination and ethnic victimization on the health of immigrant minor...
Based on two cross-sectional probability samples (Study 1: N = 1,382, Study 2: N = 1,587), we studied the interplay between positive and negative intergroup contact, different types of intergroup emotions (i.e., episodic intergroup emotions encountered during contact and more general chronic intergroup emotions), and outgroup behavior in the contex...
In two studies we tested the relationship between non-immigrant individuals’ perceptions of deviant behavior carried out by Muslims and foreigners and discriminatory intentions towards these outgroups. Based on a longitudinal and a representative cross-sectional sample, we showed that two different types of perceived deviant behavior (Study 1: Musl...
While some research suggests that ethnic and cultural diversity hinders societal cohesion, other studies show that it promotes intergroup contact opportunities, which, if exploited, help to overcome intergroup prejudice. Recently, however, intergroup contact theory has been criticized for neglecting the wider social context as well as for ignoring...
Five studies tested whether intergroup contact reduces negative outgroup attitudes through a process of ingroup distancing. Based on the deprovincialization hypothesis and Social Dominance Theory, we hypothesized that the indirect effect of cross-group friendship on outgroup attitudes via reduced ingroup identification is moderated by individuals’...
Ethnic diversity poses a threat to authoritarians, as it indicates non-conformism to group norms and threat to group conformity. According to authoritarian dynamic theory threats elicit authoritarian reactions in people with authoritarian predispositions. In the present paper we tested a mediation model derived from authoritarian dynamic theory in...