Megan E. Birney- PhD
- Associate Professor at University of Birmingham
Megan E. Birney
- PhD
- Associate Professor at University of Birmingham
About
24
Publications
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409
Citations
Introduction
Current institution
Additional affiliations
August 2015 - present
November 2013 - August 2015
October 2010 - September 2014
Publications
Publications (24)
Science denialism is at the heart of many conspiracy theory beliefs. We propose that such beliefs are manifestations of a distal social process: spite. In three pre‐registered studies, we test the hypothesis that established predictors of these beliefs (epistemic, existential, and social motives) are specific cues of competitive disadvantage that p...
Spiteful behavior, where one oneself to harm another, is a common social behavior that is associated with social competition. However, there is currently only one well-used psychological measure that claims to measure spitefulness, the Spitefulness Scale (Marcus et al, 2014). At present, there is little research investigating whether spite, as meas...
Milgram’s Obedience to Authority (OtA) studies have long been understood as demonstrating that people are prone to blindly follow the orders of authority. More recently, we have proposed an engaged followership model of obedience, which suggests that a person’s willingness to go along with the requests of an authority figure is predicated on their...
Stereotypes of men (e.g., strong, domineering, assertive) can harm boys’ health and contribute to the normalization of sexual harassment. Yet research on how adolescents view masculinity is limited, particularly for those growing up during the #MeToo movement. Using a mixed-methods approach, we explore beliefs about masculinity in a sample of 16 to...
Drawing on the ‘engaged followership’ reinterpretation of Milgram's work on obedience, four studies (three pre‐registered) examine the extent to which people's willingness to follow an experimenter's instructions is dependent on the perceived prototypicality of the science they are supposedly advancing. In Studies 1, 2 and 3, participants took part...
As immigration and mobility increases, so do interactions between people from different linguistic backgrounds. Yet while linguistic diversity offers many benefits, it also comes with a number of challenges. In seven empirical articles and one commentary, this Special Issue addresses some of the most significant language challenges facing researche...
We explore how interpersonal and intergroup perceptions are affected by a nonnative speaker’s accent strength and the status of their home country. When nationality information was absent (Study 1), natives who heard a strong (vs. weak) accent rated the speaker as warmer but immigrants as a group as more threatening. This result was replicated when...
We explored the effects of language-based stigma on the relationship between native and nonnative speakers. In two studies, we found that stigmatized nonnative speakers experienced more negative interpersonal interactions, higher levels of intergroup threat, and reduced performance on an English test compared with nonnative speakers who did not exp...
In Milgram’s seminal obedience studies, participants’ behaviour has traditionally been explained as a demonstration of people’s tendency to enter into an ‘agentic state’ when in the presence of an authority figure: they attend only to the demands of that authority and are insensitive to the plight of their victims. There have been many criticisms o...
Objective: Guided by theoretical and empirical work attesting to the health benefits of social connections, we tested whether Internet connectivity, and training in its use for social purposes, can support the well-being of older adults receiving care. Method: Participants (N = 76) were randomly assigned to receive 3 months training versus care-as-...
Traditionally, Milgram's 'obedience' studies have been used to propose that 'ordinary people' are capable of inflicting great harm on outgroup members because they are predisposed to follow orders. According to this account, people focus so much on being good followers that they become unaware of the consequences of their actions. Atrocity is thus...
Milgram's classic studies are widely understood to demonstrate people's natural inclination to obey the orders of those in authority. However, of the prods that Milgram's Experimenter employed to encourage participants to continue the one most resembling an order was least successful. This study examines the impact of prods more closely by manipula...
