Rita Guerra

• PhD
• Iscte – University Institute of Lisbon

The rapid proliferation of hate speech on social media poses significant challenges to maintaining a safe and inclusive digital environment. This paper presents a comprehensive review of automatic hate speech detection methods, with a particular focus on the evolution of approaches from traditional machine learning and deep learning models to the m...

Bystanders’ helping behaviors are essential to mitigate bullying and its consequences, although bystanders do not always intervene on behalf of those who are victimized. One study (N = 170) tested, experimentally, the impact of different forms of common identities (one-group and dual-identity vs. control) on youth (aged between 12 and 19 years) bys...

Local contestation to the deployment of large-scale renewable energy infrastructures has been increasing. Right-wing populism has also been on the rise across the world. This article aims to explore the potential relations between these two socio-political issues, by analyzing Portuguese media discourses on the renewable energy transition and if an...

In many Western societies, conflicts between non-Muslims and Muslims are fueled by the perception of Muslim identity and the national identity as a supposed pair of opposites. It can be assumed that this distinct categorization into ingroup and outgroup can reinforce the effect of salient threat to control on increased ingroup bias and can thus lea...

Nostalgia is a social, self-relevant, and bittersweet (although mostly positive) emotion that arises when reflecting on fond past memories and serves key psychological functions. The majority of evidence concerning the prevalence, triggers, and functions of nostalgia has been amassed in samples from a handful of largely Western cultures. If nostalg...

The rapid rise of social media has brought about new ways of digital communication, along with a worrying increase in online hate speech (HS), which, in turn, has led researchers to develop several Natural Language Processing methods for its detection. Although significant strides have been made in automating HS detection, research focusing on the...

The COVID-19 pandemic posed additional challenges to the safety and well-being of young people who were forced to engage in online learning, spending more time than ever online, and cyberbullying emerged as a notable concern for parents, educators, and students. Two studies conducted online examined the prevalence, predictors, and outcomes of cyber...

Bystanders’ helping interventions in bias-based bullying are rare, although they have the potential to intervene on behalf of the victim and quickly stop the aggression. Two studies tested, experimentally, the impact of adolescents' imagined (Study 1, N = 113, Mage = 16.17) and extended contact experiences (Study 2, N = 174, Mage =15.79) on asserti...

Previous research suggests that all-inclusive superordinate categories, such as “citizens of the world” and “humans,” may represent different socio-psychological realities. Yet it remains unclear whether the use of different categories may account for different psychological processes and attitudinal or behavioral outcomes. Two studies extended pre...

The superordinate social category “ citizen of the world” is used by laypeople and scholars to embody several constructs (e.g., cosmopolitanism; global identity and citizenship), and prior research suggests that the concept is better represented as a prototype rather than having a clear-cut definition. This research aims to systematically examine t...

Research on populism spans disciplines, theoretical frameworks, and methodologies. As interest in the study of populism rises, social psychology scholars strive to understand (social) psychological factors associated with it. The aim of this Special Issue is to highlight the unique yet complementary role of social psychology in understanding - and...

Although it is known that collective narcissism is associated with problematic intergroup relations, its predictors are less well understood. Two studies, conducted in four European Union countries (Germany, Greece, Portugal, the United Kingdom [UK]), tested the hypotheses that integrated (i.e., realistic and symbolic) threat (Study 1, N = 936) as...

Neoliberalism calls upon the social sciences to explore how legal innovations – new laws and policies – incorporating neoliberal values are presented to the citizenry. An example are investment visas, a new legal instrument regulating foreign residency. Investment visas reconfigure citizenship by prioritising neoliberal values, by privileging econo...

The present study examined the effect of group labels on helping behavioral intentions toward displaced people in Germany. Specifically, it examined the impact of different labels evoking either voluntary or forced migration (i.e., migrants, economic migrants, and refugees) on different helping orientations (e.g., dependency vs. autonomy‐oriented h...

This field experiment tested whether inducing common inclusive representations (i.e., one group, dual identity) during contact influences intergroup relations differently for ethnic majority and minority children by changing their metaperceptions and intergroup emotions differently. White ( N = 113) and Black ( N = 111) 8- to 10-year-old children w...

The impact of identities encompassing all human beings (e.g., human and/or global identities) on intergroup relations is complex, with studies showing mostly positive (e.g., less dehumanization), but also negative (e.g., deflected responsibility for harm behavior), effects. However, different labels and measures have been used to examine the effect...

Intergroup changes occur often between subgroups who are asymmetric in status (e.g., size, power, prestige), with important consequences for social identification, especially among the members of lower-status groups. Mergers offer an example of such changes, when subgroups (merger partners) merge into a common, superordinate group (post-merger grou...

We analysed effective and promising interventions, within the classroom and school microsystems, aiming to promote equality and belongingness for immigrant, Roma, and low-income children attending early childhood education and care (ECEC) and primary education in eight European countries. Over 500 interventions were identified, and 78 interventions...

According to social identity theory, low self-esteem motivates group members to derogate out-groups, thus achieving positive in-group distinctiveness and boosting self-esteem. According to the Frankfurt School and status politics theorists, low self-esteem motivates collective narcissism (i.e., resentment for insufficient external recognition of th...

This survey study examined the role of perceived discrimination and acculturation orientations on immigrant children's achievement and well-being in the school context. Immigrant (n = 229), immigrant descendant (n = 196), and native Portuguese children (n = 168) from 4th to 6th grade participated in the study. Results showed the expected gap: immig...

Linguistic representations and labels have an important function in social relations: they create and share meaning and shape intergroup dynamics (Carnaghi & Bianchi, 2017). Our study examined the effect of group labels on the social perception of displaced people in Germany. We examined whether activating different labels to refer to displaced peo...

While research on experimental interventions that aim to improve outgroup attitudes via contact imagery grows, it is important to examine if contact imagery that occurs in spontaneous, non‐experimentally controlled conditions drives attitudes, and in what direction. To answer this, we constructed and validated a spontaneous imagined intergroup cont...

Este estudo explorou novos mecanismos através dos quais o modelo da identidade endogrupal comum melhora as atitudes intergrupais (Gaertner & Dovidio, 2000). Especificamente, explorou-se se representações identitárias mais inclusivas de grupo único e de dupla identidade melhoram as atitudes intergrupais, através da redução da nostalgia nacional, da...

Social psychology highlights ingroup identity as an important determinant of intergroup attitudes and relations; however, research has demonstrated that its effects can be positive, negative, or nonexistent depending on how such identity is conceptualized. This research explores how national identity inclusiveness (Study 1) and centrality (Study 2)...

Two studies explored the link between social contagion concerns and assertive bystanders’ behavioral intentions in homophobic bullying episodes. Study 1 (N = 216) examined if adolescents’ social contagion concerns (i.e., fear of being misclassified as gay/lesbian) relate to decreased behavioral intentions to help victims of bullying, by increasing...

The Leave campaign in the U.K., which advocated exiting the European Union, emphasized anxiety over immigration and the need to take control of the U.K.'s borders. Citizens who expressed concerns about immigration to the U.K. were more likely to vote to leave. Two correlational studies examined the previously unexplored question of whether the Brex...

Peers are present in more than 80% of bullying episodes and research showed that bystanders have a very important role in stopping bullying episodes. However, little is known about the predictors of assertive interventions by bystanders. The current study explored if extended contact (i.e., having friends who have gay friends), is related to assert...

This study investigated the impact of different forms of group indispensability on majority collective action and social distance toward different immigrant groups. Specifically, we examined if perceived indispensability of different immigrant groups for the national identity, and the functioning of the society, (a) reduce social distance and (b) i...

This research further elaborated the concept of indispensability by developing and testing a new measure, the Functional and Identity Indispensability Scale (FIIS), to assess two dimensions on which groups can claim indispensability: functional indispensability and identity indispensability. In Study 1 we developed and validated the FIIS with a sam...

Results of five studies (N=1596) linked collective narcissism—a belief in in-group exaggerated greatness contingent on external validation—to direct and indirect, retaliatory hostility in response to situations that collective narcissists perceived as insulting to the in-group but which fell well beyond the definition of an insult. In Turkey, colle...

This chapter proposes a new, functional approach to the understanding of how effectively prejudice can be reduced among members of majority and minority groups. According to the functional perspective, derived from the Common Ingroup Identity Model, groups prefer and adopt the representation that most effectively promotes their group’s goals. Major...

This study proposed a new perspective to look at the consequences of the formation of immigrant communities in globalized societies, by investigating the impact of two forms of group indispensability on majority attitudes towards immigrants. Specifically, it explored whether perceived indispensability of different immigrant groups to the national i...

This experiment explored whether the benefits of a complete recategorization and a dual identity might effectively be translated into an intervention program designed to reduce prejudice among European Portuguese and African Portuguese 9‐ to 11‐year‐old children. Participants interacted for 45 minutes in weekly sessions for a month. One month after...

This research examined preferences for national- and campus-level assimilative and pluralistic policies among Black and White students under different contexts, as majority- and minority-group members. We targeted attitudes at two universities, one where 85% of the student body is White, and another where 76% of students are Black. The results reve...

This experiment examined the effectiveness of one-group and dual-identity recategorization strategies on reducing intergroup bias among 180 European Portuguese and African Portuguese 9- and 10-year-old children. Results revealed that each of these recategorization strategies, relative to one that emphasized separate group identities, was successful...

This edited volume captures an exciting new trend in research on intergroup attitudes and relations, which concerns how individuals make judgments, and interact with individuals from different group categories, broadly defined in terms of gender, race, age, culture, religion, sexual orientation, and body type. This new approach is an integrative pe...