Sam McFarland

Western Kentucky University | WKU · Department of Psychology

Identification with all humanity (IWAH), defined as a bond with and concern for people all over the world, predicts concern for global problems, commitment to human rights, and prosocial activities. However, it is still unknown how such a broad social identification develops and if early experiences play any role. Two studies explored the role of d...

Identification with all humanity measured as an individual characteristic is an important factor related to social and international relations, such as concern for global issues and human rights, prosocial attitudes, intergroup forgiveness, attitudes toward immigrants, solving global problems, reactions to hate crimes and dehumanisation. We examine...

Although the term "ethnic group" (EG) is often used in social studies, its definition differs among researchers. Moreover, little is known about ordinary people's subjective understanding of this term, even though it is often used in social discourse. We examined this issue in a cross-sectional study of 273 American, British, Mexican, and Polish st...

We review psychological research on global human identification and citizenship, Thomas Paine’s belief that “The world is my country, and all mankind are my brethren.” In turn, we review the theoretical foundations that guided our work, research with measures that preceded our own, and our own work with our correlated scales. We review its foundati...

Superordinate identities, such as identification with all humanity (IWAH), may be considered the result of situational activation or as individual differences that can be measured using psychometric scales. Our research originates from this second approach. Why do some people feel connected only to narrow social groups like family and friends, whil...

How can we enlarge global human identification? Empirical studies upon childhood and adolescence predictors of GHI.

Many studies have shown a positive link between multiple social identities and well-being. However, these studies have usually examined a few selected identities in this context. We examine many more social identities, expecting positive relationships between the number of social identities and well-being. Moreover, we explore the number of social...

We explored how political beliefs and attitudes predict support for anti-Muslim policies and extremist behavior in the United States following the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks. A large sample completed measures of authoritarianism, social dominance orientation (SDO), generalized prejudice, identification with all humanity (IWAH), perceptions of Mus...

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations on December 10, 1948, had five key architects: American Eleanor Roosevelt, Lebanon’s Charles Malik, China’s Peng-chun Chang, Canada’s John Humphrey, and France’s René Cassin. They represented diverse cultures and religions, and often disagreed sharply. This article offers a sh...

Raphael Lemkin is hardly known to a Polish audiences. One of the most honored Poles of the XX century, forever revered in the history of human rights, nominated six times for the Nobel Peace Prize, Lemkin sacrificed his entire life to make a real change in the world: the creation of the term “genocide” and making it a crime under international law....

The present article is focused on the activities comprising the management of cross-cultural research project in terms of multi-national, multi-institutional and interpersonal communication. Additionally we explore some effects of culturally affected computer-mediated communication (CMC), the mutual assumptions and perception of the project partner...

In two studies, we examined the interrelationships and relative utility of several recent measures of global human identification. In Study 1, McFarland, Webb, and Brown's (2012) Identification With All Humanity (IWAH) and Malsch and Omoto's (2007) Psychological Sense of Global Community (PSGC) scales overlapped substantially, but each contributed...

Cultural and individual differences in support for universal human rights are reviewed. Cross-cultural studies suggest a common international understanding of human rights, and international surveys indicate strong global endorsement of human rights. However, country-specific events can affect support within a country, and a country's historical cu...

Studies of those who rescued Jews during the Holocaust suggest that their most shared quality was a sense “of belonging to one human family” (Monroe, 1996, p. 205), caring deeply about human beings without regard for their race, religion, or other distinction. In this article, we first note the development of the concept of “one humanity” since the...

To psychologists Adler (1927/1954) and Maslow (1954), fully mature individuals care deeply for all humanity, not just for their own ingroups. This paper reports a series of studies with a new measure of that caring, the Identification With All Humanity Scale (IWAH). These studies together show that identification with all humanity is more than an a...

The concept of “humanity”—the belief that “all humanity is one undivided and indivisible family”—has been created slowly in human consciousness since the fifteenth century. Humanity has found increasing expression in international law through the ending of slavery, the creation of “crimes against humanity,” and the advancement of human rights. This...

All individual differences that predict support for international human rights are first reviewed: support for human rights is linked most positively to "globalism" (other international and environmental concerns), "identification with all humanity," principled moral reasoning, benevolence, and dispositional empathy. It is related most negatively t...

The search for the personological roots of generalized prejudice (or ethnocentrism) began with the authoritarian personality, but in recent years, the twin constructs of right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation have been widely treated as the dual processes that lead to generalized prejudice. However, studies conducted for this...

Scales developed to measure communist fundamentalism and the intrinsic, extrinsic, and quest orientations within communism were administered in 1989 to 137 Communist Party members in the Soviet Union along with measures of discriminatory attitudes toward Jews, Christians, women, homosexual persons, and political dissi- dents. Communist fundamentali...

This reply addresses three issues raised by C. Haney and G. Zimbardo (2009) in their critique of T. Carnahan and S. McFarland (2007). First, it clarifies Carnahan and McFarland's appreciation of the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) but suggests that as a model for the power of situations, the SPE does not adequately consider self-selection and sele...

RESUMEN Eticos y ensayistas suelen resaltan el valor ético de poseer un sentido de identificación con toda la humanidad, una identificación que transciende las identificaciones con la nación, grupo étnico y religión; una identi-ficación que ve a toda la humanidad como familiar. Los psicólogos Alfred Adler (1929/1964) y Abraham Maslow (1954) conside...

The authors investigated whether students who selectively volunteer for a study of prison life possess dispositions associated with behaving abusively. Students were recruited for a psychological study of prison life using a virtually identical newspaper ad as used in the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE; Haney, Banks & Zimbardo, 1973) or for a psyc...

As the two previous chapters have shown, courageous resistance takes many forms. The context, including domestic and international laws and norms, shape both when courageous resistance is likely to occur and how successful it will be. Without laws or the threat of punishment to protect human rights, those striving for justice may not be able to end...

Courageous resistance is not solely the province of individuals. The focus of this chapter is collective resistance. Collective resistance occurs when people choose to challenge injustice together. Like the decision of the individual courageous resister, collective resisters’ decisions to participate are influenced by the dynamic interaction of the...

Nazi Germany, Rwanda, Darfur. As anyone familiar with world history knows, humanity’s record over the last hundred years is grim. Yet as this book illustrates, even as humanity’s collective capacity for good has been overshadowed, there has been hope. The practice of courageous resistance has been just as strong as the record of injustice over the...

In April 1994, the east African country of Rwanda exploded into a nightmare of mass killing. Following the lead of the Presidential Guard and military, the fiercely ethnocentric Hutu Interahamwe militia, purporting to be saving the country from disloyal Tutsi and Hutu moderates, urged the Hutu majority to purge the country of the “cockroach” Tutsi...

One day in July, 1941, half of the population of the Polish village of Jedwabne murdered the other half. Until Polish-born historian Jan Gross described this, the accepted truth was described on a plaque in Jedwabne as the work of the Gestapo and Nazi occupation police. Gross concluded, however, that the Polish villagers had willingly tortured and...

Whether a person becomes a courageous resister depends on how he or she reacts upon becoming aware of grave injustice. People must decide whether to courageously resist the injustice, stand by and do nothing while it occurs, or intentionally participate in the unjust activity. How one responds when facing these crossroads depends on the combination...

In this chapter, we look at individuals who took a courageous stand when they confronted danger and injustice in their workplaces, communities, and wartime situations. We examine several cases of ordinary people called upon to confront authority when harm was being inflicted on others. We begin by exploring the cases of three individuals who clearl...

During times of injustice, some individuals or groups courageously resist maltreatment of all people, regardless of backgrounds. Using various case studies, this book introduces readers to the broad spectrum of courageous resistance and provides a framework for analyzing the factors that motivate and sustain opposition to human rights violations.

National polls indicate strong American support for international human rights. However, that support consistently ranks below national self-interests, appears to be strongly influenced by current events, and wanes as the cost of supporting human rights increases. Although most Americans express agreement with the ideals of human rights, a willingn...

Previous studies of human rights attitudes are reviewed, new measures are reported, and a three-factor model is identified (Human Rights Endorsement, Commitment, and Restriction). Individual differences that predict attitudes on each factor overlapped but differed. Dispositional empathy, education, and global knowledge contributed to an endorsement...

In the week before the 2003 American attack on Iraq, the effects of authoritarianism and the social dominance orientation on support for the attack were examined. Based on prior research on the nature of these constructs, a structural model was developed and tested. As predicted, authoritarianism strengthened support for the attack by intensifying...

McFarland and Crouch (2002) reported substantial positive correlations (a) between the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and response speed and (b) between IATs assessing racism or self-esteem and ostensibly unrelated control IATs. Using an IAT measure in millisecond-difference score format, they concluded that the IAT was confounded with general cog...

Se parte de la teoría del proceso dual de Duckitt (2001, 2002) como un esquema conceptual para analizar los efectos del autoritarismo y la dominancia social en el apoyo al ataque americano y británico en el 2003 en Irak. Estos efectos se analizaron en la semana previa al ataque. El autoritarismo y la dominancia social intensificaron el apoyo al ata...

We hypothesized that scores on the Implicit Association Test (IAT) are confounded with a general cognitive ability of how quickly one can process information when the IAT categories seem incongruent compared to when they are congruent. Across four studies, two IATs on irrelevant dimensions (e.g., delicious-happy) were substantially correlated with...

Entwickelt sich in Rußland ein demokratisches, nicht autoritares Bewußtsein, das die Basis demokratischer Institutionen sein könnte? Studien, die seit 1989 in Rußland zum Thema Autoritarismus and demokratisches Bewußtsein durcEdseführt wurden, zeigen ein uneinheitliches Bild. In Umfragen, die in den frühen 90er Jahren durcEdseführt wurden, fand man...

Memorializes Donald L. Thistlethwaite, who made important contributions to the birth of cognitive psychology. His interests centered on human logic & its distortions. His studies included examinations of latent learning, persuasive communication and attitude change, and student achievement and attitudes.

Memorializes Donald L. Thistlethwaite, who made important contributions to the birth of cognitive psychology. His interests centered on human logic & its distortions. His studies included examinations of latent learning, persuasive communication and attitude change, and student achievement and attitudes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all...

A 1993 survey of Moscow adults explored the on going relevance of the authoritarian personality in Russia following the colapse of communism. Authoritarianism correlated positively with procommunist beliefs and negatively with support for capitalist and democratic reforms, but these relationships were weaker than in 1989 and 1991. Among those low i...

Until the spring of 1988, Soviet psychologists had almost no access to Western research on authoritarianism. Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, and Sanford’s (1950) classic, The Authoritarian Personality, was found only in special library preserves, and even specialists had great difficulty getting access to this work. Books on related constructs,...

Two studies examined the relevance of the authoritarian personality in the Soviet Union. In a 1991 Moscow quota sample, authoritarianism strongly predicted support for reactionary leaders and military actions and opposition to democratic and non-Russian leaders and to democratic activities. The positive correlation between authoritarianism and supp...

Intrinsic, extrinsic, and quest religious orientations were used here to predict the desire to read belief-supporting and belief-opposing religious articles among a sample of Christian fundamentalists. As expected, both the intrinsic and quest orientations predicted the desire to read the belief-supportive articles. Only quest predicted the willing...

In this study, fundamentalism, extrinsic, intrinsic, and quest religious orientations were used to predict discriminatory attitudes toward blacks, women, homosexual persons, and communists. The four discriminations yielded a strong "general tendency to discriminate" factor, while residuals for each scale reflected unique discriminatory attitudes to...

Investigated whether the internal consistencies of personality scales increase with age and education and, if so, what causes these increases. Between 96 and 106 respondents in each of the age groups 13–24 yrs, 15–26 yrs, 17–28 yrs, and 19–20 yrs and 198 adults (aged 21–25 yrs) with varying amounts of formal education completed the Taylor Manifest...

In commenting on the article by R. L. Gorsuch (see record 1985-02900-001) concerning the measurement of religion, the author calls for a broader paradigm than that now dominating the psychology of religion. Is is argued that the underlying measurement view of science that pervades the psychology of religion is limited and inaccurate. The insistenc...

Two question orders were used in a Kentucky statewide random survey. In nonoverlapping sections, four questions which asked the respondents to express their general interests in politics and religion and their general evaluations of the gravity of the economic and energy situations either preceded or followed series of specific questions on the sam...

Kohlberg's Moral Judgment Scale, Gilligan et al.'s Sexual Moral Judgment Scale, Maitland and Goldman's Objective Moral Judgment Scale, and Hogan's Maturity of Moral Judgment Scale, were examined for reliability and inter-scale relationships. All measures except the Objective Moral Judgment Scale had good reliabilities. The obtained relations betwee...

Investigators must choose between single and multiple-item scales of religiosity. To aid in that decision, single and multiple measures were compared to determine whether they covered the same areas and formed relationships with variables from another domain. The results suggest that single-item scales (e.g., the Christological confession and the r...

Performed 3 experiments to test predictions of W. J. McGuire's (see 36:1) logical consistency model that there will be illogical as well as logical repercussion effects upon beliefs in the related, but unmentioned, premises and conclusions of syllogisms following exposure to persuasive messages on a single, related premise. Boomerang effect upon be...