Samantha Moore-Berg

University of Pennsylvania | UP · Annenberg School for Communication

Democracies welcome dissent, but when disagreements turn divisive, they can imperil social cohesion and become toxic to democracy. We review research on the psychological processes associated with toxic polarization. Prior work has generally focused on polarization as a consequence of ideological differences or affective evaluations. We assess rece...

People’s actions toward a competitive outgroup can be motivated not only by their perceptions of the outgroup, but also by how they think the outgroup perceives the ingroup (i.e., meta-perceptions). Here we examine the prevalence, accuracy, and consequences of meta-perceptions among American political partisans. Using a representative sample (N = 1...

In 16 independent samples from five countries involving ~7,700 participants, we employ a mixture of cross-sectional, longitudinal, and quasi-experimental methods to examine the effect of intergroup contact on (a) the blatant dehumanization of outgroups, and (b) the perception that outgroup members dehumanize the ingroup (meta-dehumanization). First...

Anti-migrant policies at the U.S. southern border have resulted in the separation and long-term internment of thousands of migrant children and the deaths of many migrants. What leads people to support such harsh policies? Here we examine the role of two prominent psychological factors—empathy and dehumanization. In Studies 1 and 2, we find that em...

A large portion of research in the social sciences is devoted to combating societal and social problems, such as prejudice, discrimination, and intergroup conflict, with interventions. However, these interventions are often developed based on the theories and/or intuitions of those who developed them and evaluated in isolation without comparing the...

The 20th century saw the dismantling of several oppressive regimes and an international turn toward greater social justice. Yet structural inequality and intergroup animosity persist in many post-colonial and post-slavery contexts, not least because the dehumanization inherent to those regimes remain entrenched socially. Here we examined whether th...

Two studies (one preregistered) of Americans (N = 2200) drawn from a nationally representative panel show that both Democrats and Republicans personally value core democratic characteristics, such as free and fair elections, but severely underestimate opposing party members’ support for those same characteristics. Democrats estimate that the averag...

Recent research suggests holding a structural, rather than interpersonal, understanding of racism is associated with greater impetus to address racial disparities. We believe greater acknowledgment of structural racism also functions to mitigate against empathic failures in response to structural injustices. Given South Africa’s situatedness as a c...

Two studies (one preregistered) of Americans (N = 2,200) drawn from a nationally representative panel show that both Democrats and Republicans personally value core democratic characteristics, such as free and fair elections, but severely underestimate opposing party members’ support for those same characteristics. Democrats estimate that the avera...

The 20th century saw the dismantling of several oppressive regimes and an international turn toward greater social justice. Yet structural inequality and intergroup animosity persist in many postcolonial and postslavery contexts, not least because the dehumanization inherent to those regimes remain entrenched socially. Here we examined whether the...

Rational Overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic requires large-scale cooperation and behavior change on an unprecedented scale. Individuals can help reduce the burden of the pandemic by participating in behaviors that benefit people whose life circumstances make them especially vulnerable. Objective We tested the effect of reading narrative (i.e., story...

There is a growing push within the social sciences to conduct translational science that not only advances theory but also achieves real world impact. The goals of this paper are (1) to encourage scholars to engage in translational science by conducting research that responds to pressing social challenges, and (2) to provide concrete recommendation...

Western countries have witnessed increased hostility towards Muslims among individuals, and structurally in the ways that media covers stories related to Islam/Muslims and in policies that infringe on the rights of Muslim communities. In response, practitioners have created media interventions that aim to reduce Islamophobia. However, it is unclear...

Muslims are consistently the target of dehumanization and hostile policies. Previous research shows that interventions that highlight the hypocrisy wherein people collectively blame entire groups for the heinous acts of individual members of outgroups but not ingroups are effective in reducing animosity towards Muslims. However, these interventions...

Race and social class are inherently confounded; however, much of the literature focuses on only one of these categories at a time during attitude assessment. Across three studies, we examined the influence of race and social class on implicit and explicit attitudes. Results indicated that participants had more positive attitudes toward high social...

People’s actions toward a competitive outgroup can be motivated not only by their perceptions of the outgroup, but also by how they think the outgroup perceives the ingroup (i.e., meta-perceptions). Here, we examine the prevalence, accuracy, and consequences of meta-perceptions among American political partisans. Using a representative sample ( n =...

Objective Evidence suggests that individuals without a history of nonsuicidal self‐injury (NSSI) are likely to view NSSI as a stigmatized behavior. However, there is limited evidence evaluating the presence of self‐stigma among individuals who have engaged in NSSI. Methods We recruited a university sample (n = 351) and employed implicit and explic...

Objective: Evidence suggests that individuals without a history of nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) are likely to view NSSI as a stigmatized behavior. However, there is limited evidence evaluating the presence of self-stigma among individuals who have engaged in NSSI. Methods: We recruited a university sample (n = 351) and employed implicit and expli...

Purpose – There has been contradictory evidence as to whether implicit attitudes are more indicative of food consumption behavior than explicit attitudes. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the predictive validity of implicit attitudes for food consumption behaviors with two popular indirect measures – the implicit association test (IAT) and t...

Much of the current psychological literature investigates single category dimensions (i.e., race or social class), with little focus on the intersection of multiple social category dimensions. Yet some evidence suggests that the intersection of race and social class information influences (a) stereotype expression, (b) categorization, (c) impressio...

Objective Despite the high prevalence of nonsuicidal self‐injury (NSSI), no research has systematically studied the occurrence and effects of stigmatization by others towards NSSI scarring. Methods The current study measured implicit and explicit attitudes among undergraduates towards NSSI scarring using the implicit association test and questio...

Dijksterhuis and van Knippenberg (1998) reported that participants primed with an intelligent category (“professor”) subsequently performed 13.1% better on a trivia test than participants primed with an unintelligent category (“soccer hooligans”). Two unpublished replications of this study by the original authors, designed to verify the appropriate...

We examined the role of both suspect race and socioeconomic status (SES) on shooting decisions during a first-person shooter task. Two studies revealed that both suspect race and SES influenced shooting decisions. Non-Black participants shot armed high-SES Black suspects faster than armed high-SES White suspects and responded “don't shoot” faster f...

Existing sets of social and emotional stimuli suitable for social cognition research are limited in many ways, including size, unimodal stimulus delivery, and restriction to major universal emotions. Existing measures of social cognition could be improved by taking advantage of item response theory and adaptive testing technology to develop instrum...