William B Swann

University of Texas at Austin | UT · Department of Psychology

Former president Trump has maintained broad support despite falsely contending that he was the victim of electoral fraud, also known as the “big lie.” We consider both the antecedents of this phenomenon and its consequences. We propose that Trump supporters’ already established deep personal alignment—identity fusion—with their leader predisposed t...

If the consequences of identity fusion are well established, its psychological antecedents are not. To address this shortcoming, eight studies tested the hypothesis that self-verification (receiving evaluations that confirm one’s self-views) increases fusion (a synergistic union with a group, individual, or cause), which, in turn, increases behavio...

We present a comprehensive identity fusion theory which revises and expands the original version. As did the original theory, the revision maintains that fusion—a synergistic union of the personal self and target of fusion—is marked by porous borders between the personal self and the target. These porous borders give rise to “identity synergy” wher...

The recent surge in political authoritarianism has triggered interest in the factors that regulate its rise and fall. We explored these phenomena in the time around the January 6, 2021, insurrection in the United States. Identity fusion (synergistic union) with Trump predicted the perception that Democrats represented an existential threat to the A...

Throughout the 21st century, economic inequality is predicted to increase as we face new challenges, from changes in the technological landscape to the growing climate crisis. It is crucial we understand how these changes in inequality may affect how people think and behave. We propose that economic inequality threatens the social fabric of society...

We propose that accounts of responsiveness and responsive listening are tailored for people with positive self-views (high self-esteem, positive self-concepts). Researchers define responsiveness, in part, as valuing and appreciating a partners' attributes, accomplishments, and worldview. This emphasis on being positively validated overlooks the dan...

Incels (involuntary celibates) have advocated for and even enacted violence against women. We explored two mechanisms that may underly incels' actions: identity fusion and self-verification. Study 1 (n = 155) revealed stronger identity fusion (deep alignment) with the ingroup among men active in online incel communities compared to men active in ot...

Past research has established that people whose identities are deeply aligned (“fused’) with a group endorse hostility toward distant outgroups (e.g., foreigners). We propose that identity fusion can have the opposite effect under certain conditions. Specifically, when the outgroup is familiar and non-threatening, strongly fused persons may be posi...

People cooperate every day in ways that range from largescale contributions that mitigate climate change to simple actions such as leaving another individual with choice – known as social mindfulness. It is not yet clear whether and how these complex and more simple forms of cooperation relate. Prior work has found that countries with individuals w...

There is a growing body of work suggesting that social class stereotypes are amplified when people perceive higher levels of economic inequality—that is, the wealthy are perceived as more competent and assertive and the poor as more incompetent and unassertive. The present study tested this prediction in 32 societies and also examines the role of w...

The psychological processes underlying honor violence against kin are poorly understood. We assumed that honor violence against daughters who violate a gendered norm is designed to uphold family honor and nurture positive links to the community. Four studies with Indian men supported this formulation. As expected, endorsement of honor violence (i.e...

The psychological processes underlying honor violence against kin are poorly understood. We assumed that honor violence against daughters who violate a gendered norm is designed to uphold family honor and nurture positive links to the community. Four studies with Indian men supported this formulation. As expected, endorsement of honor violence (i.e...

Happiness is a valuable experience, and societies want their citizens to be happy. Although this societal commitment seems laudable, overly emphasizing positivity (versus negativity) may create an unattainable emotion norm that ironically compromises individual well-being. In this multi-national study (40 countries; 7443 participants), we investiga...

Recent research has identified three promising candidates for predicting extreme behavior: sacred values, moral convictions, and identity fusion. Each construct is thought to motivate extreme behavior in unique ways: Sacred values trigger extreme actions when people are asked to compromise cause-related values for personal gain; moral convictions t...

We distinguish two pathways people may follow when they join violent groups: compliance and internalization. Compliance occurs when individuals are coerced to join by powerful influence agents. Internalization occurs when individuals join due to a perceived convergence between the self and the group. We searched for evidence of each of these pathwa...

As ordinary citizens increasingly moderate online forums, blogs, and their own social media feeds, a new type of censoring has emerged wherein people selectively remove opposing political viewpoints from online contexts. In three studies of behavior on putative online forums, supporters of a political cause (e.g., abortion or gun rights) preferenti...

All too often, people who develop exceptionally astute insights into others remain mysterious to these others. Evidence for such asymmetric understanding comes from several independent domains. Striking asymmetries occur among those who differ in status and power, such that individuals with low status and power understand more than they are underst...

As ordinary citizens increasingly moderate online forums, blogs, and their own social media feeds, a new type of censoring has emerged wherein people selectively remove opposing political viewpoints from online contexts. In three studies of behavior on putative online forums, supporters of a political cause (e.g., abortion or gun rights) preferenti...

Moral vitalism refers to a tendency to view good and evil as actual forces that can influence people and events. The Moral Vitalism Scale had been designed to assess moral vitalism in a brief survey form. Previous studies established the reliability and validity of the scale in US-American and Australian samples. In this study, the cross-cultural c...

All too often, people who develop exceptionally astute insights into others remain mysterious to these others. Evidence for such asymmetric understanding comes from several independent domains. Striking asymmetries occur among those who differ in status and power, such that low status, low power individuals understand more than they are understood....

Individuals who are “strongly fused” with a group view the group as self-defining. As such, they should be particularly reluctant to leave it. For the first time, we investigate the implications of identity fusion for university retention. We found that students who were strongly fused with their university (+1 SD) were 7–9% points more likely than...

Six studies explored the mechanisms that diminish allegiance to social groups. Results showed that degrading either collective ties (i.e., sentiments toward the group as a whole) or relational ties (i.e., sentiments toward individual group members) lowered identity fusion with the group (Studies 1–3 & 6). Lowered fusion, in turn, explained the tend...

Pathogens represent a significant threat to human health leading to the emergence of strategies designed to help manage their negative impact. We examined how spiritual beliefs developed to explain and predict the devastating effects of pathogens and spread of infectious disease. Analysis of existing data in studies 1 and 2 suggests that moral vita...

When ingroup members behave immorally, what determines whether other group members denounce vs. protect them? We asked if concerns for group reputation might determine how people respond to the moral indiscretions of group members. In four studies, participants read about an immoral act committed by a member of their political party. The act was ei...

Moral foundations theory suggests that relative to liberals, conservatives care more about values that are believed to bind group members together: loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and purity/degradation. In contrast, we propose that individuals who are deeply aligned (“fused”) with their group should display elevated commitment to group‐ori...

Whitehouse's focus on two causes of identity fusion (evolution and shared experiences/biology) deepens understanding of these specific topics. While we applaud his analysis, in his efforts to elaborate these two causes, he has – perhaps unavoidably – produced a narrower conceptualization of identity fusion. This is unfortunate because it undermines...

It is a common error – at least among philosophers - to contrast Mysticism and Morality, and thence to conclude that either Plotinus can have little to say about everyday moral concerns, or else that what he does say is too robust and uncompassionate to convince us now. It is true that, on the one hand, Plotinus seems to suggest that we should deta...

In this introduction to the special issue on identity fusion, the co-editors begin with a brief history of the theory. They then discuss the unique properties of the theory and its relationship to related constructs. Next they explain how each of the articles in the issue advances the theory. Finally, they discuss future research directions.

Researchers have assumed that self-enhancement strivings motivate compensatory prejudice against minorities. We ask if self-verification strivings might explain compensatory prejudice more parsimoniously. Three studies tested whether receiving overly positive evaluations from outgroup members (immigrants) amplifies prejudice and discrimination agai...

Researchers have shown that the more genes twins share, the more they care about one another. Here, we examine a psychological mediator of such genetic influences, “identity fusion” (a visceral sense of oneness with them). Results supported this hypothesis. Relative to dizygotic twins, monozygotic twins reported stronger fusion and elevated desire...

Research indicates that existential threat may motivate in-group members to retaliate against out-group members. Less is known about the impact of alignment with one’s religious or national group on retaliatory activity. We addressed this deficiency in a longitudinal study before, and soon after, the beginning of the 2015 Palestinian Stabbing Intif...

A cursory read of the social psychological literature suggests that when people find themselves in strong situations, they fail to display agency. The early classic studies of conformity, obedience, and bystander intervention, for example, are renowned for showing that when challenged by strong situational pressures, participants acquiesced—even if...

We examined the reactions of Spanish participants to three negative historic events: a corruption scandal involving the Royal Family and two separatist efforts by a prosperous region of Spain. Although average fusion scores declined following these events, these declines were limited to sentiments toward the group category – collective ties-; they...

We applaud the goal of reconciling the self and group literatures and agree that a differentiated self may sometimes improve group outcomes. Nevertheless, greater precision regarding the underlying mechanisms is needed. Specifically, differentiated selves improve outcomes by overriding selfishness when they allow for personal regulation (being pers...

Identity fusion refers to a visceral sense of oneness with an ingroup. For fused individuals, group membership is not a means to an end (e.g., a positive social identity). Rather, membership is an all-absorbing goal in itself; little other than the group matters. Group membership is also seen as enduring, sustained by chronically activated psycholo...

Moral vitalism refers to a tendency to view good and evil as actual forces that can influence people and events. We introduce a scale designed to assess the belief in moral vitalism. High scorers on the scale endorse items such as "There are underlying forces of good and evil in this world." After establishing the reliability and criterion validity...

Identity fusion is a visceral sense of “oneness” with a group and its individual members that motivates personally costly, pro-group behaviors. Past approaches, most notably social identity theory, have assumed that when people align with groups, the group category eclipses both the personal self and the relationships among individual group members...

Transsexuals vary in the sacrifices that they make while transitioning to their cross-gender group. We suggest that one influence on the sacrifices they make is identity fusion. When people fuse with a group, a visceral and irrevocable feeling of oneness with the group develops. The personal self (the sense of "I" and "me") remains potent and combi...

We introduce a computer-based measure of “identity fusion,” a form of group alignment characterized by a visceral feeling of oneness with a group. Past measures of identity fusion (a single pictorial item and a 7-item verbal scale) have demonstrated a unique capacity to predict willingness to engage in extreme pro-group behaviors (e.g., fighting an...

When tragedy strikes a group, only some group members characteristically rush to the aid of the victims. What motivates the altruism of these exceptional individuals? Here, we provide one set of answers based on data collected before and shortly after the 15 April 2013, Boston Marathon bombings. The results of three studies indicated that Americans...

Significance The human propensity to sacrifice one’s life for genetic strangers has puzzled scientists since Darwin. Here, we sought answers to this puzzle by embedding ourselves within groups of individuals prepared to die for one another—Libyan revolutionary battalion members who fought against Gaddafi’s regime in 2011. We found striking evidence...

We sought to identify the mechanisms that cause strongly fused individuals (those who have a powerful, visceral feeling of oneness with the group) to make extreme sacrifices for their group. A large multinational study revealed a widespread tendency for fused individuals to endorse making extreme sacrifices for their country. Nevertheless, when ask...

Although most people acknowledge the moral virtue in sacrificing oneself to save others, few actually endorse self-sacrifice. Seven experiments explored the cognitive and emotional mechanisms that underlie such endorsements. Participants responded to 1 of 2 moral dilemmas in which they could save 5 members of their country only by sacrificing thems...

Although most people acknowledge the moral virtue in sacrificing oneself to save others, few actually endorse self-sacrifice. Seven experiments explored the cognitive and emotional mechanisms that underlie such endorsements. Participants responded to 1 of 2 moral dilemmas in which they could save 5 members of their country only by sacrificing thems...

Do men base their self-worth on relationships less than do women? In an assessment of lay beliefs, men and women alike indicated that men are less reliant on relationships as a source of self-worth than are women (Study 1). Yet relationships may make a different important contribution to the self-esteem of men. Men reported basing their self-esteem...

Whereas past research has emphasized people's desire to be a prototypical group member within valued groups, this research explores people's competing desire to be seen as prototypical as they see themselves. Results of three studies show that evaluations that verified participants' self-perceived prototypicality were seen as especially credible an...

Upon initiating relationships, people engage in a process of identity negotiation through which they establish their respective identities. Once established, people's identities define their mutual expectations, obligations, and indeed, the very nature of their relationships. This chapter presents a rudimentary theory of identity negotiation, with...

Researchers have recently debated the cultural generalizability of the motive to promote positive, self-enhancing beliefs about the self. Here we broaden the debate to include the generalizability of the self-verification motive, which encourages people to confirm their self-views, whether negative or positive. In two studies, participants from ind...

There is considerable agreement that threatening people's beliefs may trigger compensatory activity designed to reaffirm the beliefs that have been challenged. Disagreement reigns, however, regarding the nature of the mechanism that underlies such compensatory activity. We propose that the desire for coherence that motivates self-verification proce...

People differ in their reactions to the outcomes of their group. Whereas some may revel in victory and mourn in defeat, others may internalize victory but distance themselves from defeat. Here, we sought to relate these divergent reactions to two forms of alignment with groups–identity fusion and group identification. Investigations of the 2008 ele...

Beginning with James, self-theorists have entertained two complementary visions of the self. The me has denoted people's representations of themselves, or the characteristics that they impute to themselves. The I has referred to the sense of self, the homunculus-like entity that experiences and reacts to the world, constructs mental representations...

Identity fusion is a relatively unexplored form of alignment with groups that entails a visceral feeling of oneness with the group. This feeling is associated with unusually porous, highly permeable borders between the personal and social self. These porous borders encourage people to channel their personal agency into group behavior, raising the p...

Self-verification theory assumes that people work to preserve their self-views by seeking to confirm them. As is the case with other processes advocated by positive psychology, self-verification is presumed to be a fundamentally adaptive process. Intrapsychically, self-verification strivings maintain psychological coherence, reduce anxiety, improve...

When critical, verbally disinhibited women pair with verbally inhibited men, relationship quality suffers, rendering the relationship precarious. The interpersonal and personal antecedents of this precarious couple effect were examined. It was found that the precarious couple effect was partially mediated by unhealthy communication patterns, specif...

When people are ostrasized (i.e., rejected and excluded) by either an outgroup or an ingroup, they may either withdraw or engage in compensatory activities designed to reaffirm their social identity as a group member. The authors proposed here that individual differences in identity fusion (an index of familial orientation toward the group) would m...

In recent years, according to U. S. Census reports, the number of people who classify themselves as “mixed race” is rapidly increasing. As a consequence, scholars have become increasingly interested in the nature of racial identity. Currently, scholars and laypersons tend to view the concept of race from a biological perspective, from a social-cons...

Previous research has documented the consequences of feeling fused with a group; here we examine the nature of identity fusion. Specifically, we sought to determine what fusion is and the mediating mechanisms that lead fused individuals to make extraordinary sacrifices for their group. Guided by the assumption that fusion emphasizes the extent to w...

Von Hippel & Trivers suggest that people enhance their own self-views as a means of persuading others to adopt similarly inflated perceptions of them. We question the existence of a pervasive desire for self-enhancement, noting that the evidence the authors cite could reflect self-verification strivings or no motive whatsoever. An identity negotiat...

Previous research has demonstrated that when people receive self-discrepant feedback from their interaction partners, they respond by engaging in compensatory self-verification. We sought to extend this work by determining if merely preventing people from behaving in a self-verifying manner would trigger compensatory self-verification. Consistent w...

Gaining insight into the nature and consequences of people's global self-evaluations (i.e., their self-esteem) has been fraught with difficulty. Nearly 2 decades ago, researchers suggested that such difficulties might be addressed by the development of a new class of measures designed to uncover implicit self-esteem. In this article, we evaluate th...

Consistent with recent research on initials-preferences, we assumed that people's preferences for their initials reflect an implicit form of self-esteem that buffers them against challenges to their self-worth. Accordingly, we proposed that high self-esteem persons who demonstrated weak initials-preferences would be particularly likely to engage in...

Background: Biased attention for emotional stimuli reflects vulnerability or resilience to emotional disorders. The current study examines whether the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism is associated with attentional biases for negative word stimuli. Methods: Unmedicated, young adults with low current depression and anxiety symptoms (N=106) were genotyped for t...

Reynolds et al. offer a version of interactionism based on social identity theory. Although we applaud both interaction ism and the social identity approach, we suspect that the marriage the authors propose is unlikely to succeed. The core problem is that interactionism is optimized when the situation and person are on equal footing and the authors...

Some contemporary theorists contend that the desire for self-enhancement is prepotent and more powerful than rival motives such as self-verification. If so, then even people with negative self-views will embrace positive evaluations. The authors tested this proposition by conducting a meta-analytic review of the relevant literature. The data provid...

Using an intergroup version of the trolley problem, we explored participants' willingness to sacrifice their lives for their group. In Study 1, Spaniards whose personal identities were fused with their group identity endorsed saving fellow Spaniards by jumping to their deaths in front of a runaway trolley. Studies 2 and 3 showed that the self-sacri...

Identity fusion is a feeling of oneness with the group that induces people to tether their feelings of personal agency to the group. We accordingly proposed that increasing the agency of fused persons by elevating autonomic arousal would amplify their tendency to endorse and actually enact pro-ingroup behavior. In 4 experiments, increasing autonomi...