The British journal of social psychology
-
The current socio-political circumstances in the United States (US), constituted by the increasing visibility of police shootings of Black people, present a compelling moment for analysing how news media report about law enforcement, culpability, and racism. This paper conducts a membership categorization analysis of recent news media reports of police shootings of Black people (May 2020-October 2020) and investigates how news media negotiate culpability of agents involved these shootings. ⋯ Overall, news media reports use racial categories as a resource to construct racism as an explanation for police shootings and to construct police officers and policing institutions as culpable for these shootings. Thus, we highlight how race and racism are constitutive of, and inseparable from, culpability in news media reports.
-
Previous research on money and prosociality has described a monotonic pattern, showing that money reduces generosity. The present research aimed to examine whether money differently impairs generosity when arising from altruistic versus egoistic motives. To this end, we employed economic games designed to study generosity (e.g., the Dictator game) and varied experimental currency (i.e., money vs. candy/food). ⋯ In other words, although people in general showed flexible prosociality by adjusting their generosity level according to game type, this was much more strongly the case when money rather than candy/food was the currency. In addition, we demonstrate a boundary condition of money on flexible generosity, namely imbuing money with prosocial meaning (Study 3). Some implications are discussed.
-
The novel coronavirus, COVID-19, proliferates as a contagious psychological threat just like the physical disease itself. Due to the growing death toll and constant coverage this pandemic gets, it is likely to activate mortality awareness, to greater or lesser extents, depending on a variety of situational factors. ⋯ We provide predictions and recommendations for shifting reactions to this pandemic towards behaviours that decrease, rather than increase, the spread of the virus. We conclude by considering the benefits of shifting towards collective mindsets to more effectively combat COVID-19 and to better prepare for the next inevitable pandemic.
-
COVID-19 mitigating practices such as 'hand-washing', 'social distancing', or 'social isolating' are constructed as 'moral imperatives', required to avert harm to oneself and others. Adherence to COVID-19 mitigating practices is presently high among the general public, and stringent lockdown measures supported by legal and policy intervention have facilitated this. ⋯ We argue that the moralization of these practices, twinned with relaxations of policy, may likely cause interactional tension between those individuals who do vs. those who do not uphold social distancing in the coming months: that is, derogation of those who adhere strictly to COVID-19 mitigating practices and group polarization between 'distancers' and 'non-distancers'. In this paper, we explore how and why these processes might come to pass, their impact on an overall societal response to COVID-19, and the need to factor such processes into decisions regarding how to lift restrictions.
-
This paper contributes to the study of admonishments, the operation of shaming in family interaction, and more broadly presses the virtue of a discursive psychological reconsideration of the social psychology of emotion. It examines the methodological basis of contemporary research on shame in experimental and qualitative social psychology, illustrated through the Test of Self-Conscious Affect (TOSCA) and qualitative work using shame narratives. Doubts are raised about how these methods can throw light on shaming practices in natural situations. ⋯ This is the sense in which the practice can be understood as shaming. Although this practice prosecutes shaming, ways in which the children can ignore, push back, or rework parents' actions are highlighted. This study contributes to a broader consideration of how enduring behavioural change can be approached as a parents' project.