The British journal of social psychology
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Bad guys suffer less (social pain): Moral status influences judgements of others' social suffering.
Research on pain judgement has shown that several features of a target influence empathy for others' pain. Considering the pivotal role of morality in social judgement, we investigated whether judgements of others' social and physical suffering vary as a function of the target's moral status. Study 1 manipulated the moral characteristics of an unknown other and found that participants ascribed less social (but not physical) suffering to a target depicted as lacking moral status rather than to a target high in morality. ⋯ Study 3 revealed the specific role of morality, as information on another evaluative dimension (i.e., competence) had no effects on pain judgements. Study 4 showed that social targets perceived as lacking moral qualities are thought to experience less social pain than highly moral targets because of their perceived lower level of humanity. Overall, our findings suggest that social (but not physical) pain might represent a capacity that is denied to social targets that are perceived low in morality.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study
Deviance as adherence to injunctive group norms: the overlooked role of social identification in deviance.
We currently report three studies investigating group members' expressions of dissatisfaction and discontent with the behaviour and attitudes of their in-group members. Our analysis examines the context in which group members will deviate from actual group member behaviour. We argue that highly identifying group members will challenge fellow group member behaviour when that group member behaviour is perceived to violate injunctive group norms. ⋯ The findings supported our predictions. This support was particularly strong when a majority of group members violated group norms. Implications for the analysis of the relationship between social identification and deviance are discussed.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Carrying on or giving in: the role of automatic processes in overcoming ego depletion.
Research has shown that repeated exercise of self-control leads to impaired performance on subsequent self-control tasks, a phenomenon labelled ego depletion. The current research investigates the influence of automatic processes on self-control performance. ⋯ If such a prime was absent, self-control performance of depleted participants decreased indicating ego depletion. Using a different manipulation, these findings were replicated in Study 2.