Karim Bettache

Microaggression research has made great strides over the past decade while steadily pushing itself into mainstream psychological science. Yet the field remains firmly situated within the Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) cultural context. Correspondingly, recurring criticisms against the validity of microaggressions are often rooted in individualist, decontextualized understandings of behavior, and critics’ rebuttals are often grounded in a philosophical and reflective understanding of the cultural context. In this article, I put forward that (a) the enactments and appraisals of microaggressions are the behavioral results of the cognitive salience of cultural schemas; (b) cultural schemas are informed by cultural ideologies, underlining their methodological and empirical relevance for future research; and (c) cultures are dynamic by highlighting the effects of geopolitical events on the content of cultural schemas that may moderate the perception and enactment of microaggressions. For these reasons, I argue that a cultural psychology of microaggressions may help to depathologize the individual by situating behavior in its cultural context while at the same time necessitating the inclusion of communities residing in non-WEIRD societies.

A strong preference for fair skin appears to be the norm across the Asian continent and may pervade many aspects of social life. Yet scholarly work on this ubiquitous phenomenon is rare within psychological science. This article is a call for a psychological investigation into colorism in Asia. I argue that colorism has firm systemic roots as a result of the sociohistorical trajectories of different Asian societies that have attached cultural meanings to skin color. Consequently, similarities and differences in such trajectories may account for variability in the expression of colorism within contemporary Asian societies. Directions for a cultural psychological approach to colorism are suggested.

Human spatial behavior has been the focus of hundreds of previous research studies. However, the conclusions and generalizability of previous studies on interpersonal distance preferences were limited
by some important methodological and sampling issues. The objective of the present study was to compare preferred interpersonal distances across the world and to overcome the problems observed in previous studies. We present an extensive analysis of interpersonal distances over a large data set (N = 8,943 participants from 42 countries). We attempted to relate the preferred social, personal, and intimate distances observed in each country to a set of individual characteristics of the participants, and some attributes of their cultures. Our study indicates that individual characteristics (age and gender) influence interpersonal space preferences and that some variation in results can be explained by
temperature in a given region. We also present objective values of preferred interpersonal distances in different regions, which might be used as a reference data point in future studies.

On the one hand, neoliberalism, originally an economic theory, has evolved into a sociopolitical ideology and extended its hegemonic influence to all areas of life, including the production of psychological knowledge in academia and the practice of psychology in various domains. On the other hand, neoliberalism has been criticized as the root of all problems in contemporary societies. Widespread discontent with neoliberalism is seen as the catalyst for the rising popularity of populism, the election of Donald Trump in the United States, and the Brexit referendum. The discontent with neoliberalism has also inspired imaginations of what a postneoliberal society may be like, as evidenced by the rise of neosocialists such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the United States or Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom. In this issue, we have gathered multidisciplinary insights to answer questions that would constitute a preliminary agenda of a social psychology of neoliberalism. These questions include: how neoliberalism can be studied social psychologically? What are the neoliberalist constraints on knowledge creation and social practices? How can social psychology shed light on the psychological responses to the hegemonic impact of neoliberalism and contribute to the imagination of a postneoliberal world? In short, is social psychology of neoliberalism a feasible and useful intellectual project for producing actionable social knowledge?

American culture is known for its emphasis on freedom-promoting values such as self-determination and autonomy. Yet, a large segment of American society endorses a conservative ideology that seems to go against these values. In this article, we empirically show that conservatives’ weaker endorsement of autonomy values predicts a preference to be an amorphous entity in a tight, uniform group (Study 1A). We do so by implementing a novel measure of sociocultural tightness that is not based on self-report items. We subsequently show that cultural (East–West) differences in this preference can be explained through a similar mechanism (Study 1B). Hence, we show that some cognitive processes of American conservatives are similar to those of individuals coming from more collectivist, non-Western societies.

This article examines whether and how moral convictions, defined as strong and absolute stances on moralized issues, motivate advantaged group members to challenge social inequality. Specifically, we propose that violations of moral convictions against social inequality motivate collective action against it by increasing identification with the victims of social inequality. Such identification links the current work with the Social Identity Model of Collective Action (SIMCA; Van Zomeren, Postmes, & Spears, 2008, in press), which predicts that individuals’ motivation to challenge social inequality requires a relevant social identity in which group-based anger and group efficacy beliefs motivate collective action. For the advantaged, moral convictions are therefore powerful motivators of collective action against social inequality. Two studies, conducted in the Netherlands and Hong Kong, replicated empirical support for this line of thought. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings for collective action among the advantaged.

People universally value autonomy, and this is the case particularly in individualist societies. Nevertheless, we hypothesize that even in the US, an individualist society, people are willing to relinquish personal control and choose to be an amorphous entity in a behaviorally homogeneous group when under physical threat because such groups increase the effectiveness in mobilizing collective effort. We found evidence for this hypothesis in two studies. In Study 1, individual differences in perceived physical threat (but not social threat) predicted the preference for joining a homogeneous group, through the mediating effect of lowered endorsement of personal agency. We replicated this result in Study 2, in which the cognitive salience of physical and social threat was experimentally manipulated. We discuss the implications of these results.

Literature indicates that people tend to judge the moral transgressions committed by out-group members more severely than those of in-group members. However, these transgressions often conflate a moral transgression with some form of intergroup harm. There is little research examining in-group versus out-group transgressions of harmless offenses, which violate moral standards that bind people together (binding foundations). As these moral standards center around group cohesiveness, a transgression committed by an in-group member may be judged more severely. The current research presented Dutch Muslims (Study 1), American Christians (Study 2), and Indian Hindus (Study 3) with a set of fictitious stories depicting harmless and harmful moral transgressions. Consistent with our expectations, participants who strongly identified with their religious community judged harmless moral offenses committed by in-group members, relative to out-group members, more severely. In contrast, this effect was absent when participants judged harmful moral transgressions. We discuss the implications of these results.

People’s participation in local culture shapes their psyches, which in turn creates their cultural environment. In this sense, culture and mind are mutually reinforcing. Therefore, a satisfactory understanding of human
psychology requires investigations of cultural influence (Henrich et  al., 2010). Individualism–collectivism is the most frequently used conceptual tool by researchers examining this issue. This chapter provides a current overview of research concerning individualism–collectivism.