Asians and Asian Americans have experienced increased discrimination due to COVID-19. Building on the rejection-identification model (RIM; Branscombe et al., 1999) and the rejection-disidentification model (RDIM; Jasinskaja-Lahti et al., 2009), we sought to examine how COVID-19 discrimination has impacted Asian Americans’ identities and well-being. Asian and Asian American individuals currently residing in the United States were recruited to participate in our study. The relations between perceived COVID-19 discrimination, identification, and well-being were examined correlationally (Study 1) and experimentally (Studies 2 and 3). Across 3 studies, COVID-19 discrimination is associated with increased levels of anxiety and stress but decreased identification with being American. At the same time, perceived discrimination was unrelated to participants’ Asian (Study 1, 2, and 3) and specific ethnic (Study 3) identities. In Study 2, we experimentally demonstrated that reading about the negative impact of COVID-19 on Asian Americans interacted with perceived discrimination to decrease the extent to which participants identified as American, which has implications for anxiety and stress. Results from Study 2 supported the RDIM predictions and was replicated in a US-born sample in Study 3. Our studies suggest that Asian and Asian Americans’ well-being is harmed through the decrease of a positive identity (i.e., being an American) without the compensation of another positive identity (i.e., being Asian or being a specific ethnicity) to protect them from the negative impactive of COVID-19 discrimination. Thus, Asian Americans need support now more than ever.

Intellectual humility (IH), the recognition of one’s intellectual limitations, is a promising characteristic to tackle societal conflicts such as affective political polarization. Despite increasing research on IH in recent years, most research has been conducted in the USA, probably due to a lack of scales that are validated in languages other than English. Our objective was to offer researchers in the German context several IH measures to choose from depending on their specific research question. Therefore, we validated and compared four established IH scales within the German context. Items of three widely-used IH scales (CIHS, SIHS, LIHS) were translated from English into German by two independent researchers, rated by experts ( n = 8), and pre-tested ( n = 13). We then assessed the structural, convergent, discriminant, and incremental validity of the scales plus an existing Swiss-German IH scale (IHS) in a preregistered online-survey ( N = 698), representative for Germany regarding age, gender, and education. Discriminant validity was assessed via social desirability, cognitive closure, need for cognition, HEXACO honesty-humility, and openness, and incremental validity regarding affective polarization. Results showed that the IHS did not meet all of our pre-registered criteria, potentially due to cross-cultural differences between Germany and Switzerland. However, the three translated scales were comparable to the original English scales regarding structural, convergent, and discriminant validity. The SIHS showed the best incremental validity in predicting less affective polarization towards opinion-based outgroups. Limitations and directions for future research regarding IH in German-speaking contexts are discussed.

Altruism may not be a unitary concept but may include behaviorally dissociable subfactors. Here, we examined the effects of social distance within and across group boundaries on three facets of altruism: help giving, peer punishment, and moral courage. Using real-life scenarios presented as vignettes, participants were asked to indicate the likelihood that they would engage in the described behaviors across three different social settings: a familiar low-distance in-group, an unfamiliar high-distance in-group, and a hostile out-group. We used the Inclusion of Others in Self (IOS) scale to measure perceived closeness to members of the described social group. We hypothesized that help giving would be most and moral courage least sensitive to variations in social distance. In both studies, results revealed no significant differences in help giving across variations in social distance but a higher self-reported likeliness to show morally courageous acts in the familiar and close in-group compared to the other groups. The results for peer punishment were only partially consistent, following a similar pattern to moral courage. IOS scores discriminated between high and low-distance in-groups, as expected, but did not discriminate well between a high-distance in-group and hostile out-group. On the other hand, facet-specific trait scores correlated significantly with vignette responses. When the three facets were considered together across all vignettes, in-group favoritism became apparent. The studies contribute to our understanding of the social context conditions of altruistic behaviors and call for the refinement of experimental and self-report measures in the study of altruistic behavior.

A substantial body of research has documented significant variations across fields of study in the prevalence of discrimination experiences among women. In the present research, we investigated the role of normative climates in fields of study by focusing on the shared endorsement of hegemonic masculinity on the experiences and anticipations of gender discrimination among female and male students. We recruited a large sample of students attending upper-secondary vocational schools (N = 1,298), segmented into various fields of study (k = 35). We assessed students’ endorsement of hegemonic masculinity (whose effects were estimated at the field level), along with perceived and anticipated gender discrimination (estimated at the individual level). Multi-level structural equation modelling revealed cross-level interactions consistent with our hypotheses. Female students, particularly in fields of study scoring high in hegemonic masculinity, perceived and anticipated more gender discrimination than their male counterparts. These gender differences were either weaker or absent in fields with a climate low in hegemonic masculinity. These findings highlight the importance of addressing the role of normative climates occurring in local educational contexts to adequately determine the experiences of female and male students.

When employees observe an immoral practice under the control of their employer, they face a decision on whether to act against it. If they do want to act, they need to decide how to report their concerns, that is, whether they want to use internal (i.e., to other members of the organization) or external reporting channels (e.g., to the media). In the present contribution, we investigate which personality traits relate to these two types of whistleblowing decisions. In a two-wave scenario study (N = 724), we tested whether HEXACO Honesty-Humility is associated with a decision for whistleblowing (vs. inaction) and whether HEXACO Agreeableness is associated with a decision for internal (vs. external) whistleblowing. Our predictions were not confirmed, and all in all, the six HEXACO dimensions jointly explained only a small amount of variance in these two whistleblowing decisions. There was, however, evidence from exploratory analyses showing that higher levels of Honesty-Humility were positively associated with a decision for internal (vs. external) whistleblowing.

The collective action of subordinates has historically been the most important factor constraining exploitative behaviour of powerful individuals. However, subordinate collective action is often overlooked within the psychological literature examining the effect of power on decision making. Using a modified multiplayer version of the Ultimatum Game, we investigated how the ease of collective action affected the decision making of Proposers and Responders. Altogether 256 students took part in a 20-round Collective Action Ultimatum Game. They were divided into four conditions and into fixed groups of four (three Responders per group). The ease of collective action was operationalized as the contribution responders needed to make to a ‘collective pot’ to prevent the Proposer receiving their allocation. The mechanism that determined how total contributions could result in a successful rejection varied between the four conditions (‘Easy’, ‘Medium’, ‘Hard’ and ‘Impossible’). The study found that Proposers in the Easy/Medium conditions divided resources more equally than those in the Hard/Impossible conditions from the start of the game. Results also showed that ease did not affect Responders’ willingness to engage in collective action, but in the Hard condition they became more accepting of unequal offers as the game progressed. Results suggest that the ease of collective action (i) induces more egalitarian behaviour by individuals in a position of power, and (ii) makes subordinates less willing to accept inequality.

The present study examined the interaction of grammatical gender and gender stereotypes in Modern Greek. Native Greek adults were primed with Greek occupational nouns of common gender (i.e., nouns that are used for both male and female characters) with a masculine ending and a stereotypically male or female bias (e.g., iδravlikós ‘plumber’ and esθitikós ‘beautician’), followed by a masculine or feminine pronoun target (aftós ‘he’ or aftí ‘she’), forming stereotypically congruent (iδravlikós – aftós, ‘plumber – he’, esθitikós – aftí, ‘beautician - she’) and incongruent (iδravlikós – aftí, ‘plumber – she’, esθitikós – aftós, ‘beautician - he’) prime-target pairs. The participants’ task was to decide the gender of the pronoun, and their response times were measured. An effect of congruency was found for masculine pronouns, with slower response times when the masculine pronoun had been primed with a stereotypically female role noun. No such effect of congruency was found for feminine pronouns. This suggests that not only gender stereotypicality but also the morphological form of the noun influenced processing in Greek role nouns. Specifically, apparent morphosyntactic cues, albeit being uninformative about referential gender, seemingly generated a male bias and mitigated the impact of gender stereotypes associated with female-biased role nouns in prime-target pairs involving a feminine pronoun, reflecting an interaction between grammatical form and stereotype.

Past research has found that gender-inclusive language is more commonly used in egalitarian cultures. People in middle-class communities not only endorse more egalitarian values but also more strongly believe that social change is possible than people in working-class communities. As such, there may be a higher demand for and, thus, use of gender-inclusive language in middle-class professions than for working class professions. Two studies investigated the use of feminine and gender-inclusive job titles for working vs. middle class professions in two grammatical gender languages, namely feminine job titles in Polish corpus texts (Study 1) and gender-inclusive job titles in Swiss German job advertisements (Study 2). Results showed that feminine and gender-inclusive job titles were indeed more often used for middle- than for working-class professions in both countries. These findings document the need to take social class into account in future language research as well as in the implementation of language reforms.

The non-binary gender star in German (e.g., Radfahrer*in - cyclist) is intended to inclusively address all genders, that is, persons identifying beyond a female-male dichotomy, as well as women and men. Critics of this gender-fair form claim that, because it is not in line with German orthography, it impedes the readability of texts. Experimental research on this claim is still scarce. Because word recognition is a crucial component of the reading process, we developed a lexical decision task to investigate lexical access to role nouns in star form with a student (Experiment 1: 97 participants, 18–29 years) and a non-student sample (Experiment 2: 80 participants, 30–80 years), thus taking interindividual differences into account. Our results are promising for proponents of the star form: First, we found that less than 3% of all participants rejected star nouns as German words. Second, amongst the remaining participants, students accepted star nouns as quickly and as often as feminine and masculine forms. In contrast, non-students accepted star nouns more slowly and less often. However, the non-students’ initial difficulties in lexical access reflected in slower reaction times were overcome quickly over the course of the experiment thus suggesting that the readability of the gender star is a matter of familiarity and practice.