Midlife's challenges, changes and demands can create barriers to maintaining group activities, which, for some, include attending in-person group exercise classes. As a potential solution, on-demand group exercise platforms offer agency over participation, anonymity and community interaction. This research explores how social identification processes shape participation within an on-demand group exercise platform. Twenty on-demand group exercise participants aged 40-64 were recruited for three data collection stages: (1) an initial semi-structured interview on exercise history and on-demand usage; (2) a two-week post-exercise diary capturing social identification experiences and (3) a follow-up interview to discuss topics from the first two stages. Results highlight how, through anonymous participation in on-demand group exercise, participants experienced a sense of agency, inclusion and community while feeling socially supported both during and after participation. Findings from this study suggest four factors that can impact social identification within on-demand exercise platforms, namely, (a) creating a collective learning event to foster unity, (b) providing anonymity and agency to enable increased exercise trial, (c) enabling exercise participation from self-excluded groups and (d) amplifying life-stage similarity and support both on-screen and via social media.

Leaders play an important role in social change efforts by influencing individuals to work together towards a collective goal through the construction of a shared identity. However, the external conditions in which a group is situated can facilitate or constrain leaders' identity strategies, which, in turn, may affect the success of the group's social change objectives. Using the feminist movement as a case study, we employed qualitative surveys to examine how leaders (N = 39) in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States constructed and communicated group identities that were inclusionary of transgender women, and the challenges they faced when doing so. Results from a reflexive thematic analysis showed that leaders created trans-inclusionary feminist identities by developing value-aligned coalitions with transgender groups, ingroup policies and inclusive symbols and slogans. These group identities were challenged by unsupportive policies, funding requirements and outgroup backlash. Feminist leaders responded in various ways, including altering the shared group identity or reaffirming the identity. From these findings, a cyclical relationship is proposed between leaders' identity strategies, the challenges posed by their groups' external environments and how leaders navigate these challenges in maintaining and communicating group identity.

This research examines the impact of psychological distance to politics on the formation of conspiracy beliefs. Psychological distance to politics, defined as the perceived separation or detachment from political processes, can lead individuals to view political events and actors with suspicion. Through two cross-sectional studies, with nationally representative samples (Study 1: United States, N = 431; Study 2: United States, N = 300), we find that greater psychological distance to politics predicts belief in specific conspiracy theories and conspiracy mentality. In Study 3 (United States, N = 302, pre-registered), we demonstrate that reducing the sense of psychological distance to politics in participants significantly decreases their likelihood of subscribing to conspiratorial explanations. These findings highlight the importance of psychological distance to politics as a predictor of conspiracy beliefs.

In two studies (N = 886), we examined how individuals judge and select feedback providers for those who either handle criticism well or poorly after performing a low-quality task. Prosocial liars who provided overly positive feedback, were judged as more moral than honest feedback providers. However, despite this, honest feedback providers were preferred for both oneself and others. Interestingly, when choosing a feedback provider for a vulnerable recipient versus a generic other, participants preferred a prosocial liar in the former case. Similarly, a 'sensitive' feedback provider, defined as someone who tells the truth to individuals who handle criticism well but offers overly positive feedback to those who struggle, was also favoured when the recipient was vulnerable compared with when the recipient was unspecified. Notably, the sensitive provider was not judged as less moral than the honest one, suggesting that inconsistent (dis)honesty is tolerated when it aligns with social needs. These findings indicate that individuals strategically adjust preferences for honesty versus lying based on social cues.

Through five studies, this research examined how objectively measured societal freedom and individual perceptions of it are related to reduced belief in conspiracy theories. Study 1 (N = 6353 participants from 36 countries) examined the negative relationship between societal freedom (as measured by the Human Freedom Index) and generic conspiracy beliefs. Study 2 (N = 44,458 participants from 52 countries) focused on interest group-related COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs- a measure not explicitly referring to government actors. Moving to the individual level, Study 3 (N = 278) examined relationships between perceived societal freedom and various conspiracy beliefs, while Study 4 (N = 246) experimentally tested whether manipulating perceptions of societal freedom affected belief in generic conspiracist beliefs as well as those related to vaccines and financial crises. Results indicated that both greater societal freedom and higher perceived societal freedom are associated with lower levels of conspiracy beliefs. In Study 5 (N = 592), we examined the psychological mechanisms mediating the relationship between perceived societal freedom and conspiracy beliefs and found the significant indirect effect via political anger. These findings contribute to a broader understanding of how macro-level conditions can be incorporated into efforts to reduce the prevalence of conspiracy theories.

In this perspective, we discuss the problem of mistrust in science through the lens of intergroup dynamics. Within this framework, we focus on why and how certain groups-most notably conservative-leaning audiences, individuals high in social dominance orientation and those who endorse science-populist beliefs-perceive scientists as a socially distant and even threatening out-group. We outline evidence-based strategies-including structured contact and collaboration, recategorization, crossed categorization and decategorization and perspective-taking/perspective-giving-and illustrate how they can be applied to rebuild trust between scientists and the public. Examples include participatory citizen science projects, joint community-scientist initiatives, highlighting scientists' overlapping identities with target communities and communication that reflects both scientists' and community members' moral perspectives. We emphasize that these interventions must be tailored to local contexts and guided by diagnostic research that identifies which groups hold the most negative perceptions of scientists, how scientists perceive the public and specific social-psychological mechanisms at play-such as perceived moral conflict and symbolic threat. Finally, we caution against viewing intergroup approaches as stand-alone solutions; rather, we suggest they should complement broader systemic efforts to improve the information environment and the social conditions under which trust in science can thrive.

Social identity research has yet to fully engage with identity economics. This article bridges the two by examining capital market participation and capital income inequality - a critical economic behaviour and a societal issue that remain understudied in social psychology. We integrate psychological concepts and metrics of social identity with large-scale, representative UK data on household economics, encompassing 60,156 individuals and 130,598 observations from 2010 to 2023. Examining gender, ethnicity, education, occupation, politics, age and family as aspects of individuals' self-concept, our findings show that between- and within-person variations in these identities, beyond mere group memberships, were uniquely associated with both the presence and amount of capital income. Rather than reinforcing group membership effects, which could suggest adherence to group norms around capital market participation, our results highlight the importance of identity domains. Gender and ethnic identity were associated with lower capital income, whereas educational and political identity were linked to higher capital income. These patterns persisted across different groups and income strata. Importantly, the predictive power of social identities was comparable to traditional sociodemographic variables. This study extends social identity research to understudied economic behaviours and contributes to the emerging fields of identity economics and the psychology of inequality.

The alt-right increasingly claims that White men are becoming targets of discrimination, yet few studies examine how, and for whom, perceived (reverse) discrimination manifests among White men. We address this oversight by examining rates of change in perceptions of ethnic and gender discrimination across 10 annual waves of a nationwide sample of White men (2014 to 2023; N = 20,486). Latent class growth analysis revealed that most White men (82.75% of participants) reported low and stable perceptions of discrimination over time, alleviating concerns of widespread discontent. However, we identified a Disenfranchised class (8.49%) that perceived moderate discrimination and a Radicalized class (8.76%) whose initially low levels of perceived discrimination increased markedly over time. These classes differed across socio-demographic variables, socio-political attitudes and well-being measures. We thus identify how, and for whom, perceptions of discrimination change over time among White men and how these changes undermine health and progressive social change.

Power, especially in the court system, is a potent determinant of intergroup relationships. Blind justice being only an ideal, public opinion can influence whether harm to low power groups is considered criminal and should be prosecuted. Our experiments investigated the impact of social dominance orientation (SDO) on the perceived appropriateness of punishment for harm to subordinate group members by dominant group members. Further, we examined the moderating role of a remorseful apology. We argue that perpetrators who do not show remorse towards their less powerful victim might be judged less harshly by those scoring high in SDO. Apologizing for the harm indicates a desire for social cohesion, which should appeal more to those low on SDO. We tested our hypothesis across three potential hate crimes: a privacy violation against a gay man (Study 1, N = 87 US-Americans), a shooting of an unarmed Black man (Study 2, N = 91 US-Americans), and an assault against an innocent refugee (Study 3a, N = 179 and 3b, N = 157 Germans). In three of four studies, people who desired group dominance advocated harsher punishment of remorsefully apologizing perpetrators. Our research contributes to the understanding of punitive attitudes across group boundaries with far-reaching societal implications.

When close interpersonal ties involve unethical behaviour, should we report the misconduct? Through four studies, we investigate how social relationships shape moral evaluations of transgression reporting, potential reporters' expectations of evaluators' judgements, and, critically, the alignment between anticipated and actual assessments. We discovered that potential reporters who report (as opposed to those who do not report) transgressors are perceived as more morally upright in their behaviour, more ethical and warmer, regardless of whether the transgressors are close or distant (Study 1). Potential reporters anticipated that reporting (rather than not reporting) transgressors would prompt evaluators to judge them more favourably, irrespective of the relationship's closeness (Study 2). However, reporters expected lower evaluations of morality and warmth when reporting close versus distant transgressors (Study 2). Evaluators' actual evaluations of reporting transgressions proved more favourable than reporters anticipated, particularly concerning behavioural moral rightness, morality and warmth (Study 3). Reporters and evaluators differed in their moral valuations of loyalty versus justice, leading reporters to underestimate the positive impact that reporting close transgressors would have in evaluators' eyes (Study 4). These findings imply that evaluators are more supportive of reporting transgressors than reporters anticipate and that reporters overestimate the social costs associated with such actions.

Public acts of virtue can promote prosocial norms yet are often met with moral scepticism - a phenomenon known as virtue discounting. What psychological processes might underlie people's propensity to both discount others' public virtue and also engage in it themselves? We examine one possible explanation: whether people expect their own public virtuous behaviour to be judged more favourably than others' similar actions. Across four pre-registered studies (N = 2511), we tested for self-serving asymmetries in moral expectations. In three between-subjects experiments, participants either anticipated how others would evaluate their own actions (meta-perceptions) or judged the actions of another person (third-party judgements). Study 1 found no asymmetry in moral goodness. But in Studies 2 and 3, participants expected their own public virtue to be judged as more principled (and more morally good, in Study 2), less reputation-driven, and more trustworthy. Study 3 showed these asymmetries held across multiple perspectives. In contrast, Study 4 used a within-subjects design and found that self-serving asymmetries disappeared when judgements were made side by side. Together, these findings clarify how self-enhancement shapes moral expectations under naturalistic conditions and extend research on moral self-enhancement beyond trait judgements to public virtue and its perceived motivation.

This research investigates whether and how workplace diversity approaches-identity-conscious versus identity-blind-are associated with LGBTQ+ employees' perceptions of tolerance. Whilst tolerance is widely regarded as an important virtue for the harmonious functioning of diverse societies, it can inadvertently harm minoritized individuals. In workplace settings, perceptions of tolerance may hinder the benefits of diversity by discouraging minoritized employees from sharing their perspectives and prompting individuals with relatively concealable stigmas, such as LGBTQ+ employees, to conceal their identities. Across two studies (n = 907), we examine the conditions under which tolerance perceptions may arise. Study 1 explores LGBTQ+ prospective employees' anticipated tolerance in organizations with identity-blind versus identity-conscious mission statements. Study 2 examines LGBTQ+ employees' workplace experiences, focussing on how organizational and leadership diversity approaches are related to perceptions of tolerance. Findings reveal that relatively identity-blind approaches are associated with increased feelings of being tolerated. Moreover, identity-conscious leadership strategies, when coupled with identity-conscious organizational approaches, further diminish perceptions of being merely tolerated. Our findings underscore an un-intended correlate of identity-blind diversity approaches, which may perpetuate tolerance-focussed climates and indirectly undermine inclusion for LGBTQ+ employees.

Tourism intensification is today a powerful transforming force in many European cities. Supported by new policies, it brings the displacement of long-time residents and influxes of new ones, transforming located relations of urban neighbourhoods and their sociocultural worlds. Contributing to a sociopolitical psychology of place, this study explores how residents in touristified contexts make sense of place and its changes and claim rights for located relations. We conducted a narrative analysis of interviews with residents (n = 30) in two Lisbon neighbourhoods under tourism pressure, exploring how their storied accounts of events-in-time and self-and-other roles and relations construct senses of place and intertwine with claims for place-rights and located relations. Findings reveal three shared, competing narratives, offering different roles to Selves and Others and their relations, some advancing more individual, some more collective rights-claims and relational demands and constructing a different sense of place-rooted, elective and cosmopolitan. The study highlights the value of theoretically grounded narrative analysis for extending a sociopolitical psychology of place. It advances too a better understanding of how sociocultural worlds emerge from the inter-relations of people, place and policy and of the 'battles of ideas' over located relations and rights in urban contexts, in particular those affected by tourism.

Relative deprivation theory argues that individuals can perceive themselves to be deprived relative to other individuals (IRD) or that their ingroup is deprived relative to other groups (GRD). Few studies, however, investigate how these distinct 'types' of relative deprivation manifest over time. We address this oversight using multi-trajectory latent class growth analysis to identify distinct growth trajectories of relative deprivation across 13 annual waves of a nationwide longitudinal panel study (2011-2023; N = 75,073). We identified two discrete classes: the Content class (90.5% of the sample) and the Deprived class (9.5%). Whereas the Content class had low levels of IRD and GRD that declined over 12 years, the Deprived class had moderate levels of IRD that decreased but high levels of GRD that increased over time. Membership in these two classes differed across demographics, well-being and sociopolitical measures. The implications for relative deprivation theory are discussed.

Anticipating, considering and incorporating possible futures are central components of human social life. Our social actions, beliefs, values and interactions are all oriented towards, or away from, various future outcomes. Yet despite this, social psychology is yet to harness its unique contribution to our understanding of the future, not addressing the challenges that many other disciplines are confronting in this emerging discipline. In this editorial, we introduce our special issue on 'futures social psychology', and in doing so, we provide a starting point for scholars interested in furthering research in this area. We outline previous important discipline-specific and methodological contributions, connecting social psychological perspectives to the wider academic and practitioner landscape. We outline how our eleven special issue contributions advance discussion, theorizing and research methodology on topics such as sustainability, collective group continuity, prefigurative politics, AI sentience and degrowth policies. Finally, we encourage social psychologists of all topic and methodological persuasions to adopt a generative, prospective and possibilities-focussed approach to their work, to ensure that social psychology as a discipline can effectively meet the challenges of the future and maximize its impact.

Social scientists have developed impactful frameworks to understand who unites in protest. Yet, when exceptional circumstances arise, people are sometimes astounded by the convergence of disparate groups protesting together for an apparently unifying cause. One recent example is the COVID-19 pandemic. A new movement protesting the containment measures rapidly evolved, gaining momentum only weeks after the measures' implementation. Strikingly, the movement included participants from, among others, the political far left and right-individuals who had protested each other only weeks earlier and would do so again after the pandemic was declared over. This context enabled a real-life investigation of how people navigated conflicting ideologies to mobilise collectively. Drawing on 11 naturalistic protest observations and template analysis of 30 interviews with 31 protesters, we find that most participants indeed experienced the movement as ideologically diverse. At the same time, protesters used three strategies to navigate ideological conflict: (1) highlighting superordinate identities and ally utility (i.e., usefulness in advancing shared goals); (2) defending allies through in-/out-group biases; and (3) embracing diversity. Our analysis demonstrates the combined explanatory power of social identity, social categorisation, and coalitional psychology frameworks in understanding emerging Querfront alliances, showing how protesters moved from identity construction to coalition calculus.

Using conversation analysis and discursive psychology, this paper examines how members of the Asian category co-construct shared experiences and attributes associated with the category in the U.S. context. Analysing sequences of interaction from podcasts advertised as centring around Asian American experiences, I identify a set of practices recurrently adopted by participants in generalising about commonalities shared by Asian members, which include mitigations, interrogatives, parenthetical inserts and various category-related repair practices. Through a detailed qualitative analysis, I demonstrate the delicate and methodical interactional work done by participants in managing the tension between constructing shared attributes/experiences and acknowledging differences within the Asian category, while also dealing with potential interactional issues associated with generalizing. This paper contributes to a better understanding of how shared meanings associated with social identities are collaboratively negotiated and (re)produced, in addition to offering a detailed account of the practices involved in category-based generalizing in interaction.

Athlete retirement involves substantial identity changes and psychological challenges. This longitudinal qualitative study explored the experiences of 16 recently retired elite Chinese athletes using the Social Identity Model of Identity Change (SIMIC). Semi-structured interviews were conducted within 3 months of retirement (T1) and 1 year later (T2), with reflexive thematic analysis applied to examine the dynamic relationship between social identity change and adjustment. Key themes highlighted the processes related to SIMIC in sports retirement: (a) identity loss impacting adaptation to new roles, (b) identity continuity achieved through identity remigration (strengthening connection with past group identity) and identity remooring (forming new identities related to previous ones), (c) challenges and advantages of identity gain, (d) the impact of identity aspiration to gain or maintain group membership and (e) ways in which similarity in group contexts increases group compatibility. Findings revealed that while athletes experienced distress from identity loss at T1, social support from existing group memberships mitigated these effects through identity remigration. By T2, identity continuity and compatibility between old and new group memberships, supported by group context similarity, became critical to adjustment to new roles. These findings extend SIMIC in novel ways and can inform support programmes for retiring athletes.

Decades of research have recognized political candidates' competence and warmth as predictors of voter preferences, but to whom these distinct personalities are most appealing remains unclear. In the current research, we investigated how voters' Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) influenced their preferences for highly competent or warm political candidates. In two studies, we experimentally manipulated candidate competence (Study 1) and warmth (Study 2) and measured voter preferences using overall evaluations, the feeling thermometer, and the likelihood-of-voting rating. We also measured perceived ability to clean up danger, perceived ability to win competitions, and perceived caring about people as potential mediators. The results suggested that a candidate's high competence (vs. neutral traits) increased preferences for the candidate among voters high in RWA more than those low in RWA. However, despite some indication, the effect that a candidate's high warmth (vs. neutral traits) increased such preferences among voters low in RWA more than those high in RWA lacked robustness across different voting preference measures. Additionally, the moderating effects of SDO on the relationships between candidate traits and voter preferences were not significant. Neither RWA nor SDO moderated the indirect effects of candidate competence and warmth through the proposed mediators.

Initial research suggested that intimate partner violence (IPV) increased over COVID-19 due to social restrictions. This IPV increase during COVID-19 has been termed the 'twin pandemics'. Closer inspection of the evidence, however, challenges this notion. In this study, Australian residents (N = 608) who were either exposed to strict, prolonged lockdown orders (Victorian residents) or not (non-Victorian residents) completed 10 waves of IPV perpetration assessment online over five months and baseline assessments of instigating factors (situational factors that increase IPV perpetration), impelling factors (personal characteristics that increase IPV perpetration) and inhibiting factors (personal and situational factors that diminish IPV perpetration). Latent profile analysis and conditional latent growth curve modelling revealed that lockdown alone did not predict IPV trajectories. However, individuals whose profiles evidenced higher instigating and impelling factors and lower inhibiting factors (i.e. perfect storm profile) demonstrated elevated physical and psychological IPV over time compared to those whose profiles evidenced lower instigating and impelling factors and higher inhibiting factors (i.e. low-risk profile). Those with a perfect storm profile also evidenced steeper acceleration in physical and psychological IPV over time. The findings call into question the 'twin pandemics' notion and suggest that IPV over COVID-19 is best predicted by a specific risk profile.