Psychology Research Digest
British Journal of Social Psychology
The British Journal of Social Psychology is an international journal that publishes impactful basic and applied social psychological research from all parts of the world. Our aim is to showcase research at the forefront of theoretical and methodological innovation that contributes to informing psychological perspectives of social-contextual challenges and audiences beyond academia. We value diverse perspectives and are committed to robust and transparent research practices.
Who is perceived as vulnerable? The role of gender conformity cues and explicit sexual orientation
A substantial proportion of gay men report experiencing everyday harassment, raising questions about how observers interpret victimizing situations. Understanding these patterns requires examining how intersecting social categories shape perceptions of vulnerability, and how vulnerability is related to victim blaming. We investigated how minimal behavioural cues of gender conformity and explicitly disclosed sexual orientation jointly influence vulnerability-related impressions. In Studies 1a/b (N = 248), gender non-conforming targets were consistently perceived as more vulnerable and more susceptible to victimization. Studies 2a/b (N = 452) replicated these effects, while we found no significant effects of explicit sexual orientation on impressions of vulnerability and victimization susceptibility and no significant interactions with gender conformity. These findings highlight the consistent role of behavioural cues of gender conformity in shaping vulnerability-related impressions when intersecting identity information is available. Moreover, perceived vulnerability was positively associated with both direct and indirect victim blaming, which suggests that vulnerability-related impressions, rather than identity cues alone, are relevant to blame-related judgements. Together, the results highlight how different sources of intersecting identity information are weighted when forming impressions of victimization and evaluating victims.
Publication date: Tue, 10 Nov 2026 22:23:37 -0800 Access the article >>‘Flooding’ using disinformation
Disinformation strategies are often deployed by professionals to elicit confusion rather than to persuade. One key method for this is ‘flooding’: inserting a large number of incongruent propositions into the communication environment, with the goal of preventing people from identifying and acting on reliable information. We assess some of the basic elements of this strategy with two pre-registered experimental studies (N = 2607) on the topics of sunscreens and GMOs. We pitted a flooded versus a non-flooded information environment against each other, with varying levels of accurate and inaccurate propositions. Our findings suggest that, in some cases, flooding can influence attitudes, push the evaluation of information into the realm of uncertainty and increase subjective feelings of information overload. We further speculate that flooding may elicit rational inattention and have other downstream consequences such as fatigue and passivity.
Publication date: Sun, 08 Nov 2026 23:30:15 -0800 Access the article >>Transnational voting as collective action in liminal occasion: Examination of political mobilization of non‐resident Turkish citizens in Germany
This study examines transnational voting as collective action in a liminal occasion. Focusing on Turkey-origin residents in Germany during and after the 2023 Turkish national elections, it combines multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork with 17 post-election interviews. The ethnography shows how party alliances transformed formal voting rights into mobilization through organizational infrastructures, trusted networks, symbolic venues and ideological repertoires. The interviews show how these mobilizations were interpreted through contested entitlement, anti-immigrant sentiment, protective transnationalism and in-betweenness. Together, the findings show that transnational voting becomes collective action when it is organized through shared infrastructures, activated through social ties and interpreted as a claim to rights, recognition, protection or opposition. The article contributes to research on collective action, diaspora politics and transnational citizenship by showing how migrants' agency emerges from dual inclusion and exclusion across national contexts.
Publication date: Fri, 06 Nov 2026 22:03:20 -0800 Access the article >>Reimagining violence: Social representations, emotions and the politics of resistance
Political violence occupies a contested space shaped by power asymmetries, colonial legacies and competing moral frameworks. Drawing on Social Representations Theory (SRT) and affective polyphasia, this study examines how individuals evaluate the legitimacy of violence as resistance and how emotional repertoires structure these judgements, using a mixed-methods instrument administered to 444 participants across 64 countries. Network analysis identified anger and hope as central, co-occurring emotions with complementary temporal orientations–anchoring resistance in past injustice and future possibility. Factor analysis revealed three emotional repertoires (transformative, self-evaluative, threat) and three dimensions of violence. Emotions were associated with activism indirectly through distinct pathways, varying by type: transformative emotions required cognitive anchoring, self-evaluative emotions involved identity processes and threat emotions reflected ambivalence, with material damage emerging as a key mediator linking systemic critique to action. Cluster analysis identified five emotional profiles varying by geopolitical region and ideology. Findings extend SRT, refine collective action models and challenge linear emotion–action assumptions.
Publication date: Thu, 05 Nov 2026 22:40:21 -0800 Access the article >>Who are we? Children's national and European identities and inclusion of minorities
Superordinate national and European identities have the potential to encompass diverse groups, promoting inclusion. However, the content associated with these identities can influence whether diverse groups are included. This study investigated how children co-construct ideas about their national (i.e. Irish) and European identity content (RQ1) and who these groups include (RQ2). Transcripts from eight focus groups using interactive activities with children aged 10–11 (n = 26, M age = 10.68, SD age = 0.48; 72% male) were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis, producing three key themes. First, children viewed national and European identities as intertwined and place-based. Second, children highlighted fundamental identity contents that determined whether people were included in the group. Some viewed only ethnic content (e.g. blood and birth) as fundamental to group membership, emphasizing restricted pathways to inclusion. Others accepted either ethnic or civic (e.g. citizenship and participation) content, highlighting multiple pathways to inclusion. Third, children discussed other, prototypical forms of identity content, which were broadly cultural in nature (e.g. language and learning about the national culture). Prototypical content did not determine whether people could be included or not, but rather the degree of inclusion. Implications for how to facilitate discussions about superordinate identities to promote social inclusion in childhood are discussed.
Publication date: Thu, 05 Nov 2026 22:19:52 -0800 Access the article >>The social origins of identity and bias: Language models, accumulated meaning and positioning
This paper develops a social psychological interpretation of distributional language models, algorithmically learned representations of natural language. Within these models, words are positioned according to patterns of usage, and the resulting embeddings can be interpreted as maps of cultural associations available for learning. This cultural-learning account explains how patterned meanings become available to individual cognition but leaves open how those meanings are socially produced. Drawing on social identity theory, discursive psychology and a stigmergic–dialogical model of communication, the paper argues that identity and bias emerge through social interaction and the accumulation of linguistic traces. As people take positions, respond to others and circulate formulations, they produce patterns of meaning that locate actors relationally and make alignments and differences recognizable. Bias emerges when this accumulation is uneven, making associations, evaluations and distinctions differentially available across communities. From this perspective, embeddings map patterns accumulated through social activity. Their geometry captures relations through which identities become recognizable and groups distinguishable. The paper extends this approach with speaker landscapes, which locate speakers by their language use and show how groups become differentiated. The result is a framework for studying how meaning, identity, bias and group differentiation are socially produced at scale.
Publication date: Thu, 29 Oct 2026 22:22:14 -0700 Access the article >>Issue Information
British Journal of Social Psychology, Volume 66, Issue 1, January 2027.
Publication date: Thu, 29 Oct 2026 22:11:26 -0700 Access the article >>