Authoritarians and rebels with and without the cause. How collective narcissism shapes political orientations
Agnieszka Golec de Zavala
Uniwersytet Kardynała Stefana Wyszyńskiego w Warszawie; Goldsmiths University of London, UK
From Social Categories to Social Spaces: How Stereotypes Shape Place Perception and Spatial Inequality
Simona Sacchi
University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy
Despite growing attention in urban planning, sociology, and economics to issues such as spatial segregation, gentrification, and unequal service distribution, a significant gap remains in our understanding of the psychosocial dimensions of spatial inequality——such as place attachment, perceived misfit, relative deprivation, and their influence on well-being, agency and behaviour.
Building on environmental psychology and social cognition research, this presentation challenges the dominant, one-way view of space–person relations. While prior work has shown how physical environments influence the perception of individuals and social groups, I will focus on the reverse process: how stereotypes associated with social categories influence the perception and evaluation of the spaces those categories are believed to inhabit. Drawing on a program of experimental studies and research conducted in naturalistic, real-life contexts, I present converging evidence that spaces—especially urban spaces—might be imbued with gender- and class-based stereotypes. These “stereotyped spaces” function as social signals, predicting variation in perceived (mis)fit, safety, and agency, as well as downstream behavioural tendencies. I will conclude by extending this empirical framework beyond urban settings to other key environments of everyday life, such as workplaces, showing how the interaction between social identity and physical space contributes to the persistence of inequality across contexts.
Overall, this work demonstrates that places are not neutral backdrops, but active psychological agents through which social perception operates and social hierarchies are reinforced.
Ambivalent Prejudice and the Role of Religion: The Cases of Sexism and Ageism
Vassilis Saroglou
University of Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve), Belgium
The relation between religion and prejudice has been the most studied topic in social psychology applied to religion for the last 60 years. There has been extensive research on how religion and religiousness predict and amplify—or attenuate, under conditions—stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination of groups clearly perceived as threatening religious ideas and values: ethnoreligious (including immigrants), convictional (atheists), and moral (mostly sexual minorities) outgroups. In the last 15 years, we extended in our lab that research in two ways: first, by examining atheists’ prejudice toward religionists and, second, by studying religion’s role in ambivalent prejudice toward outgroups that, in the Stereotype Content Model, belong to the “high warmth, low competence” quadrant. In this talk, I will focus on the latter and present theory and research on religion’s role in hostile and benevolent sexism as well as hostile and benevolent ageism.
The Future of Nostalgia
Constantine Sedikides
University of Southampton, UK
Nostalgia is a bittersweet (albeit mostly positive), self-relevant, and social emotion. Nostalgic narratives typically cast the self as the central protagonist, situated among close others during personally meaningful, often defining, life moments. Nostalgia also has remarkable implications for future-oriented functioning. It fosters an approach-oriented (vs. avoidance-oriented) motivational stance. It enhances optimism, in part by increasing social connectedness—a felt sense of support, belonging, and acceptance—which in turn elevates self-esteem. Nostalgia also stimulates creativity by strengthening openness to experience. Moreover, it promotes prosocial tendencies, including donation intentions and actual charitable giving, and it facilitates intergroup contact. Far from reflecting escapist withdrawal from the present, nostalgia serves as a psychological resource that supports a more positive and attainable future.