Cruelty and indifference are the point: Preference for hierarchy is related to support for policies that harm marginalized groups through feeling both less empathy and more schadenfreude

Individuals who have relatively higher levels of social dominance orientation (SDO; Ho et al., 2015) are more likely to support policies and engage in behaviors that harm marginalized groups through both passive (e.g., neglect) and active (e.g., subjugation) means. While SDO is positioned as a relevant antecedent to outcomes regarding intergroup conflict, the mechanisms by which SDO impact group harm are underspecified. In this paper we investigate the social emotions of intergroup empathy and schadenfreude—the congruent negative and incongruent positive emotional reactions, respectively, a person has in response to the suffering of members from another social group—as key mediators between SDO and intergroup harm. More specifically, we test a model in which SDO leads to active harm primarily through feeling schadenfreude while SDO leads to passive harm primarily through not feeling empathy. In four pre-registered studies (N = 3,468), we show initial support for this model, as SDO’s associations with actively harmful policy support were more strongly mediated through schadenfreude than empathy, while SDO’s associations with passively harmful policy support were more strongly mediated through empathy than schadenfreude. We discuss the relevance of these findings to intergroup conflict interventions more broadly, as well as highlight the role of schadenfreude in motivating intergroup harm.

PRAXEOLOGICAL DIMENSION OF WORKING TIME

Praxeological dimension of working time is undoubtedly influenced by current sociopolitical system invoking the axiology being commonly recognized values. This means that in enacting public and legal regulations the state may not isolate the employees facing exceptional hardship or even unforeseeable situations assuming the form of peculiar force majeure. Thus, both employees’ wellbeing and the welfare in general are vital. For that reason the labour law should praxeologically be a way to control real situations and the needs of working people and the society. The labour law should also praxeologically create a system of institutions reconciling social emotions in order to protect social peace which constitutes common welfare.

Shame

Reliance on mutual aid is a distinctive characteristic of human biology. Consequently, a central adaptive problem for our ancestors was the potential or actual spread of reputationally damaging information about the self – information that would decrease the inclination of other group members to render assistance. The emotion of shame appears to be the solution engineered by natural selection to defend against this threat. The existing evidence suggests that shame is a neurocomputational program that orchestrates various elements of the cognitive architecture in the service of (i) deterring the individual from making choices wherein the personal benefits are exceeded by the prospective costs of being devalued by others, (ii) preventing negative information about the self from reaching others, and (iii) minimizing the adverse effects of social devaluation when it occurs. The flow of costs (e.g., punishment) and benefits (e.g., income, aid during times of hardship) in human societies is regulated to an important extent by this interlinked psychology of social evaluation and shame (as well as other social emotions). For example, the intensity of shame that laypeople express at the prospect of committing each of various offenses closely matches the intensity of the actual offense-specific punishments called for by criminal laws, including modern laws and ancient laws that are millennia old. Because shame, like pain, causes personal suffering and sometimes leads to hostile behavior, shame has been termed a “maladaptive” and “ugly” emotion. However, an evolutionary psychological analysis suggests that the shame system is elegantly designed to deter injurious choices and make the best of a bad situation.

Justice in the Eye of the Beholder: How Comparison Framing Affects the Perception of Global Inequality Through Social Emotions and Justice Sensitivity

Global inequality is one of today’s major challenges. How people mentally represent inequality is often determined by its comparative framing. In the present work, we seek to analyze whether putting the focus of a comparison on the disadvantaged or advantaged group affects legitimacy perceptions of and action intentions against global inequality. Results of two preliminary studies indicated that global inequality is perceived as less legitimate and action intentions are increased when the disadvantaged group is the grammatical subject of the comparison, but only when the size of the economic inequality is perceived to be large (vs. small). In addition, social emotions mediated the relationship between comparative framing and legitimacy perceptions. Building on these preliminary studies, we present a planned large-scale study in which we aim to replicate these effects and to additionally test whether the strength of individuals’ emotional responses to comparative framing is moderated by their justice sensitivity. We will discuss findings with regard to the role of how framing elicits certain mental representations of justice.

The red-beard evolutionary explanation of human sociality

Recent evolutionary studies on cooperation devote specific attention to non-verbal expressions of emotions. In this paper, I examine Robert Frank’s popular attempt to explain emotions, non-verbal markers and social behaviours. Following this line of work, I focus on the green-beard explanation of social behaviours. In response to the criticisms raised against this controversial ultimate explanation, based on resources found in Frank’s work, I propose an alternative red-beard explanation of human sociality. The red-beard explanation explains the emergence and evolution of emotions, a proximate cause, rather than patterns of behaviour. In contrast to simple evolutionary models that invoke a green-beard mechanism, I demonstrate that the red-beard explanation can be evolutionary stable. Social emotions are a common cause of a social behaviour and a phenotypic marker and therefore cooperative behaviour cannot be suppressed without also changing the marker.

Elity pod presją negatywnych emocji

The aim of the article is to reflect on the phenomenon of populist resentment towards elites in contemporary liberal democracies. This form of resentment is claimed to lower the quality of democracy, both in regard to its procedures and social bonds, thus deepening the crisis of the system. One of the paper’s aims is to explore this phenomenon as a structure composed of negative social emotions. This part of the analysis is conceptual and theoretical in character. The article then considers the dynamics and mechanisms of the resentment against elites. In this part of the text, the phenomenon is viewed through the lens of the social and cultural context in which it is rooted, as well as from the perspective of individual experiences. Because instances of social resentment manifest themselves mainly in words, this is illustrated using examples from the public debate in Poland regarding elites. The paper concludes with two hypotheses formulated with respect to the multilevel and multidimensional character of this form of resentment.

Some questions of the process of forming emotions in children of preschool age

The paper analyzes the current state of the emotional development of children of preschool age within the framework of national studies. Emotional growth is considered to be a significant regulator of the most important life functions and a factor in the formation of a complex system of emotional attitude of a preschool child. On the basis of theoretical generalizations of various research positions three interrelated areas of emotional development during the preschool years were identified: emotional expressiveness, emotional regulation of behavior and communication, the development of social emotions. Key words: emotional sphere, emotional development of preschoolers; directions of emotional development; model of emotional development

Human values: A cognitive perspective

Things afford positive, neutral, or negative long-run effects on the replicative probability of the focal individual’s genes. At the most general level, values are internal estimates of those effects. Value information steers physiology and behavior in the right direction: approach apple, avoid lion. Thus, value computation is of paramount biological importance. Task analysis suggests there are many prerequisites for valuing things aptly. Here, I focus on two: the need to compute value accurately, and the need to properly feed and integrate value information into the various systems that use value information (e.g., emotion). For example, the subjective food value imputed to an apple needs to reflect the nutrient content of the apple (accuracy); the intensity of gratitude aroused if someone gave you an apple needs to reflect the food value imputed to the apple (integration). Here, I evaluate these hypotheses with two preregistered studies. Consistent with the integration hypothesis, there are close correspondences between (i) the food values that participants impute to each of 40 food items (Study 1; goods) and (ii) the social values and the social emotions (including: gratitude, anger, shame, and pride) that result when those food items occur as constituents of broader social events. Similar correspondences are observed when participants evaluate each of 28 diseases and injuries (Study 2; bads). Consistent with the accuracy hypothesis, exploratory analyses indicate that the food values, the social values, and the social emotions elicited by the food items all track the nutrient content of those food items. Valuation is inherently a computational process. For this reason, a cognitive perspective is distinctively suited to spur progress in our understanding of human values.