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Dieses Buch führt in knapper Form durch die wesentlichen Bereiche der Sozialpsychologie. Der Text soll grundlegendes Wissen einfach und verständlich zugänglich machen. Die Themenbereiche umfassen Gegenstand und Geschichte sowie Methoden der Sozialpsychologie, Selbst und Identität, Konstruktion der sozialen Realität und die Prozesse dieser Konstruktion, Einstellungen, Interpersonale Beziehungen und sozialen Einfluss, Prozesse in Kleingruppen sowie Toleranz und Diskriminierung zwischen sozialen Gruppen. (Verlagstext)

Terror management research shows that mortality salience (MS) increases people's attempts to live up to cultural standards. However, as cultures value very different and sometimes even contradictory standards, it is often difficult to derive specific predictions. Previous research identified the salience of injunctive norms (norms based on moral prescriptions) as an important moderator. We tested whether the influence of MS also depended on the salience of descriptive norms, which refer to what most people actually do in a particular situation. We, indeed, found that only when showing people that fellow ingroup members were optimistic (as opposed to pessimistic) that Germany would win the soccer world championship, did MS increase participants' tendency to likewise express optimism about the team.

Existential threat, which terror-management theory suggests is associated with greater psychological distance from nature and increased concern for the self, may erode human motivation to protect the natural environment. Environmentally relevant motivations and concerns include desires to protect humans (anthropocentric motivation and egoistic concern) and nature (biocentric motivation and biospheric concern). Experimentally induced mortality salience decreased biocentric but not anthropocentric motivation to protect the environment (Studies 1 and 2) as well as biospheric but not egoistic environmental concern (Study 2). However, moderator effects also suggest how environmentally protective motivations can be sustained despite existential threat. If people conceive of proenvironmental action as serving humans or if it relates to people's identities, the malicious effects of existential threat on proenvironmental motivation can be eliminated.

Zusammenfassung: Die Forschung zur Terror Management Theorie hat gezeigt, dass die experimentelle Induktion der kognitiven Verfügbarkeit eigener Sterblichkeit ("Mortalitätssalienz") bei Menschen das Bestreben erhöht, das eigene kulturelle Weltbild zu verteidigen. Vor allem in US-amerikanischen Studien hat sich dies in einer erhöhten Verteidigung nationaler Symbole niedergeschlagen. Wir berichten über eine Studie, in der wir den Einfluss von Mortalitätssalienz auf Reaktionen auf die Verteidigung der Geschehnisse um die deutsche Wiedervereinigung und die Einstellung zur DM in Ost- und Westdeutschland untersucht haben. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Personen aus Ostdeutschland nach Mortalitätssalienz verglichen mit einer Kontrollbedingung eine verstärkte Tendenz aufwiesen, die deutsche Einheit gegenüber Kritik zu verteidigen. Für Personen aus Westdeutschland war diese Reaktion nicht zu beobachten. Weiterhin zeigte sich, dass jüngere Personen aus Ostdeutschland die DM nach Mortalitätssalienz abwerteten, während bei älteren Personen eine tendenzielle Aufwertung zu beobachten war. Diese Befunde verdeutlichen, dass Reaktionen auf nationale Ereignisse und Symbole unter Mortalitätssalienz in Abhängigkeit unterschiedlicher Bevölkerungs- und Altersgruppen differenziert betrachtet werden müssen.

Blaming immigrants seems to be in part motivated by the need for control. However, three alternative explanations have been proposed as to why blaming bolsters feelings of control. First, blaming may restore a sense of an orderly world in which negative events can be attributed to a clear cause (causal attribution). Second, blaming others may strengthen in-group identities thereby facilitating group-based control (in-group identification). Finally, blaming low-status groups may enhance individuals' perceptions of dominance and superior status (hierarchy enhancement). Addressing these arguments, we conducted two survey experiments in the German context. In the first experiment, we examined the control-bolstering functions of causal attribution and in-group identification. Participants were primed with an economic crisis threat and then, given the opportunity to either blame out-groups (immigrants and managers), blame an abstract cause (globalization), or affirm their national identity. In the second experiment, we examine control enhancement in the context of political conflict and status hierarchies. Participants had the opportunity to either express prejudice toward low-status out-groups (immigrants and obese people) or indicate their opinion on the polarized issue of representation of the far-right. Both studies replicate earlier findings showing that anti-immigrant blaming and prejudice enhances the feelings of control. Neither mere causal attribution nor mere in-group identity salience produce similar control-bolstering effects. Instead, findings suggest that intergroup conflict and status differences benefit control the enhancement processes supporting accounts of both group-based control and social dominance. Findings are discussed with respect to social cohesion and the appeal of populist frames promoting antagonistic, unequal intergroup relations. ; The peer review history for this article (including the reviewer reports, their responses, and the editor's decision letter) is available at https://publons.com/publon/10.1002/jts5.73.

Personal and collective threat can breed ethnocentrism and intergroup conflict. We present a model of group‐based control to elucidate motivational underpinnings of these effects from a social psychological perspective. Reviewed empirical evidence illustrates the effects of personal threat on ethnocentric attitudes. Moreover, evidence reveals that perceived lack of personal control of important aspects of one's life induces people to support and defend social in‐groups. This is because people heuristically believe that groups are homogeneous actors of shared goals that may promise the symbolic restoration of group members' sense of global control. We discuss the effects complex real‐world threats (economic crises, terrorism, and climate change) have on ethnocentric tendencies and how we explain this within the control model. Finally, we elaborate on implications for reducing ethnocentric threat responses and on possible prosocial consequences of threat that may help to solve societal crises.

Abstract. The present paper offers a review of the relationship between existential individual threats and peace-hampering as well as peace-facilitating factors. An overwhelming bulk of literature on terror management theory (TMT) demonstrates negative effects of mortality salience such as derogation of outgroup members, prejudice, stereotyping, aggression, and racism. These negative reactions may be detrimental in peace-processes and critical in explaining intergroup conflicts, severe hostilities, and war. Complementary empirical insights derived from TMT, however, demonstrate positive effects of mortality salience (MS) that lead to prosocial reactions. The findings that are reviewed throughout this paper aim at reconciling the seemingly contradictory findings of antisocial and prosocial reactions to reminders of death. In concluding, a variety of conceivable interventions are discussed that may override genuinely detrimental consequences of MS and help to foster peace processes.

Cognitive, emotional and socio-behavioral reactions to uncontrollability -- From coping to helplessness : effects of control deprivation on cognitive and affective -- Processes / Marcin Bukowski and Miroslaw Kofta -- The motivation for control : loss of control promotes energy, effort, and action / atharine H. Greenaway, Michael C. Philipp and Katherine R. Storrs -- "Ironic" effects of need for closure on closed-minded processing mode : the role of -- Perceived control over reducing uncertainty / Magorzata Kossowska, Marcin Bukowski and Sindhuja Sankaran -- Uncontrollability in the classroom : the intellectual helplessness perspective / Klara Rydzewska, Marzena Rusanowska, Izabela Krejtz and Grzegorz Sedek -- Socially grounded responses to perceived lack of control : from compensation to active coping -- Compensatory control theory and the psychological importance of perceiving order / Bastiaan T. Rutjens and Aaron C. Kay -- Perceived uncontrollability as a coping resource : the control-serving function of enemies and uncertainty / Daniel Sullivan and Sheridan A. Stewart -- Giving in and giving up : accommodation and fatalistic withdrawal as alternatives to primary control restoration / Joseph Hayes, Mike Prentice and Ian McGregor -- Extending control perceptions to the social self : ingroups serve the restoration of control / Janine Stollberg, Immo Fritsche, Markus Barth and Philipp Jugert -- Coping with identity threats to group agency as well as group value : explicit and implicit routes to resistance / Soledad de Lemus, Russell Spears, Jolien van Breen and Malka Telga -- Uncontrollability, powerlessness and intergroup cognition -- Thinking up and talking up : restoring control through mindreading / Susan T. Fiske, Dan L. Ames, Jillian K. Swencionis and Cydney H. Dupree -- Accentuation of tending and befriending among the powerless / Ana Guinote and Joris Lammers -- The emotional side of power(lessness) / Katerina Petkanopoulou, Guillermo B. Willis and Rosa Rodr¡guez-Bailcentn -- Uncontrollability, reactance, and power : power as a resource to regain control after freedom threats / Christina Steindl, Eva Jonas and Sandra Sittenthaler