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Applied Social Psychology combines the science of social psychology with the practical application of solving social problems that exist in the real world. This exciting textbook provides a thorough explanation of how social psychologists can contribute to the understanding and management of different social problems. A highly prestigious team of contributors from across Europe and the United States illustrate how social psychological theories, research methods and intervention techniques can be successfully applied to problems encountered in the fields of physical and mental health, immigration and integration, economic behaviour, political behaviour, environmental behaviour, organisations and the classroom. This expanded edition also features new chapters on the dynamic fields of consumer behaviour, traffic behaviour, criminal behaviour, sport and development aid. Each field studied features an overview of important problems, the role of human behaviour in these problems, the factors influencing relevant behaviour, and effective ways to change this behaviour. This is an essential volume for all undergraduate and graduate students studying applied social psychology.

Cities can play a pivotal role in accelerating climate action, that is, climate mitigation and adaption. Yet, the success of cities' climate strategies strongly depends on the cities' residents, who often have to accept, adopt, undertake and participate in climate actions. This article discusses how a better understanding of city residents' motives—particularly the personal and group values that underlie their climate actions—could foster climate action in cities. Importantly, it engages with the rich literature in the social sciences on personal values, which—though typically overlooked by policymakers—highlights the relevance of focusing on personal biospheric values (i.e., caring about nature and the environment) in explaining and promoting residents' climate actions. Additionally, the article provides novel insights into how perceived biospheric group values (i.e., the extent to which relevant groups are perceived to endorse biospheric values) can strengthen the value-base for climate actions, particularly among those residents who weakly endorse biospheric values. Critically, it provides concrete examples of how cities can strengthen the group value-base for climate actions, thereby showing how cities can play a unique role in engaging residents in climate action.

This research examined to what extent physical factors, notably lighting and entrapment (blocked escape), and individual factors, notably gender, affect feelings of safety and the acceptability of reduced lighting levels. The authors reasoned that acceptability of reduced street lighting depends on perceived safety, which in turn depends on entrapment, lighting, and gender. Virtual representations of a residential street were used, systematically manipulating entrapment and lighting levels. As expected, people felt less safe in lower lighting and higher entrapment settings, and these settings were evaluated as less acceptable. Although women perceived a situation as less safe compared with men, the authors found no gender differences in acceptability, which extends previous research. Importantly, as hypothesized, perceived safety mediated the effect of lighting on acceptability levels, suggesting that people can accept lower lighting levels when social safety is not threatened.

Understanding differences in environmental risk perception and risk judgments might facilitate the development of effective environmental risk management strategies, including risk communication. Cultural theory holds that systematic individual differences exist in the perception of environmental risks based on four different myths of nature: nature benign, nature ephemeral, nature perverse/tolerant, and nature capricious. The myths of nature represent distinct perceptions toward environmental risks, which are assumed to be closely related to preferences for appropriate risk management strategies. The authors examined to what extent myths of nature are related to beliefs associated with problems of car use and preferences for strategies to manage these problems. As hypothesized, significant variations in perceptions, preferences, and policy evaluations were found among respondents favoring different myths of nature. Nature ephemeral was associated with a higher problem awareness and a more positive evaluation of policy measures, especially in comparison to nature benign.

AbstractEnergy projects can cause various risks over which people have little control, because they are usually developed, implemented, and managed by external parties, such as governments and industry. This study aims to examine how people cope with such externally controlled risks from energy projects, in particular earthquakes induced by gas extraction in their region. Specifically, we studied which factors influence people's intentions to engage in emotion‐focused coping aimed at reducing negative emotions, and problem‐focused coping aimed at reducing the risks and/or their negative consequences. Extending previous studies, we distinguish two types of problem‐focused coping that may be relevant when facing externally controlled risks, namely self‐focused coping, in which individual themselves take action to reduce the negative consequences of the risks, and others‐focused coping, in which case individuals urge responsible parties to take actions to reduce the risks. Our results show that the three types of coping can be distinguished empirically, and people are likely to engage in others‐focused coping. Further, people are most likely to engage in others‐focused coping when they experience strong morality‐based emotions toward the risks from energy projects, whereas they are most likely to engage in self‐focused coping and emotion‐focused coping when they experience strong negative consequence‐based emotions toward the risks from energy projects.

Energy projects can pose serious risks that can elicit negative emotions in people, threatening their well-being and fueling public resistance. As energy projects are oftentimes controlled by governments and industry, people have to rely on responsible parties for preventing and reducing the risks. We introduced the TEAR model and examined to what extent trust in responsible parties, in addition to perceived risks, is related to people's negative emotions towards risks of energy projects. So far, the effects of risk perceptions and trust on emotions have been studied in isolation, which hinders the understanding of their unique effects on emotions. We tested in a longitudinal field survey to what extent perceived risks and trust in responsible parties relate to different types of negative emotions elicited by gas extraction and induced earthquakes, including consequence-based emotions (e.g. fear), morality-based emotions (e.g. anger) and feelings of powerlessness. The results consistently showed that the higher risks people perceived, the more they experienced all types of negative emotions. Trust in responsible parties was particularly strongly associated with morality-based emotions and feelings of powerlessness. The assumed relationships between the constructs in the TEAR model were generally stable across time, in spite of other ongoing developments, such as recurring earthquakes, increasingly heated public debates about the risks of gas extraction, and some prevention and mitigation measures taken by responsible parties.

Imagine that the neighborhood you are living in is covered with graffiti, litter, and unreturned shopping carts. Would this reality cause you to litter more, trespass, or even steal? A thesis known as the broken windows theory suggests that signs of disorderly and petty criminal behavior trigger more disorderly and petty criminal behavior, thus causing the behavior to spread. This may cause neighborhoods to decay and the quality of life of its inhabitants to deteriorate. For a city government, this may be a vital policy issue. But does disorder really spread in neighborhoods? So far there has not been strong empirical support, and it is not clear what constitutes disorder and what may make it spread. We generated hypotheses about the spread of disorder and tested them in six field experiments. We found that, when people observe that others violated a certain social norm or legitimate rule, they are more likely to violate other norms or rules, which causes disorder to spread.

This article examines which policy features affect the perceived effectiveness and acceptability of pricing policies aimed to reduce CO2 emissions. A survey study was conducted among 112 Dutch respondents in 2003. As hypothesized, incentives and policies targeting efficiency behavior were perceived to be more effective and acceptable than were disincentives and policies targeting curtailment behavior. Policies targeting direct energy use were evaluated as more effective than those targeting indirect energy use. No significant differences were found between the acceptability of policies targeting direct and indirect energy savings. As expected, push measures were perceived to be more effective and acceptable when revenues are allocated within the energy domain rather than to general funds. Pull measures were evaluated as more effective when they are funded from within the energy domain rather than from general public funds. The way pull measures are funded did not significantly affect their acceptability.