Suchergebnisse

This special issue dedicated to the social psychological study of the economic crisis in four European Union countries along the Mediterranean includes six empirical papers discussing different aspects of the phenomenon. Four papers are part of a larger project that started in 2011, aiming to compare the social representations of the economic crisis in France, Greece, Italy, and Portugal. Starting from the study of the social representations of the causes of the crisis and the measures to overcome it, various social psychological parameters that interfere are examined. Thus, the political, ideological, and social positioning, and the axiological universe of the participants are considered as important predictors and mediators in the different papers. Additionally, possible political participatory activities in reaction to the crisis are considered. The presentation of the outcome of this research project is completed by a paper analyzing the way the crisis was depicted in the Italian press and a paper looking at the impact of the financial threat to political participation in France. The research presented here reveals the ways social subjects give meaning to a situation of crisis and thus provides social and political insights into social thinking and behavior with important policy implications for individual nations as well as Europe at large. In this paper, we present the general framework of the studies carried out and we introduce the collection of empirical papers of the special issue.

"An examination of potential outgroup-focused predictors of group-based guilt relating to past colonial conflicts involving Portugal and the Netherlands, specifically, the role of the perceptions of the ingroup towards the victimized outgroup, as well as on outgroup identification and meta-perceptions (i.e. the ingroup's beliefs regarding the outgroup's perceptions of it). Using Structural Equation Modeling in a Portuguese sample (N=178) and a Dutch sample (N=157), we found that the experience of group-based guilt due to colonial conflicts can be positively predicted by outgroup perceptions and outgroup identification (Dutch sample only). Meta-perceptions were a negative predictor of group-based guilt (Dutch sample only). Furthermore, our results show that group-based guilt is positively associated with compensatory behavioral intentions and perceived importance of remembering past colonial conflicts. Results point to the important role of outgroup-focused variables in shaping group-based guilt experiences relating to past conflicts between groups. The findings suggest possible avenues of further research and ways to improve intergroup relations following conflict." (author's abstract)

As part of a larger research project, we asked 1,806 adults from France, Greece, and Italy (in the larger project, Portuguese students were included) to discuss the causes of the current economic crisis and the strategies that should be adopted by the countries to overcome it. The six factors extracted by the factor analysis revealed that the economic crisis was attributed to the depletion of resources, the weakness of the financial system, planned conspiracy, system inequality, overconsumption, or the weakness of the political system. These causes had cross-national structural equivalence and overconsumption – a people-blaming cause – as opposed to conspiracy attributions to a global power or to structural inequalities inherent to the system. Further analyses found three types of strategies to exit the crisis – conforming to EU requests, rationalizing the public sector, and leaving the European Union – but failed to establish cross-national structural equivalence. Results thus suggest that there is some similarity in the discourses of the media that is reflected on people's perceptions about the causes of the economic crisis, but that the strategies to exit the crisis are more linked to the socioeconomic conditions of the countries.