Suchergebnisse

AbstractThere are widespread, strongly held beliefs that naturism has a negative impact on children. However, naturist groups advocate for including children and prior research has not clearly investigated how naturism affects children. Two pre‐registered, cross‐sectional studies (N1 = 411, N2 = 250) investigated how nudity‐related experiences in childhood predicted overall adjustment. In Study 1, adults reported their recalled experiences of nudity in childhood as well as their current levels of body appreciation, self‐esteem and overall adjustment. In Study 2, mothers reported on their children's current experiences of nudity and the children themselves reported on their current levels of body appreciation, self‐esteem and overall adjustment. Results for both studies were similar (though in Study 2, some associations only approached statistical significance): Experiences of naturism were associated with positive, not negative outcomes. These findings suggest that, despite the concerns some people express, naturism does not generally lead to negative outcomes for children.

AbstractPrior research suggests that naturism leads to less social physique anxiety and more positive body image, but that other forms of public nudity (e.g., casual stripping, sexting) may be harmful, particularly for women. Two cross-sectional studies built on those previous findings. Study 1 (N1 = 6670) found a positive relationship between generalised nude activity and body appreciation which was not moderated by gender. Study 2 (N2 = 331) found that both naturism and casual stripping predicted more body appreciation, a relationship mediated by less social physique anxiety. Again, these relationships were not moderated by gender. In contrast, sexting did not predict body appreciation and predicted more social physique anxiety, but only in men. These findings highlight that some types of nudity may be more beneficial or harmful than others, and that future research and policy should specify the type of nudity under consideration in order to maximise positive effects.

We investigated whether imagining contact with an outgroup member would change intergroup behaviour. Participants who had imagined a positive interaction with an outgroup member or an unspecified stranger were told that they were about to take part in a discussion task with an outgroup member. They were taken to a room and asked to set out two chairs ready for the discussion while the experimenter left, ostensibly to find the other participant. The distance between the two chairs was then measured. Undergraduate students who imagined talking to an obese individual (Experiment 1) or a Muslim individual (Experiment 2) placed the chairs significantly closer than those in the control condition. They also reported more positive feelings and beliefs regarding Muslims. These findings highlight an important practical application of imagined contact: preparing people for successful face-to-face contact.

AbstractPrevious evidence shows that heterosexual people perceive heterosexual status to be more fragile than homosexual status. However, research has not yet investigated whether sexual minorities have similar, or diverging, perceptions of the fragility of sexual orientation. With a sample that included 89 heterosexual and 80 sexual minority participants, we investigated the fragility of heterosexuality using a between-participants design in which participants indicated their agreement with gender neutral statements about the fragility of either heterosexual or homosexual status. Contrary to our expectations we found evidence of Fragile Heterosexuality perceptions regardless of participants' sexual orientation. Additionally, we explored the potential moderating effects of social-dominance orientation, right-wing authoritarianism and prejudice against gay/lesbian people on this Fragile Heterosexuality effect. For sexual minority participants, high levels of social dominance orientation moderated (i.e., increased) the perceived fragility of heterosexual identity relative to homosexual identity. No other inter-group ideology was a significant moderator. These findings highlight that heterosexuality is perceived as more fragile by both heterosexual and sexual minority individuals. Implications and possible avenues for future research are discussed.

Attitudes towards foreigners are widely researched, most frequently in survey studies. However, in that context it is often unclear which attitude object respondents have in mind, and thus what their answers refer to. This paper uses a representative sample of 3,195 Germans who reported which groups they think of when thinking about foreigners living in Germany. We found that Germans disproportionately think of groups who are Muslim, and that such salience is associated with more negative attitudes towards "foreigners." This holds true when controlling for attitudes towards Muslims; in fact, thinking of Muslim groups when thinking about foreigners moderates the relationship between anti-Muslim and anti-foreigner attitudes. The relationships were weaker when respondents think of Turks, a large and long-standing minority in Germany, suggesting an attenuation of the links through familiarity or intergroup contacts. No relationship was found between thinking of refugees and attitudes towards foreigners. Implications for research are discussed, particularly regarding the interpretation of self-reported attitudes towards foreigners and the study of populist strategies.

AbstractPrior research in the UK and the USA found that heterosexual identity was perceived as more easily compromised than gay identity: a finding dubbed the "Fragile Heterosexuality" effect. However, there is as yet no evidence that this effect occurs outside the USA and UK. With representative samples from Germany (N = 1236) and Italy (N = 1249), we investigated the fragile heterosexuality effect using participants' agreement with gender-neutral statements about the perceived fragility of sexual orientation of others. We found evidence supporting the fragile heterosexuality effect in both countries. We also investigated six possible moderators of the effect. Higher estimates of gay/lesbian population weakened the effect, and higher levels of anti-gay prejudice strengthened the effect. Contact (quantity/quality), right wing authoritarianism, and social dominance orientation did not moderate the effect. These findings contribute to previous literature by highlight that the fragile heterosexuality effect appears across countries of diverse LGBTQ friendliness and languages, and also suggest plausible explanations for the effect.

Abstract. Previous research demonstrates that membership of majority groups is often perceived as more fragile than membership of minority groups. Four studies ( N1 = 90, N2 = 247, N3 = 500, N4 = 1,176) investigated whether this was the case for heterosexual identity, relative to gay identity. Support for fragile heterosexuality was found using various methods: sexual orientation perceptions of a target who engaged in incongruent behavior, free-responses concerning behaviors required to change someone's mind about a target's sexual orientation, agreement with statements about men/women's sexual orientation, and agreement with gender-neutral statements about sexual orientation. Neither participant nor target gender eliminated or reversed this effect. Additionally, we investigated multiple explanations (moderators) of the perceived difference in fragility between heterosexual identity and gay identity and found that higher estimates of the gay/lesbian population decreased the difference between the (higher) perceived fragility of heterosexual identity and the (lower) perceived fragility of gay identity.