Human perceptions of an avian predator in an urban ecosystem: close proximity to nests increases fondness among local residents

Urban Ecosystems - How humans view their local birds influences the habitat quality for the birds. Humans that enjoy birds will often consider them when altering landscapes or may enhance their own...     

Inter-Group Aggression in New Orleans in the Immediate Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the city of New Orleans witnessed an emerging conflict between the residents who survived the storm and the rescuers charged with assisting them. This particular type of inter-group conflict has not been documented before, as it uniquely entails survivors acting against their very self-interest, and rescuers subverting their helping roles. We argue that Drury and Reicher's Elaborated Social Identity Model explains the nature of the inter-group aggression. Drawing on published first-person accounts, we document how the power differential between rescuers and survivors shaped inter-group perceptions and eventually rendered inter-group aggression acceptable. While inter-group aggression reflects only one facet of the aftermath of Katrina, we conclude that it must be interpreted as meaningful social action commensurate with the groups' emerging collective identities.     

Gendered Influence of Downward Social Comparisons on Current and Possible Selves

Because men and women differ with regard to independent and interdependent self-construals, we propose that downward comparisons are more likely to lower women's achievement-related self-evaluations compared to men's. We also hypothesize that gendered self-schemas provide men with advantages in the processing of self-related dispositional information and women with advantages in the processing of self-related social-contextual information. To the extent that a downward social comparison presents a potential threat to the self, men and women differ in how effectively they can fend off the implications of different types of comparisons. Results from three experiments (total N = 393) support these hypotheses, suggesting that gendered responses to downward comparison are at least in part driven by a culturally normative focus on dispositional information prevalent in the West.