Publications by authors named "Jolien van Breen"

This paper examines the meaning of violence in contemporary Western societies. Scholars have argued that in contemporary Western societies, the concept is expanding toward a broader understanding of violence, beyond its "traditional" usage in the context of crime and war. The current paper aims to generate empirical evidence that speaks to this question.

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Some public officials have expressed concern that policies mandating collective public health behaviors (e.g., national/regional "lockdown") may result in behavioral fatigue that ultimately renders such policies ineffective.

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Unlabelled: We investigated women's anger expression in response to sexism. In three studies s = 103, 317, and 241), we tested the predictions that women less anger about sexism than they -the anger gap-and that the anger expressed by women is associated with instrumental concerns, specifically perceived costs and benefits of confronting sexism. To estimate the specificity of the proposed gap, we compared women's anger reactions to men's anger reactions as well as anger reactions to sadness reactions.

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The current study uses data from The British Broadcasting Corporation Loneliness Experiment to explore the social stigma of loneliness and how it varies by gender, age and cultural individualism. We examined stigmatizing judgements of people who are lonely (impressions of those who feel lonely and attributions for loneliness), perceived stigma in the community and self-stigma (shame for being lonely and inclination to conceal loneliness), while controlling for participants' own feelings of loneliness. The scores on most measures fell near the mid-point of the scales, but stigmatizing perceptions depended on the measure of stigmatization that was used and on age, gender and country-level individualism.

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Anxiety associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and home confinement has been associated with adverse health behaviors, such as unhealthy eating, smoking, and drinking. However, most studies have been limited by regional sampling, which precludes the examination of behavioral consequences associated with the pandemic at a global level. Further, few studies operationalized pandemic-related stressors to enable the investigation of the impact of different types of stressors on health outcomes.

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The present paper examines longitudinally how subjective perceptions about COVID-19, one's community, and the government predict adherence to public health measures to reduce the spread of the virus. Using an international survey (N = 3040), we test how infection risk perception, trust in the governmental response and communications about COVID-19, conspiracy beliefs, social norms on distancing, tightness of culture, and community punishment predict various containment-related attitudes and behavior. Autoregressive analyses indicate that, at the personal level, personal hygiene behavior was predicted by personal infection risk perception.

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This work examines strategic factors that impact women's intention to express anger. Research suggests that women express anger to a lesser extent than they experience it (Hyers, 2007; Swim et al., 2010), and we focus on the role of gender stereotypes in this phenomenon.

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Tightening social norms is thought to be adaptive for dealing with collective threat yet it may have negative consequences for increasing prejudice. The present research investigated the role of desire for cultural tightness, triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, in increasing negative attitudes towards immigrants. We used participant-level data from 41 countries ( = 55,015) collected as part of the PsyCorona project, a cross-national longitudinal study on responses to COVID-19.

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Article Synopsis
  • * Overall, 72.9% of respondents expressed a willingness to get vaccinated, with prosocial behavior positively correlating with vaccine intentions, while belief in conspiracy theories and religiosity negatively influenced them.
  • * The research highlights the need to address misinformation and engage religious organizations in campaigns, emphasizing the importance of promoting prosocial values to boost vaccination rates globally.
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Article Synopsis
  • The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a global health crisis, prompting many countries to implement strict measures that have significantly altered societal dynamics.
  • This situation has fostered a sentiment of societal discontent, which is defined as a collective worry about society's fragile state and can drive individuals to engage in altruistic behavior.
  • The study analyzed data from 42 countries and found that higher societal discontent increases individuals' willingness to help others affected by COVID-19, highlighting important implications for crisis management strategies.
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During the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. conservative politicians and the media downplayed the risk of both contracting COVID-19 and the effectiveness of recommended health behaviors.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study analyzes how social connections and feelings of solidarity influenced experiences of loneliness during the COVID-19 lockdown across 23 countries from March to May 2020.
  • - Findings reveal that while online interactions can help lessen loneliness, those who feel lonelier are less likely to engage in online contact, and solidarity has minimal impact on loneliness levels during lockdown.
  • - Additionally, increased online communication does not replace in-person interactions; instead, it appears to encourage more face-to-face contacts later on, highlighting the complexity of social interactions during lockdown.
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In spite of their subtle nature, subliminal cues of group devaluation can have profound effects on members of targeted groups. Across three studies, we examine factors that allow people to counteract subliminal cues of group devaluation. We do this in the context of Spanish-German intergroup relations following the 2008 financial crisis.

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This paper examines whether compliance with COVID-19 mitigation measures is motivated by wanting to save lives or save the economy (or both), and which implications this carries to fight the pandemic. National representative samples were collected from 24 countries (N = 25,435). The main predictors were (1) perceived risk to contract coronavirus, (2) perceived risk to suffer economic losses due to coronavirus, and (3) their interaction effect.

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Background: Although there are increasing concerns on mental health consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, no large-scale population-based studies have examined the associations of risk perception of COVID-19 with emotion and subsequent mental health.

Methods: This study analysed cross-sectional and longitudinal data from the PsyCorona Survey that included 54,845 participants from 112 countries, of which 23,278 participants are representative samples of 24 countries in terms of gender and age. Specification curve analysis (SCA) was used to examine associations of risk perception of COVID-19 with emotion and self-rated mental health.

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Three studies examine how women's benevolent sexism (BS) shapes support for other women's agentic responses to gender-based threat. In Study 1, women read vignettes about a woman who agentically responded (vs. no response) to gender-based threat (e.

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We examine women's responses to subliminal gender stereotypes, that is, stereotypes present outside conscious awareness. Previous research suggests that subtle stereotypes elicit acceptance and assimilation, but we predict that subliminal exposure to gender stereotypes will trigger resistance in some women. Specifically, we expect resistance to occur among women who are relatively strongly identified with feminists, but not with the broader group of women.

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Across four studies, we examine multiple identities in the context of gender and propose that women's attitudes toward gender group membership are governed by two largely orthogonal dimensions of gender identity: identification with women and identification with feminists. We argue that identification with women reflects attitudes toward the society gives to group membership: what does it mean to be a woman in terms of group characteristics, interests and values? Identification with feminists, on the other hand, is a politicized identity dimension reflecting attitudes toward the social position of the group: what does it mean to be a woman in terms of disadvantage, inequality, and relative status? We examine the utility of this multiple identity approach in four studies. Study 1 showed that identification with women reflects attitudes toward group characteristics, such as femininity and self-stereotyping, while identification with feminists reflects attitudes toward the group's social position, such as perceived sexism.

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Although women who highly identify with other women are more susceptible to stereotype threat effects, women's identification might associate with greater leadership aspirations contingent on (1) counter-stereotype salience and (2) feminist identification. When gender counter-stereotypes are salient, women's identification should associate with greater leadership aspiration regardless of feminism, while when gender stereotypes are salient, women's identification would predict greater leadership aspirations contingent on a high level of feminist identification. In our study US-based women ( = 208) attended to gender stereotypic (vs.

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