What are the fundamental dimensions people use to understand their social environment?
By what dimensions do we compare social groups and other entities?
Although previous studies almost unanimously insist on focusing on gaining information about the intentions of a social entity or on an interest in implementing these intentions, this has not yet been tested in an unbiased procedure.
Based on representative social samples, participants were asked to assess these social groups regarding general similarity and dissimilarity between the groups. Across various national contexts, instructions, definitions of similarity, and evaluation scales for interpretations, we consistently found a two-dimensional space of low vs. high agency (e.g., status, power, dominance) as the primary dimension and conservative vs. progressive opinion as the second dimension, with communion or warmth emerging from the center of the space (Koch et al., 2016), which is coherent with the general principle that warmth is a function of averageness and non-deviance (Imhoff & Koch, 2016). In subsequent projects, we plan to extend these findings to the perception of employment, corporate brands, and individuals, to explore the delimiting conditions of the investigated unreliability of information about warmth, to empirically illuminate the relevance of the opinion dimension, and to establish a more economically realistic test for our model of interpersonal encounters.
Grant:
University of Cologne grants for postdoctoral researchers and independent young researchers “Salary and Scope of Fundamental, Stereotypical Dimensions” (11/2014 – 10/2017)
Publications:
Koch, A. S., Kervyn, N., Kervyn, M., & Imhoff, R. (in press). Studying the cognitive map of the U.S. states: Ideology and prosperity stereotypes predict interstate prejudice. Social Psychological and Personality Science.
Imhoff, R. & Koch, A. (2017). How orthogonal are the Big Two of social perception? On the curvilinear relation between agency and communion. Perspectives in Psychological Science, 12, 122-137.
Imhoff, R., Woelki, J., Hanke, S., & Dotsch, R. (2013). Warmth and competence in your face! Visual encoding of stereotype content. Frontiers in Psychology, 4:386.
Koch, A.*, Imhoff, R.*, Dotsch, R., Unkelbach, C., & Alves, H. (2016). The ABC of stereotypes about groups: Agency / socio-economic success, conservative-progressive Beliefs, and Communion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 110, 675-709. *shared first authorship
Conspiracy theories can be understood as alternative explanations for how societal events come about. In contrast to the official version, other causes for these events (such as accidents, targeted killings, catastrophes, or an implausible sequence of events) are instead attributed to the intentions of (somewhat) powerful, malicious actors operating in secret. Although each of these assumptions is unique in its (partially bizarre) nature, the endorsement of belief in these conspiracies is intra-individually consistent:
If one conspiracy theory is believed, it is more likely that other conspiracy theories will also be believed. We have therefore adapted and further developed the term “conspiracy mentality” (originally coined by Moscovici, 1987) to describe a generalized political attitude that is temporally stable and cannot be attributed to other facets of personality. Furthermore, it is a strong predictor of prejudice against groups perceived as powerful (Imhoff & Bruder, 2014).
As further studies showed, this form of Manichaean thinking has partly been expressed by political extremist groups (Imhoff, 2015). Conspiracy mentality can lead to distrust of sources perceived as powerful (Imhoff, Lamberty, & Klein, in preparation) and the supposedly omnipotent biomedical model in healthcare (Lamberty & Imhoff, under revision).
Publications:
Imhoff, R. & Lamberty, P. (2017). Too special to be duped: Need for uniqueness motivates conspiracy beliefs. European Journal of Social Psychology, 47, 724-734.
Bruder, M., Haffke, P., Neave, N., Nouripanah, N., & Imhoff, R. (2013). Measuring individual differences in generic beliefs in conspiracy theories across cultures: conspiracy mentality questionnaire. Frontiers in Psychology, 4:225.
Imhoff, R. (2013). Questionnaire for the Assessment of Conspiracy Mentality – Short Form. In C. J. Kemper, E. Brähler, & M. Zenger (Eds.),
Imhoff, R. (2015). Beyond (right-wing) authoritarianism: Conspiracy mentality as an incremental predictor of prejudice. In. M. Bilewicz, A. Cichocka, & W. Soral (Eds.)
Imhoff, R., & Bruder, M. (2014). Speaking (Un-)Truth to Power: Conspiracy Mentality as a Generalized Political Attitude. European Journal of Personality, 28, 25-43.
Imhoff, R., & Decker, O. (2013). Conspiracy Mentality as a Worldview. In: O. Decker, J. Kiess & E. Brähler (Eds.),
In his much-cited book “1984,” George Orwell once wrote, “Who controls the past controls the future,” a poignant formulation that best describes why it is important to deal with historical events and the study of historical representations. People try to generate meaning from history and explain it as a basis for interpreting the world and learning about the present.
Systemic differences are found in lay explanations for why certain events occurred in history. These differences, in turn, have consequences for the current relationship with members of former victim or perpetrator groups (Imhoff et al., 2016).
Particularly the negative actions of perpetrator groups in the past cast a lasting shadow over the same group in the present. This can be clearly demonstrated by the example of the National Socialist past, which still affects Germans’ relationship with nationalism and patriotism (Bilewicz, Witkowska, Stubig, Beneda, & Imhoff, 2016). In certain circumstances (Imhoff, Wohl, & Erb, 2013), some might feel emotions such as guilt or remorse (Imhoff, Bilewicz, Erb, 2012). This also entails the risk of defensive, negative reactions (Imhoff & Banse, 2009), which can ultimately lead to prejudices such as secondary antisemitism. In our current studies, we were able to show how memories of a negative past influence people’s psychological standing to criticize others and how lay explanations for the Holocaust can best be represented in a bottom-up approach.
Grant:
DFG IM 147/1-1 “Secondary Antisemitism – Underlying Psychological Processes” (11/2012-02/2015)
German-Israeli Foundation (GIF) Grant “Seventy Years Later: Historical Representations of the Holocaust and their Effects on German-Israeli Relations” (01/2014 – 12/2016)
Publications:
Bilewicz, M., Witkowska, M., Stubig, S., Beneda, M., & Imhoff, R. (2017). How to educate about the Holocaust? Psychological obstacles in historical education in Poland and Germany. In C. Psaltis, M. Carretero & S. Cehajic-Clancy (Eds.)
Imhoff, R. (2010). Two Forms of Modern Antisemitism? A Scale for Measuring Primary and Secondary Antisemitism [Two forms of modern anti-Semitism? A scale for the measurement of primary and secondary anti-Semitism]. Conflict and Communication Online, 9.
Imhoff, R. (2010). The Dynamics of Collective Guilt Three Generations after the Holocaust: Young Germans’ Emotional Experiences in Response to the Nazi Past. Hamburg: Kovac.
Imhoff, R., & Banse, R. (2009) Ongoing victim suffering increases prejudice: The case of secondary antisemitism. Psychological Science, 20, 1443-1447.
Imhoff, R., Bilewicz, M., & Erb, H.-P. (2012). Collective Guilt versus Collective Regret. Different emotional reactions to ingroup atrocities. European Journal for Social Psychology, 42, 729-742.
Imhoff, R., Bilewicz, M., Hanke, K., Kahn, D. T., Henkel-Guembel, N., Halabi, S., Shani-Sherman, T., & Hirschberger, G. (2016). Explaining the inexplicable: Differences in attributions to the Holocaust in Germany, Israel and Poland. Political Psychology.
Imhoff, R., Wohl, M., Erb, H.-P. (2013). When the past is far from dead: How ongoing consequences of genocides committed by the ingroup impact collective guilt. Journal of Social Issues, 69, 74-91.
Inspired by the forensic utility of validly accessing individual sexual interests, I have primarily focused on the deliberate effort to understand the underlying mechanisms of various established procedures. Contrary to the general opinion that indirect measurements magically collect information more or less automatically, our studies have shown that the highly reliable effect of longer response latencies for the evaluation of preferred sexual stimuli is primarily a cognitive byproduct of the present task. Further research confirmed this theory in both fMRI and EEG studies. Further research addresses the duration of sexual arousal (Imhoff & Schmidt, 2014), cues for aggression (Imhoff et al., 2013), the intensity (Lammers & Imhoff, 2016), and the descriptive norms of sexual decision-making processes.
Publications:
Imhoff, R., Bergmann, X., Banse, R., & Schmidt, A. F. (2013). Exploring the Automatic Undercurrents of Sexual Narcissism: Individual Differences in the Sex-Aggression- Link. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 42, 1033-1041.
Imhoff, R., & Schmidt, A. F. (2014). Sexual disinhibition under sexual arousal: Evidence for domain specificity in men and women. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 43, 1123-1136.
Imhoff, R., Schmidt, A. F., Bernhardt, J., Dierksmeier, A., & Banse, R. (2011). An inkblot for sexual preference: A semantic variant of the Affect Misattribution Procedure. Cognition and Emotion, 25, 676-690.
Imhoff, R., Schmidt, A. F., Nordsiek, U., Luzar, C., Young, A. W. & Banse, R. (2010). Viewing Time revisited: Prolonged response latencies for sexually attractive targets under restricted conditions. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 39, 1275-1288.
Imhoff, R., Schmidt, A. F., Weiß, S., Young, A. W., & Banse, R. (2012). Vicarious Viewing Time: Prolonged response latencies for sexually attractive targets as a function of task- or stimulus-specific processing. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 41,1389-1401.
Lammers, J., & Imhoff, R. (2016). Power and sadomasochism: Understanding the antecedents of a knotty relationship. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 7, 142-148.
Larue, D., Schmidt, A. F., Imhoff, R., Eggers, K., Schönbrodt, F. D., & Banse, R. (2014). Validation of direct and indirect measures of preference for sexual violence. Psychological Assessment, 26, 1173-1183.
Schmidt, A. F., Banse, R., & Imhoff, R. (2015). Indirect measures in forensic contexts. In F. J. R. van de Vijver & T. Ortner (Eds.),
Biased attention allocation to goal-relevant stimuli
Implicit social and romantic cognition
Self-control
Automatic categorization
Prejudices, stereotypes, and stigmas
