Project

Title

INFLUENCE OF THINKING STYLE IN THE PREDICTION OF PREJUDICE.

Dates: 2023-2027
Identifier: PID2022-137614NB-I00. Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación de España (MICIN)/AEI /10.13039/501100011033 / FEDER, UE).

About the project

In situations of financial scarcity, people tend to focus more on immediate needs, difficulties, and urgent problems. This tendency favors a change in their way of thinking, as it becomes more oriented towards the short-term (concrete thinking style). This short-term and concrete orientation can serve in finding quick solutions to immediate problems, but it neglects the long-term effects and goals, and a broader consideration of the physical and social context, which can lead to very detrimental consequences.

In previous projects we have focused on the impact of thinking style (concrete vs. abstract style) on health and risk behaviors, now, we want to extend the research on thinking style to its influence on prejudice and its cognitive, affective, and behavioral correlates. Prejudice and its consequences affect the coexistence between people and groups, favoring discriminatory behaviors and intergroup conflict, so it can also be considered within the framework of risk behaviors for social well-being. Research on prejudice is very broad, with highly developed theoretical models in social psychology. Our contribution will be to study the role that thinking style (concrete vs. abstract style) plays in predicting prejudice, including various moderating and mediating variables of this influence, such as ideology, economic scarcity, or perceived intergroup competition. A better understanding of the cognitive and affective processes that influence prejudice will allow us to advance in its prediction, something that will facilitate future interventions to improve coexistence, especially in the most vulnerable social groups.

Key words: construal level, economic scarcity, prejudice, stereotype, prosocial behavior