Hong, Y., Chan, H.-W., & Chiu, C. P.-Y. (2025). Understanding social divides in the Hong Kong 2019 unrest: A combination of person- and variable-centred approaches. European Journal of Social Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.70001

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• This research combined person- and variable-centred approaches to examine whether (a) core values, (b) perceptions of the political system's legitimacy and (c) attitudes towards Hong Kong–Mainland China integration underlie the Yellow versus Blue politicized collective identities that emerged during the Hong Kong 2019 social unrest. Data were gathered from a representative sample of 2003 Hong Kong residents through a telephone survey. Latent profile analysis of elements (a–c) identified four distinct latent classes that aligned with the Yellow–Blue identities. Membership in these classes predicted support for collective actions that challenged (e.g., protests against the government) versus defended the authority, and the associated solutions to mitigate the social schism. The person-centred approach also detected attributes (including political affiliation, Chinese identification, age and education level) that differentiated the four latent classes. Our approach can be adapted to identify elements that may characterize politicized identity groups in other social movements.

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Kossowska, M., Chan, H.-W., Hong, Y. Y., & Szumowska, E. (2025). Longitudinal effects of helping war refugees on intergroup threat and fear of war: The role of perceived helping functionality. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 28(3), 648-672. https://doi.org/10.1177/13684302241297927​

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• This study examines the long-term effects of aiding war refugees on perceptions of intergroup threat and fear of military conflict. We hypothesized that helping refugees would fulfill psychological needs, reducing perceived intergroup threat while increasing fear of warfare. Data from a panel study during the early months of the refugee crisis in Poland (due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine) showed that assistance at Time 1 led to greater personal benefits perceived at Time 2. This perception decreased intergroup threat (both realistic and symbolic) but heightened fear of war by Time 3. These results held across models considering lagged effects, though individual differences influenced the relationships regarding threat and fear. The findings contribute to discussions on the effects of aiding those fleeing conflict and how perceptions of assistance shape intergroup relations.

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Madan, S., Savani, K., Mehta, P. H., Phua, D. Y., Hong, Y.-Y., & Morris, M. W. (2025). Stress reactivity and sociocultural learning: More stress-reactive individuals are quicker at learning sociocultural norms from experiential feedback. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 128(6), 1292–1314. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000487​​​

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• This research explores how stress reactivity influences learning norms in unfamiliar sociocultural settings. Interactions in these settings can be stressful, especially when individuals violate local norms. While stress is often seen as a drawback, those with higher stress reactivity may be more motivated to improve and learn quickly. A pilot study indicated that individuals genetically predisposed to stress reactivity learned sociocultural norms faster based on experiential feedback. Study 1 showed that participants with higher acute cortisol reactivity learned these norms more quickly in response to physical stress. Study 2 replicated these findings using self-reported stress reactivity. Study 3 found that this self-reported reactivity predicted learning rates in both sociocultural and nonsocial tasks. Study 4 identified the mechanism: individuals with higher dispositional stress reactivity experienced more initial stress, which led to faster learning and reduced stress later on. Overall, more stress-reactive individuals are motivated by negative feedback in unfamiliar social interactions, enhancing their ability to learn relevant norms.

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Klein, J. W. (2025). The family as the primary social group. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 48, e64. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X24001122​

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• Moffett contends that societies should be considered the "primary" group with respect to their social ramifications. Although intriguing, this claim suffers from insufficient clarity and evidence. Rather, if any group is to be crowned supreme, it should surely be the family, with its unique capacity to encourage pro-group behavior, shape other groups, and provide meaning.

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Owuamalam, C. K., Caricati, L., Tan, C. M., Matos, A. S., Bonetti, C., Rubin, M., ... & Marinucci, M. (2025). Re‐Examining Buchel et al.’s (2021) Test of the Status Legitimacy Hypothesis. European Journal of Social Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.3173​

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• The status-legitimacy hypothesis posits that low-status groups more strongly endorse social hierarchies and disadvantageous systems (i.e., engage in system justification), particularly under extreme societal inequality. Buchel et al. (2021) found supportive evidence for this hypothesis based on a 28-nation survey (N = 48,802). However, other large-scale studies have produced contradictory evidence. Consequently, we re-examined Buchel et al.’s (2021) data, this time breaking down the critical status inequality interaction and visualizing the patterns with scatterplots. Contrary to the status-legitimacy hypothesis, our results often showed that both objective and subjective status were associated with system justification in the opposite direction–even in contexts of high societal inequality. However, higher societal inequality sometimes reduces the system justification gap between status groups. We discuss the implications of these mixed findings for the debate around the existence of a system justification motive.