Overview

• “We promise full employment till 2025“ - About the effects of pre-election promises on voter turnout and vote decision
• SERIOR (SEcurity-RIsk-ORientation)
• Interactions between visual and auditive information while perceiving gender and ethnicity
• Social diversity and confidence
• Effects from pre-election promises on trust in politicians and citizens´ vote decision
• Discrimination of women in the case of the appraisal of aptitudes regarding leadership positions: Can social competence be seen as a disadvantage?
• Memory with respect to actions: Are sequences of action remembered better after having them executed than after observation or learning?
• How heterosexual family members deal with a late coming-out in the family
• Discriminated twice or well integrated? About the life situation of lesbians and gays with migration background
• Social discrimination based on relative chronic categorization: The role of in-group projection

“We promise full employment till 2025“ - About the effects of pre-election promises on voter turnout and vote decision

Research proposal: Pre-election promises are one of the most important instruments of electoral campaigns, however, their effects on voter turnout and vote decisions are unexplored until now. This is astonishing because pre-election promises fulfil an important democratic function: they give information about the political offer and determine the scale with which the government´s action over the last years can be evaluated. Thus, pre-election promises play an important role during electoral campaigns and can influence voters in two different ways: On the one hand the decision to vote because pre-electoral promises can uncover programmatic differences between parties which has a mobilizing effect. On the other hand by means of pre-electoral promises it should be easier for voters to choose a party which matches their political wantings. The research questions of the present project are as follows: Which effects do pre-electoral promises made by parties have on voter turnout and vote decision? To answer these questions we use an interdisciplinary approach by combining political science and psychological approaches. In the foreground there are experimental studies, additionally, one study is conducted over a longer time period which reflects the dynamic information context  during an electoral campaign. 

Funded by: Fritz Thyssen Stiftung

Principal investigators: Evelyn Bytzek, Melanie C. Steffens

Duration: 07/2018 to 06/2021

SERIOR (Security-RIsk-ORientation)

Funded by: European Fund for Regional Development (EFRE) & Interreg Oberrhein

Staff: Franziska Ehrke

Duration: 2016-2018

Click here for further information

Interactions between visual and auditive information while perceiving gender and ethnicity

(as part of the DFG research group “Person Perception“)

Research proposal: General postulates with regard to the perception of gender and ethnicity are often made based on very simplifying stimuli, static faces or only group labels. Often is postulated that gender, ethnicity, and age are fundamental social categories which are processed automatically. It is the aim of the requested project to test if typical results regarding the automaticity with respect to perceptions of gender and ethnicity can be generalized to more complex and ecological valid multimodal stimuli. As we assume certain modalities are privileged to process certain social categories. Further we examine if social categorization is depending on the egalitarian attitudes of the participants. First we compare the categorization regarding gender and ethnicity with respect to different conditions of presentation (e.g. visual vs. visual + auditive) and examine relationships with the attitudes of the participants. Second, using the more complex visual-auditive stimuli we examine if typical in-group and out-group differentiationes (e.g. Germans vs. Foreigners) can be replicated when regional dialects facilitate a more subtle social categorization. Third, we additionally use event correlated potentials to examine the neuronal correlates with respect to gender and ethnicity categorizations. Finally, we examine the role of olfactoric stimuli besides the visual and auditive ones. As outcome we expect that models regarding the perception of persons have to be specified with respect to the early integration of social informartion from different modalities.

Funded by: German Research Foundation

Principal Investigator: Melanie C. Steffens

Staff: Tamara Rakic (Lancaster University), Adrian P. Simpson (Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena), Sven Kachel

Duration: 2009-2017 (two funding periods)

Social diversity and trust

To the homepage of the research project

Funded by: Ministry for Education, Science, Further Education, and Culture in the State of Rhineland-Palatinate

Principal Investigators: Melanie C. Steffens, Susanne Bruckmüller

Staff: Franziska Ehrke

Duration: 2014-2016

Effects from pre-election promises on trust in politicians and citizens´ vote decision

To the homepage of the research project

Funded by: Ministry for Education, Science, Further Education, and Culture in the State of Rhineland-Palatinate

Principal Investigators: Melanie C. Steffens, Evelyn Bytzek

Staff: Julia Dupont, Frank M. Schneider (University of Mannheim)

Duration: 2014-2016

Memory with respect to actions: Are sequences of action remembered better after having them executed than after observation or learning?

Research proposal: Subject matter of the project is the systematic comparison of the learning conditions execution of action, observation and verbal learning regarding the memory with respect to sequences of action. Actions which are executed by oneself are remembered especially well. To have a stringent experimental control over potentially falsifying boundary conditions in the numerous research papers regarding the advantage of action (Do-effect, enactment effect, SPT effect) there have been applied nearly exclusively lists of very simplified “actions“ (verb-object-phrases as “breaking the matchstick“). Up to now there is no evidence that even the execution of more complex sequences of action causes better learning performance. Also the memory processes  which underly the advantage of action seem to justify doubts that it is generalizable to sequences of action. We postulate that the execution of action increases the item-specific processing of particular parts of action, at an expense of the relations between them and at an expense of inferences regarding the target structure of sequences. The representation of the target structure should be critical for the reproduction of a sequence of action. With regard to different sequences of action under different learning conditions the memory performance and underlying processes are tested. The desired outcome is the clarification of the question in what way the execution of structured goal-driven sequences of action changes their mental representation.

Here you find a summary of the project´s outcomes

Funded by: German Research Foundation

Principal Investigator: Melanie C. Steffens

Staff: Janette Schult, Rul von Stülpnagel

Duration: 2007-2015 (two funding periods)

How heterosexual family members deal with a late coming-out in the family

Here you find a report regarding the outcomes of the project

Funded by: German Association of Lesbians and Gays

Principal Investigators: Melanie C. Steffens, Janine Dieckmann

Duration: 2013-2014

Discrimination of women in the case of the appraisal of aptitudes regarding leadership positions: Can social competence be seen as a disadvantage?

Research proposal: As striking the underrepresentation of women at the highest management levels may be, as difficult is it to prove concrete reasons for this. We focus on gender stereotypes and institutional parameters. Studies regarding selection decisions with respect to parallelized qualification have shown that womens´ competence generally is evaluated equally compared to that of men; by contrast there is still a social competence stereotype with respect to women. The change of gender stereotypes in that direction that women generally are seen as equally competent regarding professional expertise but as more socially competent than men has threatening implications for the societal position of men as the social dominant group. Compliant with the theory of social dominance subtle mechanisms to maintain social hierarchies should keep away women from ascending to leadership positions. The mechanism postulated by us is that higher social competence can be a disadvantage with respect to success in application situations. We test under which circumstances women are evaluated worse than men in fictitious job interviews and if this gender gap can be ascribed to differences regarding social competence.

Funded by: Friedrich Schiller University Jena

Principal Investigators: Melanie C. Steffens, Irena Ebert

Duration: 2010-2013 

Discriminated twice or well integrated? About the life situation of lesbians and gays with migration background

Research proposal: Lesbians and gays with migration background are a stigmatized minority in two different ways, which is why they are confronted with specific problems and have to find solution processes regarding these difficulties. With respect to Germany until now there are no comprehensive empirical studies related to life situation, problems and their consequences for the psychological health regarding lesbians and gays with migration background. Within the framework of the project which is presented here after having done a qualitative study (i.e. interviews) a quantitative survey study was conducted, participants were lesbians and gays with migration background and as reference group lesbians and gays without migration background.

Here you find a report regarding the outcomes

Funded by: German Association of Lesbians and Gays

Principal Investigators: Melanie C. Steffens

Staff: Michael Bergert

Duration: 2009-2010

Social discrimination based on relative chronic categorization: The role of in-group projection

(as part of the DFG research group “Discrimination and Tolerance in Intergroup Relations“)

Research proposal: The aim of the project is the examination of evaluations in a intergroup context and how discrimination and tolerance arise from these. For this purpose the in-group projection model (IPM) should be tested in a structurally new intergroup context to obtain critical evidence which is informative with regard to the scope of the model. The context which is targeted here is the intergroup relationship between the heterosexual majority and the homosexual minority. Characteristics of these intergroup relationships are (i) high relevant relatively chronic and salient in-groups (biological sex), crossed with majority and minority; (ii) between the groups can be observed tolerance as well as discrimination. From this one can derive not yet tested predictions about projection processes which should be moderated by the activation of different superordinate categories. Due to this intergroup situation our planned activities are beyond the scope of existing research regarding the IPM in two additional ways. The processes postulated in the model are automatic processes whose result not necessarily is conscious and expressed directly. Thus, in addition to the explicit measures which until now have been applied to test models implicit ones should be used. Moreover, the self´s projection onto the in-group should be considered as a moderating factor of the relationship between in-group projection and out-group discrimination. As part of the targeted model tests open questions from the research area of attitudes toward lesbians and gays can be clarified as an additional desirable benefit: The theoretical incorporation of many outcomes on this is poor and the intergroup perspective is lacking completely. Thus, the perspective of the IPM should be very productive.

Here you find a summary of the outcomes from the research group "Discrimination and Tolerance in Intergroup Relations"

Funded by: German Research Community 

Principal Investigators: Melanie C. Steffens. Kai J. Jonas

Staff: Gerhard Reese

Duration: 2005-2008 (first funding period), 2008-2010 (second funding period)