ISEai FWF Project:
Motivational aspects of intergroup sensitivity

Division has been rising in western societies, stifling public debate. Research suggests this is in part due to people selectively rejecting criticism from outside groups, even though civil criticism is key to healthy democracies. Within  this project, we seek to advance this view in three lines of ongoing research. The goal is to clarify people’s underlying motives to reject outsiders’ criticism (e.g., group protection, attribution of malicious intentions), establish solid evidence of causality, and pin down potential downstream consequences (facial expression and behavior). We thus derive predictions from prominent social psychological theories of human motivation. We also conduct both large-scale online experiments and laboratory group studies, utilizing moderation-of-process designs to test the underlying causal processes. Finally, we employ the automated facial expression coding to capture facial expressions; in doing so, we go beyond existing research that relies predominantly on self-report measures.  

 

Key project publications:  

Thürmer, J. L., McLeod, P. L., & McCrea, S. M. (2026). Group processes and climate change: Rejecting intergroup calls for climate action. Journal of Environmental Psychology (Online first).  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2026.102992

Thürmer, J. L., Chen, K., & McCrea, S. M. (2024). Collective action control: Ubiquitous processes and cultural differences. Current Opinion in Psychology, 60, 101904.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2024.101904

Braid, J., Thürmer, J. L., McCrea, S. M., & Richlan, F. (2025). Intergroup criticism promoted fan aggression in Austrian national team supporters during the European football championship 2024. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 80, 102907.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2025.102907