Arne Roets
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 222886 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Arne Roets |
| NOMBRES | Arne |
| APELLIDO | Roets |
| FIRMA | ROETS A |
| AFILIACIONES | Ghent University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5814-1189 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 51 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 212 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 51 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2006 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 8 |
The roots of omission bias
The omission bias refers to the tendency to judge harmful omissions as less immoral than equally harmful commissions. Rooted in the philosophical doctrine of doing and allowing, omission bias has often been treated as a principle in moral decision-making. Although extensively replicated among Western samples, little research has directly examined whether omission bias and its underlying processes generalise across cultures. The present study empl…
In Similarity We Trust
Trust plays a central role in social interactions. Recent research has highlighted the importance of others’ moral decisions in shaping trust inference: individuals who reject sacrificial harm in moral dilemmas (which aligns with deontological ethics) are generally perceived as more trustworthy than those who condone sacrificial harm (which aligns with utilitarian ethics). Across five studies ( N = 1,234), we investigated trust inferences in the …
Public servants' attitudes toward the use of Artificial Intelligence in policymaking
Understanding Citizens' Acceptance of AI in Policymaking
This study examines UK citizens' perceptions of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in policymaking. We first explored the interactive influence of three empirically derived policy issue types (technical, mixed, and ideological issues) and five different levels of AI involvement (ranging from no involvement to full involvement) on public acceptance (RO1). Our results showed that acceptance of AI is highest in technical issues, particularly in a co‐decis…
The Development of a Moral Compass
INTRODUCTION: The Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) identifies innate moral foundations that drive moral judgment, and are assumed to mature at different phases throughout development. However, core developmental aspects of moral foundations, such as normative age and gender differences from an MFT perspective, remain relatively unexplored, particularly in pre-adulthood. Therefore, the present study investigates age and gender differences in moral f…
An Eastern Look at a Western Dilemma
Moral judgment has been extensively studied utilizing traditional trolley-like sacrificial dilemmas. However, by building on Western philosophies and relying on WEIRD samples, this approach has potentially introduced a Western-centric bias to our understanding of the morality of sacrificial harm, by (a) assuming an inherent opposition between utilitarian and deontological morality and (b) underestimating cultural differences on the moral value of…
From principle to practice
Rising levels of political cynicism pose a significant challenge to contemporary democracies. Giving citizens a more direct say through referendums has been proposed as one way to bridge the gap between governments and a cynical citizenry. In a large, representative sample of the Belgian-Flemish population (N = 2205), we find that binding referendums appeal strongly to political cynics. However, when investigating their practical implementation, …
People’s preferred balance between politicians, citizens, and experts in policy-making decisions
Most prior studies examining citizens' preferences for "who should govern" assume that people prefer either politicians, citizens, or experts to exclusively influence policy decisions. Our approach posits that individuals may actually prefer a mix of these actors. Across two studies, we discovered that people indeed favour the involvement of all three actors in policy decisions, but with specific relative importance assigned to each of them. Nota…
Citizen preferences for decisional power levels and participatory instruments in local government
Western democracies increasingly struggle with public dissatisfaction toward political institutions. In response, local governments have begun implementing participatory reforms. This study examines how citizens perceive such initiatives, based on a large and representative sample of Flemish citizens (N = 2,205). Participation was studied through two complementary lenses: (1) hypothetical decision-making scenarios that varied in the level of deci…
Who Do People Prefer to Be in Charge? An In-Depth Analysis of UK Citizens’ Preferences for Politicians, Citizens, Experts, and/or Artificial Intelligence in Policymaking
For a long time, research on democratic governance has primarily focused on preferences for singular decision-makers: elected politicians, citizens, or experts. Recently, however, there has been a shift toward considering preferences for multiple decision-makers, but the specifics of these “multi-actor” models remain unclear. This study addresses this gap by exploring how people prefer decisional authority to be balanced among elected politicians…
Beyond hypothetical trolleys
Sacrificial moral dilemmas require individuals to choose between allowing harm to several people or preventing this by actively causing harm to a smaller number of people. These dilemmas have been foundational in studying how people resolve conflicts between competing moral principles, with responses traditionally interpreted as reflecting either "utilitarian" concern for the greater good or "deontological" refusal to enact harm. Existing researc…
The Relationship Between Cognitive and Emotional Abilities and Ideological Attitudes Among Adolescents
OBJECTIVE: A large number of studies-usually based on samples of adults-have revealed a negative relationship between cognitive abilities and right-wing ideological attitudes. Recently, this relationship has been claimed to be weaker among adolescents. METHOD: We administered data in a sample of adolescents (N = 531) who completed a full cognitive abilities test, as well as a number of abridged, performance-based emotional abilities tests. We als…
AI adoption in public administration
The optimal group size of deliberative mini‐publics
Deliberative mini‐publics (DMPs) have the potential to bolster political trust, although poorly organized ones may worsen existing distrust. Therefore, it is essential to consider citizens' perceptions regarding their implementation. This article examines a key aspect in this regard: the optimal group size of DMPs, as perceived by the public. Three studies were conducted: an exploratory pilot study (n = 194 Belgian citizens), Study 1 (n = 516 UK …
Analysing policy actors’ preferences for different modes of governing in local government
Effective citizen participation in policy decision making depends on the support of all democratic actors involved: citizens, but also politicians and civil servants. Drawing on data from over 4,000 respondents, we explore the existence of so-called ‘multi-actor clusters’, that is, groups of people who are characterised by a positive (or negative) stance towards different modes of local policy decision making, irrespective of their formal-institu…
Closing a gap or creating a new one? Comparing support for participatory instruments among different stakeholders
Representative democracy is perceived to be in crisis in many Western countries. Increasing citizen participation is often considered to be a remedy to close this gap between government and the people. Which instruments should be used to realize this remains, however, open for discussion. In this article, we compare attitudes of citizens, politicians and civil servants towards a number of participatory instruments. We assess to what extent these …
Promoting Anti-Rape Attitudes in Young Men Through the Repetition-Induced Truth Effect
The repetition-induced truth effect (RITE) refers to the robust observation that repeated statements are more likely to be believed than new ones. We propose that this mechanism can be used to promote anti-rape attitudes. We conducted three experimental studies (n1 = 103, n2 = 206, n3 = 339) to test whether repetition increases agreement with statements from an anti-rape attitude scale. Participants, all heterosexual men aged 18-25, were presente…
Local civil society organisations’ appreciation of different local policy decision-making instruments
In societies with a neo-corporatist tradition, organised interests like civil society organisations (CSOs) are largely embedded in the policy-making process. However, as (local) governments increasingly experiment with new forms of democratic innovation, this challenges the traditionally privileged position of CSOs in the policy-making process. We investigate the attitudes of local CSOs towards different types of policy decision-making instrument…
Towards a multifaceted measure of perceived legitimacy of participatory governance
Policy decision‐making modes in governance contexts have become increasingly participatory. This raises questions about legitimacy, and how to measure this concept. The current article advances a multifaceted measurement of perceived legitimacy of policy decision‐making modes in participatory governance, capturing the three components of legitimacy (input, throughput, and output) with two items each. This six‐item measure was tested in a vignette…
Democratic and Authoritarian Government Preferences in Times of Crisis
Prior studies have linked societal threats to a surge in conservative attitudes. We conducted three studies ( N = 1,021) to investigate whether hypothetical threat situations impact peoples' attitudes toward democracy or alternative systems. Study 1 shows that individuals under threat devaluate representative and participatory government types and show relatively stronger endorsement of less democratic alternatives. Study 2 clarifies that extrana…
How do citizens perceive the use of Artificial Intelligence in public sector decisions
Sensitivity to Moral Principles Predicts Both Deontological and Utilitarian Response Tendencies in Sacrificial Dilemmas
When facing sacrificial dilemmas in which harm maximizes outcomes, people appear sensitive to three moral principles: They are more averse to actively causing harm than passively allowing it ( action principle), causing harm directly than indirectly ( contact principle), and causing harm as a means than as a by-product of helping others ( intention principle). Across five studies and a meta-analysis ( N = 1,218), we examined whether individual di…
Disliked but Free to Speak
Freedom of speech for all citizens is often considered as a cornerstone of democratic societies. In three studies, we examined the relationship between cognitive ability and support for freedom of speech for a variety of social groups across the ideological spectrum ( N 1 varies between 1,373 and 18,719, N 2 = 298, N 3 = 395). Corroborating our theoretical expectations, although cognitive ability was related to more affective prejudice toward rel…
Sequential decision-making impacts moral judgment
Bright mind, moral mind? Intelligence is unrelated to consequentialist moral judgment in sacrificial moral dilemmas
The Motivated Cognitive Basis of Transphobia
Diversity and Out-Group Attitudes in the Netherlands
Previous studies have obtained divergent findings for the association between ethnic diversity and majority members' attitudes towards immigrants, suggesting that this relationship is moderated by individual or contextual difference variables. In a community sample of Dutch citizens (N = 399), we investigated the role of two potential moderators: right-wing authoritarianism and social threat in the local neighbourhood. Moreover, we assessed diver…
The Mobilizing Effect of Right‐Wing Ideological Climates
The present research investigated a multilevel person‐context interactionist framework for the relationship between right‐wing ideologies and prejudice across two large, representative samples (Study 1: European Social Survey: N = 56,752; Study 2: World Values Survey: N = 74,042). Across three different operationalizations of right‐wing ideology, two contextual levels (regional and national) of right‐wing climate, and three types of outgroup atti…
Towards a multifaceted measure of perceived legitimacy of participatory governance
Policy decision‐making modes in governance contexts have become increasingly participatory. This raises questions about legitimacy, and how to measure this concept. The current article advances a multifaceted measurement of perceived legitimacy of policy decision‐making modes in participatory governance, capturing the three components of legitimacy (input, throughput, and output) with two items each. This six‐item measure was tested in a vignette…
Ethnic Diversity and Support for Populist Parties
Putnam's (2007) constrict claim states that ethnic diversity has serious consequences for social cohesion, making people distrustful and leery. The present contribution extends this claim by including political cynicism and trust as side effects of diversity. Moreover, we nuance this claim by considering citizens' social-ideological attitudes as moderators of diversity effects. Using a Dutch nationally stratified sample (N = 628), we showed that …
When Suppression Backfires
Based on Wegner's Ironic Processing Theory, this study examines the effects of suppressing eating-related thoughts in a sample of 77 female students. A distinction was made between disinhibited restrainers (high dietary restraint/high disinhibition), inhibited restrainers (high dietary restraint/low disinhibition) and low restrainers. Results indicate that disinhibited restrainers used thought suppression more often and were the only group to sho…
The association between actual and perceived ethnic diversity
The present study investigated the role of authoritarianism in the association between the actual proportion of ethnic minorities (objective diversity) within a neighborhood and majority members' subjective perception thereof (perceived diversity). Additionally, we tested how authoritarianism affects the direct and indirect relationships between objective diversity and outgroup threat, anxiety, and mistrust. Analyses in a nationally stratified sa…
Resisting temptation
Broadening the individual differences lens on party support and voting behavior
Social‐cultural and economic‐hierarchical ideological attitudes have long been used to explain variation in political partisanship. We propose two additional, stable attitudes (political cynicism and ethnic prejudice) that may help in explaining contemporary political alignments. In a Belgian ( N = 509) and Dutch sample ( N = 628), we showed that party support can be segmented into four broad families: left, libertarian, traditionalist, and far‐r…
The morality of action
AI adoption in public administration
Need for Closure Effects on Affective and Cognitive Responses to Culture Fusion
This research examined how affective and cognitive responses to culture fusion, a specific type of culture mixing that features the blending of different cultures or parts thereof into a new entity, are influenced by individual differences in Need for Closure (NFC). Two studies showed that individuals high (vs. low) in NFC felt less favorable toward culture fusion (i.e., the affective response), both at an abstract level (i.e., society structure …
How do citizens perceive the use of Artificial Intelligence in public sector decisions
Local civil society organisations’ appreciation of different local policy decision-making instruments
In societies with a neo-corporatist tradition, organised interests like civil society organisations (CSOs) are largely embedded in the policy-making process. However, as (local) governments increasingly experiment with new forms of democratic innovation, this challenges the traditionally privileged position of CSOs in the policy-making process. We investigate the attitudes of local CSOs towards different types of policy decision-making instrument…
Closing a gap or creating a new one? Comparing support for participatory instruments among different stakeholders
Representative democracy is perceived to be in crisis in many Western countries. Increasing citizen participation is often considered to be a remedy to close this gap between government and the people. Which instruments should be used to realize this remains, however, open for discussion. In this article, we compare attitudes of citizens, politicians and civil servants towards a number of participatory instruments. We assess to what extent these …
Failures to change stimulus evaluations by means of subliminal approach and avoidance training
Previous research suggests that the repeated performance of approach and avoidance (AA) actions in response to a stimulus causes changes in stimulus evaluations. Kawakami, Phills, Steele, and Dovidio (2007) and Jones, Vilensky, Vasey, and Fazio (2013) provided evidence that these AA training effects occur even when stimuli are presented only subliminally. We also examined whether reliable AA training effects can be observed with subliminal stimul…
People’s preferred balance between politicians, citizens, and experts in policy-making decisions
Most prior studies examining citizens' preferences for "who should govern" assume that people prefer either politicians, citizens, or experts to exclusively influence policy decisions. Our approach posits that individuals may actually prefer a mix of these actors. Across two studies, we discovered that people indeed favour the involvement of all three actors in policy decisions, but with specific relative importance assigned to each of them. Nota…
Analysing policy actors’ preferences for different modes of governing in local government
Effective citizen participation in policy decision making depends on the support of all democratic actors involved: citizens, but also politicians and civil servants. Drawing on data from over 4,000 respondents, we explore the existence of so-called ‘multi-actor clusters’, that is, groups of people who are characterised by a positive (or negative) stance towards different modes of local policy decision making, irrespective of their formal-institu…
Democratic and Authoritarian Government Preferences in Times of Crisis
Prior studies have linked societal threats to a surge in conservative attitudes. We conducted three studies ( N = 1,021) to investigate whether hypothetical threat situations impact peoples' attitudes toward democracy or alternative systems. Study 1 shows that individuals under threat devaluate representative and participatory government types and show relatively stronger endorsement of less democratic alternatives. Study 2 clarifies that extrana…
On the effectiveness of approach-avoidance instructions and training for changing evaluations of social groups
0.23, Bayes Factor = 4404.42) and evidence for the absence of instruction-based effects (Bayes Factors < 0.19), they also illustrate that there is still much uncertainty regarding the boundary conditions of these effects and the underlying mental processes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)
Promoting Anti-Rape Attitudes in Young Men Through the Repetition-Induced Truth Effect
The repetition-induced truth effect (RITE) refers to the robust observation that repeated statements are more likely to be believed than new ones. We propose that this mechanism can be used to promote anti-rape attitudes. We conducted three experimental studies (n1 = 103, n2 = 206, n3 = 339) to test whether repetition increases agreement with statements from an anti-rape attitude scale. Participants, all heterosexual men aged 18-25, were presente…
Exposure Makes the Heart Grow Less Fond
Prior research has provided conflicting evidence on the question of whether exposure to food temptations directs attention towards or away from food cues. In this study, the effects of exposure to food temptations on attention processing were investigated using an exogenous cueing paradigm. The results show that exposure to food temptations led participants to direct their attention away from food cues. This effect was found after exposure to pic…
When Suppression Backfires
Based on Wegner's Ironic Processing Theory, this study examines the effects of suppressing eating-related thoughts in a sample of 77 female students. A distinction was made between disinhibited restrainers (high dietary restraint/high disinhibition), inhibited restrainers (high dietary restraint/low disinhibition) and low restrainers. Results indicate that disinhibited restrainers used thought suppression more often and were the only group to sho…
Resisting temptation
Age Differences in Conservatism
The present study investigates the commonly found age–conservatism relationship by combining insights from studies on the development of personality and motivated social cognition with findings on the relationships between these factors and conservative beliefs. Based on data collected in Belgium ( N =2,373) and Poland ( N =939), we found the expected linear effect of age on indicators of social‐cultural conservatism in Belgium and Poland and the…
To Have or To Be? A Comparison of Materialism-Based Theories and Self-Determination Theory as Explanatory Frameworks of Prejudice
The present study aimed to delineate the psychological structure of materialism and intrinsic and extrinsic value pursuit. Moreover, we compared models based on self-determination theory (SDT), Fromm's marketing character, and Inglehart's theory of social change to account for racial prejudice. In a sample of undergraduate students (n=131) and adults (n=176) it was revealed that the extrinsic value pursuit Financial Success/Materialism could be d…
Exposure Makes the Heart Grow Less Fond
Prior research has provided conflicting evidence on the question of whether exposure to food temptations directs attention towards or away from food cues. In this study, the effects of exposure to food temptations on attention processing were investigated using an exogenous cueing paradigm. The results show that exposure to food temptations led participants to direct their attention away from food cues. This effect was found after exposure to pic…
Item selection and validation of a brief, 15-item version of the Need for Closure Scale
Diversity and Out-Group Attitudes in the Netherlands
Previous studies have obtained divergent findings for the association between ethnic diversity and majority members' attitudes towards immigrants, suggesting that this relationship is moderated by individual or contextual difference variables. In a community sample of Dutch citizens (N = 399), we investigated the role of two potential moderators: right-wing authoritarianism and social threat in the local neighbourhood. Moreover, we assessed diver…
The Motivated Gatekeeper of Our Minds
The morality of action
The association between actual and perceived ethnic diversity
The present study investigated the role of authoritarianism in the association between the actual proportion of ethnic minorities (objective diversity) within a neighborhood and majority members' subjective perception thereof (perceived diversity). Additionally, we tested how authoritarianism affects the direct and indirect relationships between objective diversity and outgroup threat, anxiety, and mistrust. Analyses in a nationally stratified sa…
Need for Closure Effects on Affective and Cognitive Responses to Culture Fusion
This research examined how affective and cognitive responses to culture fusion, a specific type of culture mixing that features the blending of different cultures or parts thereof into a new entity, are influenced by individual differences in Need for Closure (NFC). Two studies showed that individuals high (vs. low) in NFC felt less favorable toward culture fusion (i.e., the affective response), both at an abstract level (i.e., society structure …
Failures to change stimulus evaluations by means of subliminal approach and avoidance training
Previous research suggests that the repeated performance of approach and avoidance (AA) actions in response to a stimulus causes changes in stimulus evaluations. Kawakami, Phills, Steele, and Dovidio (2007) and Jones, Vilensky, Vasey, and Fazio (2013) provided evidence that these AA training effects occur even when stimuli are presented only subliminally. We also examined whether reliable AA training effects can be observed with subliminal stimul…
‘Fake news’
The present experiment (N = 390) examined how people adjust their judgment after they learn that crucial information on which their initial evaluation was based is incorrect. In line with our expectations, the results showed that people generally do adjust their attitudes, but the degree to which they correct their assessment depends on their cognitive ability. In particular, individuals with lower levels of cognitive ability adjusted their attit…
The Happiness Gap Between Conservatives and Liberals Depends on Country-Level Threat
In the present study, we investigated the much debated “happiness gap” between conservatives and liberals, approaching the issue from a multilevel person × context perspective. More specifically, we investigated whether this relationship depends on country-level threat. We used individual-level data for right-wing attitudes and psychological well-being from 94 large, representative samples collected worldwide (total N = 137,890) and objective ind…
An Asymmetric Moral Conformity Effect
The present study investigated whether and to what extent people’s judgments on trolley-type moral dilemmas are subject to conformity pressures. Trolley dilemmas contrast deontological (principled) moral concerns with consequentialist (outcome based) moral reasoning. Subjects were asked to respond to trolley dilemmas in a forced choice format and either simultaneously received bogus information about the base rate of consequentialist and deontolo…
The Motivated Cognitive Basis of Transphobia
The Mobilizing Effect of Right‐Wing Ideological Climates
The present research investigated a multilevel person‐context interactionist framework for the relationship between right‐wing ideologies and prejudice across two large, representative samples (Study 1: European Social Survey: N = 56,752; Study 2: World Values Survey: N = 74,042). Across three different operationalizations of right‐wing ideology, two contextual levels (regional and national) of right‐wing climate, and three types of outgroup atti…
Of Mice, Men, and Trolleys
Scholars have been using hypothetical dilemmas to investigate moral decision making for decades. However, whether people’s responses to these dilemmas truly reflect the decisions they would make in real life is unclear. In the current study, participants had to make the real-life decision to administer an electroshock (that they did not know was bogus) to a single mouse or allow five other mice to receive the shock. Our results indicate that resp…
Toward an Integrated Cognition Perspective on Ethnic Prejudice
Both ability and motivation aspects of cognition have been shown to relate to ethnic prejudice. In line with recent theorizing, the present study advances an integrated cognition perspective on ethnic prejudice by examining the interplay between cognitive ability (measured with the Kaufman Adolescent and Adult Intelligence Test) and cognitive motivation (measured with the Need for Cognitive Closure [NFC] Scale) in a Belgian, heterogeneous adult s…
The relationship between emotional abilities and right-wing and prejudiced attitudes
Previous research revealed that cognitive abilities are negatively related to right-wing and prejudiced attitudes. No study has, however, investigated if emotional abilities also show such a relationship, although this can be expected based on both classic and recent literature. The aim of the present study was 2-fold: (a) to investigate the relationship between emotional abilities and right-wing and prejudiced attitudes, and (b) to pit the effec…
Decision making in the prisoner's dilemma game
The prisoner's dilemma game is a mixed‐motive game that offers two players the simultaneous choice between a cooperative and a defective alternative. An often neglected aspect of such a binary‐choice game, however, is that in many real‐life encounters, people can choose not only to cooperate or defect, but they also have a third option: to exit the social dilemma. Although in the literature a consensus has emerged that the addition of an exit opp…
Ethnic Diversity and Support for Populist Parties
Putnam's (2007) constrict claim states that ethnic diversity has serious consequences for social cohesion, making people distrustful and leery. The present contribution extends this claim by including political cynicism and trust as side effects of diversity. Moreover, we nuance this claim by considering citizens' social-ideological attitudes as moderators of diversity effects. Using a Dutch nationally stratified sample (N = 628), we showed that …
Broadening the individual differences lens on party support and voting behavior
Social‐cultural and economic‐hierarchical ideological attitudes have long been used to explain variation in political partisanship. We propose two additional, stable attitudes (political cynicism and ethnic prejudice) that may help in explaining contemporary political alignments. In a Belgian ( N = 509) and Dutch sample ( N = 628), we showed that party support can be segmented into four broad families: left, libertarian, traditionalist, and far‐r…
Bright mind, moral mind? Intelligence is unrelated to consequentialist moral judgment in sacrificial moral dilemmas
A meta-analytic integration of research on the relationship between right-wing ideological attitudes and aggressive tendencies
Many studies have investigated the relationship between ideological attitudes and aggressive tendencies. The present meta-analytic integration of research on this relationship included data of 177 samples (total N = 47,933 participants). The results revealed that this relationship was substantial, r =.31, 95% CI [.27 to.35], p <.001. Such a relationship emerged for both attitudes towards violence and behavioural indicators, although the former re…
Psychology (40 obras) · Social Psychology (34 obras) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (25 obras) · Political science (22 obras) · Politics (16 obras) · Cultural Differences and Values (14 obras) · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment (14 obras) · Social Psychology (13 obras) · Cognition (11 obras) · Law (11 obras)