Susanne Bruckmüller
Biographic Data
| ID | 139674 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Susanne Bruckmüller |
| GIVEN NAMES | Susanne |
| FAMILY NAME | Bruckmüller |
| SIGNATURE | BRUCKMÜLLER S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7373-0141 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 132 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Talking About Privilege: Framing Inequality as Advantage Is More Likely for Inequality in Positive Than in Negative Outcomes
Inequality is often one-sidedly framed as disadvantage, a practice identified as problematic by empirical research and critical scholarship, as it renders privilege invisible and shapes perceptions of and reactions to inequality. Importantly, inequality can mean differences in positive (e.g., promotions) or negative outcomes (e.g., harassment). Drawing on cognitive processes involved in (group) comparisons and the processing of positive and negat…
Recalling ingroup privilege as outgroup disadvantage: Evidence for a privilege-reframing bias and tests of a potential mediator
While inequality can be framed as disadvantage (e.g., “women earn less than men”) or as privilege (e.g., “men earn more than women”) in logically equivalent ways, disadvantage framing dominates discourses about inequality. The present research had two goals. First, we aimed to establish a privilege-reframing bias in recall of inequality information: the tendency to misremember ingroup privilege in terms of outgroup disadvantage. Since recipients …
Are Women Brave or Braver Than Men? Judgments of Implicit and Explicit Intergroup Comparisons
People learn about social groups by reading and hearing verbal statements. We investigated if the perceived truth and acceptability of such statements depend on whether they are implicitly vs. explicitly comparative (e.g., “Women are brave” vs. “Women are braver than men”). Participants (Study 1: Ns = 259; Study 2: N = 246) rated the truth, acceptability, familiarity, and positivity of implicitly vs. explicitly comparative, stereotypical vs. coun…
Interpretations of Generic Versus Comparative Statements About Groups: Similarities and Differences
We compare interpretations of two kinds of statements that are important for stereotype transmission: generics (e.g., “women are helpful”) and comparatives (e.g., “women are more helpful than men”). Participants ( N = 338) read and interpreted generic or comparative statements about positive and negative features of gender (Experiment A) and age groups (Experiment B). We found similarities and differences. Participants interpreted both generics a…
Unequal Tweets: Black Disadvantage is (Re)tweeted More but Discussed Less Than White Privilege
From serial reproduction to serial communication: Transmission of the focus of comparison in lay communication about gender inequality
We introduce and explore the potential of the serial communication method, a modification of the serial reproduction paradigm in which participants communicate their own thoughts. It affords participants more agency, more closely simulating real communication. We specifically examined the transmission of the focus of comparison in explanations of gender inequality, a consequential form of equivalency framing. Participants in Wave 1 (n = 86) read …
Fragile Heterosexuality: A Cross-cultural Study Between Germany and Italy
Prior research in the UK and the USA found that heterosexual identity was perceived as more easily compromised than gay identity: a finding dubbed the “Fragile Heterosexuality” effect. However, there is as yet no evidence that this effect occurs outside the USA and UK. With representative samples from Germany ( N = 1236) and Italy ( N = 1249), we investigated the fragile heterosexuality effect using participants’ agreement with gender-neutral sta…
Can Accepting Criticism Be an Effective Impression Management Strategy for Public Figures? A Comparison with Denials and a Counterattack
The way public figures react to criticism can influence perceptions of and trust in them. We tested whether politicians who openly accepted criticism were perceived as more moral and warmer (i.e., more communal) and were trusted more than politicians who rejected criticism. Using fictitious politicians, Experiments 1–3 showed the expected positive effect of accepting criticism on communion and trust, moderated neither by the politician’s party af…
A double‐edged sword: How social diversity affects trust in representatives via perceived competence and warmth
Previous research has claimed that diversity erodes trust, even though the empirical evidence is mixed and restricted to ethnic neighborhood diversity. Against the backdrop of increasing diversity within the political sphere and concurrently declining political trust, we examined the impact of social diversity on trust in groups of political representatives. In two experiments ( N 1 = 109, N 2 = 248) we tested how the diversity of political parti…
One Group's Advantage or Another Group's Disadvantage? How Comparative Framing Shapes Explanations of, and Reactions to, Workplace Gender Inequality
Gender inequality is usually described as women's disadvantage, only rarely as men's advantage. Moreover, it is often illustrated by metaphors such as the glass ceiling-an invisible barrier to women's career advancement-metaphors that often also focus on women's disadvantage. Two studies ( N = 228; N = 495) examined effects of these different ways of framing gender inequality. Participants read about gender inequality in leadership with a focus o…
Greedy elites and poor lambs: How young Europeans remember the great war
The present study examines current social representations associated with the origins of the Great War, a major event that has profoundly affected Europe. A survey conducted in 20 European countries (N = 1906 students in social sciences) shows a high consensus: The outbreak of the war is attributed to the warring nations’ leaders while the responsibility of the populations is minimized. Building on the concept of social representation of history …
Years After: What is the relation between pacifist attitudes and social representations of the Great War
In this paper we use a social representational perspective to consider the interplay between pacifist attitudes and representations of World War I, on a large sample of European students. WWI gave rise to pacifist movements across the globe. Across 10 European countries (N = 1347 undergraduate students), we invited participants to report the first five words that came to their mind when thinking about this event and measured their level of pacifi…
When do past events require explanation? Insights from social psychology
Some past events incite more wonder about their causes than do others. For example, negative events require explanation more than positive events. We review social psychologists’ theoretical and empirical insights on what kinds of past events “beg explanation.” We draw on attribution theory that became popular among psychologists from the 1960s onward, on research on counterfactual reasoning, and on conversational and discursive critiques of attr…
A century of victimhood: Antecedents and current impacts of perceived suffering in World War I across Europe
In the article “A century of victimhood: Antecedents and current impacts of perceived suffering in World War I across Europe” (DOI: 100.1002/ejsp.2232) (Bouchat et al.,), published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, 47: 195:208, the affiliations for Silvia Mari, Nebojša Petrovic and Alice Krenn were provided incorrectly. The complete authors' affiliation list is shown below. Pierre Bouchat, Laurent Licata Research Center for Social and…
A century of victimhood: Antecedents and current impacts of perceived suffering in World War I across Europe
The present study addresses antecedents and consequences of collective victimhood in the context of World War I (WWI) across 15 European nations ( N = 2423 social science students). Using multilevel analysis, we find evidence that collective victimhood is still present a hundred years after the onset of the war and can be predicted by WWI‐related objective indicators of victimization at national and family levels. This suggests that collective vi…
Less is more? Think again! A cognitive fluency-based more–less asymmetry in comparative communication
Differences between groups, individuals, or objects can be framed in multiple ways. One can, for instance, say that men generally earn more than women or that women generally earn less than men. Showing that these logically equivalent expressions are not psychologically equivalent, we demonstrate a robust more-less asymmetry in the use of and responses to comparative statements. More specifically, we show that people use "more than" statements mo…
Beyond the Glass Ceiling: The Glass Cliff and Its Lessons for Organizational Policy
It has been almost 30 years since the metaphor of the “glass ceiling” was coined to describe the often subtle, but very real, barriers that women face as they try to climb the organizational hierarchy. Here we review evidence for a relatively new form of gender discrimination—captured by the metaphor of the glass cliff—that women face when they obtain positions of leadership. Such positions often prove to be more risky and precarious than those o…
The Density of the Big Two: How Are Agency and Communion Structurally Represented
Communion and agency are fundamental dimensions of social perception and judgment. Previous research revealed a primacy of communion in social information processing. The present research investigates whether there is a similar asymmetry in the "density" of communion and agency. We test whether communal content is more densely clustered in memory than agentic content, that is, more similar to other communal content than agentic content is similar…
Self and Agency in Context: Ecologies of Abundance and Scarcity
This work considers sociocultural foundations of self and agency in material affordances associated with affluence and poverty. We first review work that links independent self-construal and disjoint agency to material abundance. We then report an experiment among students at North American ( n = 52) and West African ( n = 60) universities, in which we manipulated abundance and scarcity concepts and assessed effects on a pronoun-selection measure…
Empathic Perspective Taking and the Situational Malleability of the Communal Self-concept
Previous research has suggested that communal self-descriptions might be less malleable than agentic ones. We propose that the communal self-concept is malleable as well, and that empathic perspective taking activates the communal self-concept. In two studies, participants watched a video and were either instructed to empathically take the perspective of the target person or to remain objective and detached. In Study 1, we used a repeated-measure…
Framing gender differences: Linguistic normativity affects perceptions of power and gender stereotypes
When unknown groups and equal status groups are compared by contrasting one group (“the effect to be explained”) against another (“the linguistic norm”), the group positioned as the norm is sometimes perceived as more powerful, more agentic, and as less communal. Such perceptions may contribute to status‐linked stereotypes, as group differences are spontaneously described by positioning higher‐status groups as the linguistic norm. Here, 103 parti…
Nice and easy does it: How perceptual fluency moderates the effectiveness of imagined contact
The bigger one of the “Big Two”? Preferential processing of communal information
An important aim of person perception is to guide people in their actions towards others and an especially important question in this regard is whether to approach a target or not. A target's traits can be differentiated into the “Big Two” fundamental content dimensions of agency and communion. Four studies test the hypothesis that relative to agentic traits communal traits – which can also be conceptualized as “other-profitable” traits – are pro…
The glass cliff: When and why women are selected as leaders in crisis contexts
The glass cliff refers to women being more likely to rise to positions of organizational leadership in times of crisis than in times of success, and men being more likely to achieve those positions in prosperous times. We examine the role that (a) a gendered history of leadership and (b) stereotypes about gender and leadership play in creating the glass cliff. In Expt 1, participants who read about a company with a male history of leadership sele…
The bigger one of the “Big Two”? Preferential processing of communal information
An important aim of person perception is to guide people in their actions towards others and an especially important question in this regard is whether to approach a target or not. A target's traits can be differentiated into the “Big Two” fundamental content dimensions of agency and communion. Four studies test the hypothesis that relative to agentic traits communal traits – which can also be conceptualized as “other-profitable” traits – are pro…
Nice and easy does it: How perceptual fluency moderates the effectiveness of imagined contact
Beyond the Glass Ceiling: The Glass Cliff and Its Lessons for Organizational Policy
It has been almost 30 years since the metaphor of the “glass ceiling” was coined to describe the often subtle, but very real, barriers that women face as they try to climb the organizational hierarchy. Here we review evidence for a relatively new form of gender discrimination—captured by the metaphor of the glass cliff—that women face when they obtain positions of leadership. Such positions often prove to be more risky and precarious than those o…
The Density of the Big Two: How Are Agency and Communion Structurally Represented
Communion and agency are fundamental dimensions of social perception and judgment. Previous research revealed a primacy of communion in social information processing. The present research investigates whether there is a similar asymmetry in the "density" of communion and agency. We test whether communal content is more densely clustered in memory than agentic content, that is, more similar to other communal content than agentic content is similar…
Framing gender differences: Linguistic normativity affects perceptions of power and gender stereotypes
When unknown groups and equal status groups are compared by contrasting one group (“the effect to be explained”) against another (“the linguistic norm”), the group positioned as the norm is sometimes perceived as more powerful, more agentic, and as less communal. Such perceptions may contribute to status‐linked stereotypes, as group differences are spontaneously described by positioning higher‐status groups as the linguistic norm. Here, 103 parti…
When do past events require explanation? Insights from social psychology
Some past events incite more wonder about their causes than do others. For example, negative events require explanation more than positive events. We review social psychologists’ theoretical and empirical insights on what kinds of past events “beg explanation.” We draw on attribution theory that became popular among psychologists from the 1960s onward, on research on counterfactual reasoning, and on conversational and discursive critiques of attr…
A century of victimhood: Antecedents and current impacts of perceived suffering in World War I across Europe
The present study addresses antecedents and consequences of collective victimhood in the context of World War I (WWI) across 15 European nations ( N = 2423 social science students). Using multilevel analysis, we find evidence that collective victimhood is still present a hundred years after the onset of the war and can be predicted by WWI‐related objective indicators of victimization at national and family levels. This suggests that collective vi…
One Group's Advantage or Another Group's Disadvantage? How Comparative Framing Shapes Explanations of, and Reactions to, Workplace Gender Inequality
Gender inequality is usually described as women's disadvantage, only rarely as men's advantage. Moreover, it is often illustrated by metaphors such as the glass ceiling-an invisible barrier to women's career advancement-metaphors that often also focus on women's disadvantage. Two studies ( N = 228; N = 495) examined effects of these different ways of framing gender inequality. Participants read about gender inequality in leadership with a focus o…
Greedy elites and poor lambs: How young Europeans remember the great war
The present study examines current social representations associated with the origins of the Great War, a major event that has profoundly affected Europe. A survey conducted in 20 European countries (N = 1906 students in social sciences) shows a high consensus: The outbreak of the war is attributed to the warring nations’ leaders while the responsibility of the populations is minimized. Building on the concept of social representation of history …
Unequal Tweets: Black Disadvantage is (Re)tweeted More but Discussed Less Than White Privilege
A double‐edged sword: How social diversity affects trust in representatives via perceived competence and warmth
Previous research has claimed that diversity erodes trust, even though the empirical evidence is mixed and restricted to ethnic neighborhood diversity. Against the backdrop of increasing diversity within the political sphere and concurrently declining political trust, we examined the impact of social diversity on trust in groups of political representatives. In two experiments ( N 1 = 109, N 2 = 248) we tested how the diversity of political parti…
Years After: What is the relation between pacifist attitudes and social representations of the Great War
In this paper we use a social representational perspective to consider the interplay between pacifist attitudes and representations of World War I, on a large sample of European students. WWI gave rise to pacifist movements across the globe. Across 10 European countries (N = 1347 undergraduate students), we invited participants to report the first five words that came to their mind when thinking about this event and measured their level of pacifi…
Less is more? Think again! A cognitive fluency-based more–less asymmetry in comparative communication
Differences between groups, individuals, or objects can be framed in multiple ways. One can, for instance, say that men generally earn more than women or that women generally earn less than men. Showing that these logically equivalent expressions are not psychologically equivalent, we demonstrate a robust more-less asymmetry in the use of and responses to comparative statements. More specifically, we show that people use "more than" statements mo…
The glass cliff: When and why women are selected as leaders in crisis contexts
The glass cliff refers to women being more likely to rise to positions of organizational leadership in times of crisis than in times of success, and men being more likely to achieve those positions in prosperous times. We examine the role that (a) a gendered history of leadership and (b) stereotypes about gender and leadership play in creating the glass cliff. In Expt 1, participants who read about a company with a male history of leadership sele…
The bigger one of the “Big Two”? Preferential processing of communal information
An important aim of person perception is to guide people in their actions towards others and an especially important question in this regard is whether to approach a target or not. A target's traits can be differentiated into the “Big Two” fundamental content dimensions of agency and communion. Four studies test the hypothesis that relative to agentic traits communal traits – which can also be conceptualized as “other-profitable” traits – are pro…
Self and Agency in Context: Ecologies of Abundance and Scarcity
This work considers sociocultural foundations of self and agency in material affordances associated with affluence and poverty. We first review work that links independent self-construal and disjoint agency to material abundance. We then report an experiment among students at North American ( n = 52) and West African ( n = 60) universities, in which we manipulated abundance and scarcity concepts and assessed effects on a pronoun-selection measure…
Empathic Perspective Taking and the Situational Malleability of the Communal Self-concept
Previous research has suggested that communal self-descriptions might be less malleable than agentic ones. We propose that the communal self-concept is malleable as well, and that empathic perspective taking activates the communal self-concept. In two studies, participants watched a video and were either instructed to empathically take the perspective of the target person or to remain objective and detached. In Study 1, we used a repeated-measure…
Framing gender differences: Linguistic normativity affects perceptions of power and gender stereotypes
When unknown groups and equal status groups are compared by contrasting one group (“the effect to be explained”) against another (“the linguistic norm”), the group positioned as the norm is sometimes perceived as more powerful, more agentic, and as less communal. Such perceptions may contribute to status‐linked stereotypes, as group differences are spontaneously described by positioning higher‐status groups as the linguistic norm. Here, 103 parti…
Nice and easy does it: How perceptual fluency moderates the effectiveness of imagined contact
The Density of the Big Two: How Are Agency and Communion Structurally Represented
Communion and agency are fundamental dimensions of social perception and judgment. Previous research revealed a primacy of communion in social information processing. The present research investigates whether there is a similar asymmetry in the "density" of communion and agency. We test whether communal content is more densely clustered in memory than agentic content, that is, more similar to other communal content than agentic content is similar…
Beyond the Glass Ceiling: The Glass Cliff and Its Lessons for Organizational Policy
It has been almost 30 years since the metaphor of the “glass ceiling” was coined to describe the often subtle, but very real, barriers that women face as they try to climb the organizational hierarchy. Here we review evidence for a relatively new form of gender discrimination—captured by the metaphor of the glass cliff—that women face when they obtain positions of leadership. Such positions often prove to be more risky and precarious than those o…
Less is more? Think again! A cognitive fluency-based more–less asymmetry in comparative communication
Differences between groups, individuals, or objects can be framed in multiple ways. One can, for instance, say that men generally earn more than women or that women generally earn less than men. Showing that these logically equivalent expressions are not psychologically equivalent, we demonstrate a robust more-less asymmetry in the use of and responses to comparative statements. More specifically, we show that people use "more than" statements mo…
When do past events require explanation? Insights from social psychology
Some past events incite more wonder about their causes than do others. For example, negative events require explanation more than positive events. We review social psychologists’ theoretical and empirical insights on what kinds of past events “beg explanation.” We draw on attribution theory that became popular among psychologists from the 1960s onward, on research on counterfactual reasoning, and on conversational and discursive critiques of attr…
A century of victimhood: Antecedents and current impacts of perceived suffering in World War I across Europe
In the article “A century of victimhood: Antecedents and current impacts of perceived suffering in World War I across Europe” (DOI: 100.1002/ejsp.2232) (Bouchat et al.,), published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, 47: 195:208, the affiliations for Silvia Mari, Nebojša Petrovic and Alice Krenn were provided incorrectly. The complete authors' affiliation list is shown below. Pierre Bouchat, Laurent Licata Research Center for Social and…
A century of victimhood: Antecedents and current impacts of perceived suffering in World War I across Europe
The present study addresses antecedents and consequences of collective victimhood in the context of World War I (WWI) across 15 European nations ( N = 2423 social science students). Using multilevel analysis, we find evidence that collective victimhood is still present a hundred years after the onset of the war and can be predicted by WWI‐related objective indicators of victimization at national and family levels. This suggests that collective vi…
Years After: What is the relation between pacifist attitudes and social representations of the Great War
In this paper we use a social representational perspective to consider the interplay between pacifist attitudes and representations of World War I, on a large sample of European students. WWI gave rise to pacifist movements across the globe. Across 10 European countries (N = 1347 undergraduate students), we invited participants to report the first five words that came to their mind when thinking about this event and measured their level of pacifi…
Greedy elites and poor lambs: How young Europeans remember the great war
The present study examines current social representations associated with the origins of the Great War, a major event that has profoundly affected Europe. A survey conducted in 20 European countries (N = 1906 students in social sciences) shows a high consensus: The outbreak of the war is attributed to the warring nations’ leaders while the responsibility of the populations is minimized. Building on the concept of social representation of history …
Can Accepting Criticism Be an Effective Impression Management Strategy for Public Figures? A Comparison with Denials and a Counterattack
The way public figures react to criticism can influence perceptions of and trust in them. We tested whether politicians who openly accepted criticism were perceived as more moral and warmer (i.e., more communal) and were trusted more than politicians who rejected criticism. Using fictitious politicians, Experiments 1–3 showed the expected positive effect of accepting criticism on communion and trust, moderated neither by the politician’s party af…
A double‐edged sword: How social diversity affects trust in representatives via perceived competence and warmth
Previous research has claimed that diversity erodes trust, even though the empirical evidence is mixed and restricted to ethnic neighborhood diversity. Against the backdrop of increasing diversity within the political sphere and concurrently declining political trust, we examined the impact of social diversity on trust in groups of political representatives. In two experiments ( N 1 = 109, N 2 = 248) we tested how the diversity of political parti…
One Group's Advantage or Another Group's Disadvantage? How Comparative Framing Shapes Explanations of, and Reactions to, Workplace Gender Inequality
Gender inequality is usually described as women's disadvantage, only rarely as men's advantage. Moreover, it is often illustrated by metaphors such as the glass ceiling-an invisible barrier to women's career advancement-metaphors that often also focus on women's disadvantage. Two studies ( N = 228; N = 495) examined effects of these different ways of framing gender inequality. Participants read about gender inequality in leadership with a focus o…
From serial reproduction to serial communication: Transmission of the focus of comparison in lay communication about gender inequality
We introduce and explore the potential of the serial communication method, a modification of the serial reproduction paradigm in which participants communicate their own thoughts. It affords participants more agency, more closely simulating real communication. We specifically examined the transmission of the focus of comparison in explanations of gender inequality, a consequential form of equivalency framing. Participants in Wave 1 (n = 86) read …
Fragile Heterosexuality: A Cross-cultural Study Between Germany and Italy
Prior research in the UK and the USA found that heterosexual identity was perceived as more easily compromised than gay identity: a finding dubbed the “Fragile Heterosexuality” effect. However, there is as yet no evidence that this effect occurs outside the USA and UK. With representative samples from Germany ( N = 1236) and Italy ( N = 1249), we investigated the fragile heterosexuality effect using participants’ agreement with gender-neutral sta…
Unequal Tweets: Black Disadvantage is (Re)tweeted More but Discussed Less Than White Privilege
Are Women Brave or Braver Than Men? Judgments of Implicit and Explicit Intergroup Comparisons
People learn about social groups by reading and hearing verbal statements. We investigated if the perceived truth and acceptability of such statements depend on whether they are implicitly vs. explicitly comparative (e.g., “Women are brave” vs. “Women are braver than men”). Participants (Study 1: Ns = 259; Study 2: N = 246) rated the truth, acceptability, familiarity, and positivity of implicitly vs. explicitly comparative, stereotypical vs. coun…
Interpretations of Generic Versus Comparative Statements About Groups: Similarities and Differences
We compare interpretations of two kinds of statements that are important for stereotype transmission: generics (e.g., “women are helpful”) and comparatives (e.g., “women are more helpful than men”). Participants ( N = 338) read and interpreted generic or comparative statements about positive and negative features of gender (Experiment A) and age groups (Experiment B). We found similarities and differences. Participants interpreted both generics a…
Recalling ingroup privilege as outgroup disadvantage: Evidence for a privilege-reframing bias and tests of a potential mediator
While inequality can be framed as disadvantage (e.g., “women earn less than men”) or as privilege (e.g., “men earn more than women”) in logically equivalent ways, disadvantage framing dominates discourses about inequality. The present research had two goals. First, we aimed to establish a privilege-reframing bias in recall of inequality information: the tendency to misremember ingroup privilege in terms of outgroup disadvantage. Since recipients …
Talking About Privilege: Framing Inequality as Advantage Is More Likely for Inequality in Positive Than in Negative Outcomes
Inequality is often one-sidedly framed as disadvantage, a practice identified as problematic by empirical research and critical scholarship, as it renders privilege invisible and shapes perceptions of and reactions to inequality. Importantly, inequality can mean differences in positive (e.g., promotions) or negative outcomes (e.g., harassment). Drawing on cognitive processes involved in (group) comparisons and the processing of positive and negat…
Psychology (22 works) · Social Psychology (22 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (19 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (13 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Political science (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Law (6 works) · Perception (6 works) · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment (6 works)