Orla T Muldoon
Biographic Data
| ID | 265659 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Orla T Muldoon |
| GIVEN NAMES | Orla T |
| FAMILY NAME | Muldoon |
| SIGNATURE | MULDOON O T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Limerick |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9082-2443 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 82 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 520 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 82 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Attitude (In)congruence in Group Interactions Predicts Social Identification and Favouritism Behaviour
Addressing widespread polarisation requires understanding how attitudes relate to identification and ingroup favouritism. Two studies employ interactive paradigms to examine whether attitude congruence produces behavioural consequences in addition to identification. In Study 1, participants ( N = 375) responded to four novel attitude statements in groups of five and were randomised to either see the responses of the other participants, or to be b…
Village Identification, Village Support and Collective Efficacy Among People Living in Poverty in Nepal
Social cure research shows that community identification can be a source of beneficial social resources. However, extreme poverty may undermine social cure processes, in a type of social curse. In our study, we examined whether village identification is a source of collective efficacy among disempowered ethnic groups in Nepal. Furthermore, we investigated whether this relationship is mediated by village support rooted in village identification. D…
Shared Identity, Shared Experience, Social Mobilisation: A Social Identity Approach to Collective Action Among War‐Affected People
Crises have the potential to transform social identities and foster collective action, yet little is known about how new identities emerge and how a sense of shared experience (SSE) sustains mobilisation beyond immediate group contexts. The present research investigated these processes among 495 displaced Ukrainians with 107 participants completing a follow‐up 3 years later. It focused on identification and SSE with war‐affected people and intent…
Populist attitudes of Democrats and Republicans are differentially affected by changes in electoral fairness and democratic satisfaction
Populism has long accompanied the development of modern democracies like a shadow, reflecting the presence of institutional faults. Given populism's discursive targeting of elites, it is particularly attractive to those who feel unfairly treated by the current state of affairs. In this paper, we explore how these populist grievances change in reaction to electoral events. Specifically, we assess perceptions of fairness and apply them to an electo…
Application of Western models of posttraumatic stress disorder in Nepal: Confirmatory factor analysis in earthquake survivors and in spinal cord injury patients
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is often diagnosed by counting the number of symptoms experienced in specified symptom clusters, as outlined by the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of mental illness. However, PTSD measurement tools and this method of diagnosing and treating PTSD, even in non-Western countries, is based on Western concepts of the underlying factor structure. While some research has su…
The psychological implications of forced adoption: A scoping review
Forced Adoption is an under-researched phenomenon with impactful psychological implications for those affected. In the context of an identified gap in empirical research on forced adoption, this scoping review aimed to systematically chart empirical studies and distinct grey literature on the psychological impact of forced adoption on birth mothers and adoptees. The databases PsycINFO, CINAHL, SAGE, Scopus, ProQuest, Sociological Abstracts and Go…
(Re‐)conceptualising Post‐Traumatic Growth: A Social Identity‐Informed Approach
Traditional models of post‐traumatic growth (PTG) focus mostly on the role of individual processes in its development, often at the cost of understanding processes other than individual‐level factors that can shape positive post‐trauma appraisals and recovery. In this perspectives piece, we seek to address this imbalance by developing an understanding of PTG that accounts for the ways that our membership of social groups pre‐ and post‐trauma affe…
Election results can decrease intergroup threat and through that positively affect intergroup relations
Previous research has established that intergroup threat is pivotal to intergroup relations in divided societies. We used the Northern Ireland Assembly Elections in 2022 as a unique chance to investigate how elections can affect feelings of threat and intergroup relations between communities with a history of violent intergroup conflict. We argued that because of their conflicting goals, if Sinn Féin (i.e., a Republican party that promotes a unit…
Collective post‐traumatic growth: Validating and measuring positive change in the collective self among victims of sexual violence
Across the world, women's personal responses to gender‐based violence are increasingly political. In the current paper, we consider whether positive changes in the collective self, arising from personal experience of gender‐based violence, which may lie at the heart of this phenomenon, can be evidenced. Four studies are reported that evidence and validate a proposed construct that reveals collective post‐traumatic growth (PTG) among people who ha…
Advancing the interface between research and practice in sustainable development: A view from Political Psychology
When saying sorry is not enough: The paradox of a political apology offered to Irish mother and baby home survivors
While political apologies cannot undo what has been done, they are often perceived as highly relevant for healing and reconciliation. However, these apologies are often mired in controversy and highly political. While research on political apologies has focused on the role of intergroup relations, limited research has explored the intragroup dynamics involved. The present article explores how the paradoxical features of a political apology to ing…
The Social Psychology of Trauma: Connecting the Personal and the Political
Many of us have been affected by trauma and struggle to manage our health and well-being. The social psychological approach to health highlights how social and cultural forces, as much as individual ones, are central to how we experience and cope with adversity. This book integrates psychology, politics, and medicine to offer a new understanding that speaks to the causes and consequences of traumatic experiences. Connecting the personal with the …
Running women or women runners: Does identity salience affect intention to exercise outside and feelings of safety
Safety concerns for women are prevalent and influence their likelihood to exercise outside. While some women modify their exercise behaviour due to safety concerns, others exercise outside more freely. In this paper, two experiments are reported with women runners to examine whether making their identity as a runner or a woman salient changed their self‐reported likelihood of exercising outside, sense of safety and personal safety anxiety. While …
Sins of their fathers’: Social groups parental incarceration and positive psychological outcomes across time in the US and UK
Paternal incarceration (PI) is recognised as a severely stigmatising event that undermines social connections leaving affected children isolated and vulnerable. However, few studies have explored social group membership as a potential mediator of positive outcomes. This paper analysed data from two national contexts, Scotland and the United States, to examine the potential for social group membership in childhood to mediate the association betwee…
New social identities in Ukrainian 'refugees: A social cure or social curse
Experiencing traumatic events often drives profound post-traumatic stress (PTS), but trauma also has the potential to engender positive consequences, such as post-traumatic growth (PTG). Traumatic experiences may also lead to gaining new identities which can have both protective (i.e., social cure) or damaging (i.e., social curse) effects on health and well-being. This study aims to examine the role of new social identities and related social ide…
Pandemic threat and group cohesion: National identification in the wake of Covid-19 is associated with authoritarianism
Authoritarianism emerges in times of societal threat, in part driven by desires for group-based security. As such, we propose that the threat caused by the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with increased authoritarian tendencies and that this can be partially explained by increased national identification. We tested this hypothesis by collecting cross-sectional data from three different countries in April 2020. In Study 1, data from Ireland (N = …
A qualitative study examining young peoples’ perceptions and adherence to Covid-19 public health guidelines in Ireland
These findings provide an insight into the psychological, financial and physical difficulties young people face as a consequence of pandemic public health measures and lockdowns in particular. They highlight the need for better communication with young people to support and embed trust in authorities and the scientific and political community
Brexit: Threat or opportunity? Nationalist identification is related to the perceived likelihood of a United Ireland
Northern Ireland has long been a contested territory. The 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement seemed to offer a resolution to the long-standing conflict. However, it has been reawakened by Brexit. Brexit presents a threat in Northern Ireland because it raises the divisive question of the United Kingdom’s sovereignty over the region and the issue of the border. However, despite Nationalists’—a political identity group associated with the political …
Institutional status and identity dimensions to cardiovascular stress responses
This study aimed to examine the effect of shared social identity (i.e., whether the source of information about a stressor comes from an ingroup vs. outgroup member) and message content (i.e., whether people were informed that the task is stressful vs. challenging) on cardiovascular reactivity to stress (CVR) across two higher education institutions differing in status (University vs. Institute of Technology [IoT]). The study employed a quasi‐exp…
When trauma is stigmatized: Disidentification and dissociation in people affected by adverse childhood experiences
Survivors of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) can experience dissociation because of their trauma. Those survivors can also experience stigma stemming from their traumatic experiences, which may encourage disidentification from the stigmatized group (i.e., other survivors of ACEs). However, the relationships between disidentification and dissociation have not been empirically tested. Using a social identity framework, we examined whether stig…
Affiliative identity, well‐being and eating disorder symptoms during the transition to university
The transition to university can often be challenging for individuals with eating disorders (EDs). As such, there is a need to understand protective factors that optimise people's health during this transition. Researchers using the social identity perspective suggest that group identification and psychological well‐being may impact ED symptoms. Yet, these effects have not been demonstrated over time, limiting causal understanding. We address thi…
Sexual violence and traumatic identity change: Evidence of collective post‐traumatic growth
Recent research indicates that social identities play a crucial role in the connection between adversity, post‐traumatic stress, and overall psychological well‐being. Understanding of how trauma influences collective dimensions of the self, positively or negatively, is limited. This study focuses on analysing publicly accessible narratives of four women who chose to waive their anonymity after the conviction of the men who had attacked and sexual…
Sleep as a mediator of the relationship between social class and health in higher education students
A substantial body of research indicates that higher education students from lower social class backgrounds tend to have poorer health than those from higher social class backgrounds. To investigate sleep as a potential mediator of this relationship, online survey responses of students from five large Australian universities, one Irish university and one large Australian technical college were analysed in three studies (Study 1 N = 628; Study 2 N…
Failure Leads Protest Movements to Support More Radical Tactics
Most social movements will encounter setbacks in their pursuit of sociopolitical change. However, little is known about how movements are affected after protestors fail to achieve their aims. What are the effects of failure on subsequent engagement in various conventional and radical actions? Does failure promote divergent reactions among protestors and/or dissatisfaction with democracy? A meta-analysis of nine experiments ( N = 1,663) assessed t…
Social integration: Implications for the association between childhood trauma and stress responsivity
Overall, the results indicated that dysregulated cardiovascular stress responses owing to childhood trauma may be shaped by a lack of social integration. The implications of this, as well as the findings for the individual types of trauma, are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Perceived Threat, Social Identification, and Psychological Well‐Being: The Effects of Political Conflict Exposure
Using data drawn from the adult population in Northern Ireland (N = 1,515), this article examines the relationship between perceived intergroup threat and psychological well‐being, taking into consideration the mediating role of social identification and the moderating role of political conflict exposure. Results by and large confirmed our predictions that perceived threat would be directly associated with poorer well‐being but would also exert a…
Religious and National Identity after the Belfast Good Friday Agreement
National and religious identification processes can be seen as the basis of the conflict in Northern Ireland, and over the course of the conflict preferred social and political identities became increasingly oppositional and entrenched. This paper reviews this evidence using population‐level studies of self‐categorized national and religious identity. In an attempt to explore the bases of these identities, two interrelated qualitative studies exa…
Community identity as resource and context: A mixed method investigation of coping and collective action in a disadvantaged community
Social identities enhance members' well‐being through the provision of social support and feelings of collective efficacy as well as by acting as a basis for collective action. However, the precise mechanisms through which identification acts to enhance well‐being can be complicated by stigmatisation, which potentially undermines solidarity and collective action. The present research examines a real‐world stigmatised community group in order to i…
No War, No Peace: Northern Ireland after the Agreement
In 1998 a historic agreement, commonly known as the Belfast or Good Friday Agreement, formed the basis of a negotiated settlement for the future of Northern Ireland. Since that time the level of violence in Northern Ireland has reduced but many problematic issues related to governance, sectarianism, and community relations remain on the political agenda and have destabilized the post‐peace accord environment. Many of these issues can be viewed as…
Personal and Political: Post‐Traumatic Stress Through the Lens of Social Identity, Power, and Politics
Post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has always been controversial and highly politicized. Here, using a social identity approach, we review evidence that trauma and its aftermath are fundamentally linked to social position, sociopolitical capital, and power. We begin this contribution by demonstrating how a person's group memberships (and the social identities they derive from these memberships) are inherently linked to the experience of advers…
Economic inequality and the rise of far‐right populism: A social psychological analysis
It is argued that far‐right (FR) populism in the West is fuelled by inequality. In this paper, we argue that three social psychological processes are central to explaining these phenomena. We suggest that these processes are recursive although we do not specify their temporal order. Drawing on the social identity tradition, we first examine how inequality is linked to reduced social trust and cohesion, which has consequences for both low‐ and hig…
Stigmatised Identity and Service Usage in Disadvantaged Communities: Residents', Community Workers' and Service Providers' Perspectives
The impact of community stigmatisation upon service usage has been largely overlooked from a social identity perspective. Specifically, the social identity‐mediated mechanisms by which stigmatisation hinders service use remain unspecified. The present study examines how service providers, community workers and residents recount their experience of the stigmatisation of local community identity and how this shapes residents' uptake of welfare, edu…
Social Identity, Groups, and Post‐Traumatic Stress Disorder
As with the identification and labelling of many mental health problems, the adoption of PTSD within DSM can be said to arise from contemporaneous social and political contexts: specifically the return to the United States of many war‐affected veterans from Vietnam (Scott, 1993). The specific circumstances of the recognition of PTSD within DSM‐III have led several commentators to discuss it in terms of social construction (e.g., Summerfield, 2001…
Children's experience and adjustment to political conflict in Northern Ireland
Despite the prolonged nature of political conflict in Northern Ireland, the extent of children's experience of such violence has rarely been investigated. This study examines school-age (8-11 years) children's (N = 689) self-reported experience of a number of negative life events, including a number of conflict-related events in relation to gender, age, socioeconomic status, and religious affiliation. These reports suggest that children's experie…
It's just heart breaking”: Doing inclusive political solidarity or ambivalent paternalism through sympathetic discourse within the “refugee crisis” debate
This article explores how people do sympathetic talk in relation to the European “refugee crisis.” The analysis was grounded in critical discursive psychology and also drew on the concept of affective–discursive practice. Data was retrieved from a phone‐in program on Irish national radio over a 6‐month period when the refugee crisis debate was at its height. It is shown that speakers deployed elaborate sympathetic repertoires with ease that descr…
Community identity and collective efficacy: A social cure for traumatic stress in post‐earthquake Nepal
Post‐Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was initially conceptualized as a psychopathology that arose as a consequence of war time experiences. More recently, available evidence has demonstrated that post‐traumatic stress (PTS) as a consequence of war is buffered by social identity processes. In such contexts, identity resources are arguably more readily accessible given the integral relationship between social identities and intergroup violence. Th…
Children of the Troubles: The Impact of Political Violence in Northern Ireland
This article explores the effects of political violence on children and young people in Northern Ireland. The article begins with a brief historical account of the Northern Irish conflict and the recently negotiated Belfast Good Friday Agreement of 1998. This account illustrates, as is the case with many conflicts, its basis is religious, national, economic, and political, despite its frequent construction as a battle between Protestant and Roman…
Father Identity, Involvement and Work–Family Balance: An In‐depth Interview Study
Work and family roles have changed considerably in the past number of decades. Fathers are now expected to fulfil the role of ‘new father’ that involves actively caring and sharing in child rearing and, at the same time, maintain commitment to their occupational role. As a consequence, men are subject to the same pressure that women were when they initially entered the workplace decades ago and indeed still are today. This study aims to explore t…
The Political Psychology of Covid‐19
The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to unprecedented and extraordinary conditions. It represents a profound threat to health and political and economic stability globally. It is the pressing issue of the current historical moment and is likely to have far-reaching social and political implications over the next decade. Political psychology can inform our preparedness for the next phase of the pandemic as well as our planning for a post COVID-19 …
The Legacy of the Troubles on the Young People's Psychological and Social Development and their School Life
Throughout the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, concern has been expressed for the generations that have grown up against a backdrop of political violence. Despite the interest of local and international researchers in the psychological effects of the conflict on children's and adolescents' development, a firm understanding as to the psychological cost of the Troubles has not been reached. This fact largely can be attributed to the co…
Shared national identification in Northern Ireland: An application of psychological models of group inclusion post conflict
The common ingroup identity model (CIIM) holds that viewing former outgroup members as part of a larger shared ingroup can allow social categorisation to be harnessed for social cohesion. The ingroup projection model (IPM) suggests that even where shared identification occurs, social divisions can be transposed into superordinate groups. Here we explore the potentially inclusive national identity in a region (Northern Ireland) which has historica…
Religious and Ethnonational Identification and Political Violence
Religious and national identification are often elided when describing the Troubles in Northern Ireland: Catholicism with Irishness and Protestantism with Britishness. However, these categories do not coincide completely, and a third national identity label ‘Northern Irish’ has recently been seen to emerge, with some respondents from both major religious groupings claiming this identity. A survey study of residents in Northern Ireland (n = 359) e…
The construction of intellectual disability by parents and teachers
This study examines how disability is constructed by significant adults in the lives of young people with intellectual disability. Specifically, we are examined how parents of those affected by intellectual disability and teachers in special schools construct intellectual disability in talk. Using focus group interviews, we examined whether stigma might be recreated or sustained within the family and school settings of those affected by intellect…
Perceived discrimination amongst young people in socio‐economically disadvantaged communities: Parental support and community identity buffer (some) negative impacts of stigma
There is increasing acceptance that children are not unaware of when they are targets of discrimination. However, discrimination as a consequence of socio-economic disadvantage remains understudied. The aim of this study was to examine the impact of perceived discrimination on well-being, perceptions of safety and school integration amongst children growing up within socio-economically disadvantaged communities in Limerick, Ireland. Mediation ana…
Citizenship attributes as the basis for intergroup differentiation: Implicit and explicit intergroup evaluations
Recent research (e.g. Barnes, Auburn & Lee, 2004 ) suggests that citizenship opportunities and resources may be afforded or denied to individuals according to their group memberships. We consider how the generic processes of intergroup differentiation by which groups are socially devalued and excluded can reflect divergent conceptualizations of citizenship among different groups. As part of a wider investigation of social exclusion, a combination…
Crisis complicates peacebuilding in postconflict societies: Covid-19 support triggers negative outgroup emotions among individuals with low and high prejudice
Multiple group membership supports resilience and growth in response to violence and abuse
This paper examines the role that social group processes, and multiple group membership in particular, play in supporting resilience and post‐traumatic growth following the experience of violence and abuse. Drawing on social identity theorizing, we develop and test a model that (a) predicts an association between multiple group membership and positive outcomes of resilience and post‐traumatic growth, and (b) explores mechanisms, of personal contr…
Something That Unites Us All’: Understandings of St. Patrick's Day Parades as Representing the Irish National Group
The present study investigates how attendees at national celebratory crowd events—specifically St. Patrick's Day parades—understand the role of such events in representing and uniting the national community. We conducted semi‐structured interviews with people who attended St. Patrick's Day parades in either Dublin or Belfast. In year 1, full‐length interviews were conducted before and after the events ( N = 17), and in years 1 and 2, shorter inte…
Sexual violence and traumatic identity change: Evidence of collective post‐traumatic growth
Recent research indicates that social identities play a crucial role in the connection between adversity, post‐traumatic stress, and overall psychological well‐being. Understanding of how trauma influences collective dimensions of the self, positively or negatively, is limited. This study focuses on analysing publicly accessible narratives of four women who chose to waive their anonymity after the conviction of the men who had attacked and sexual…
Ordinary decent domestic violence’: A discursive analysis of family law judges’ interviews
This study examined judges’ constructions of the ‘best interests of the child’ in child custody and access arraignments where there were allegations of domestic violence within the context of an interview. Using interviews with six Irish District Court judges, a micro-structural discourse analysis enabled the identification of socio-cultural discourses, scientific knowledge and judges’ own values and beliefs biases about custody arraignments in c…
Children's experience and adjustment to political conflict in Northern Ireland
Despite the prolonged nature of political conflict in Northern Ireland, the extent of children's experience of such violence has rarely been investigated. This study examines school-age (8-11 years) children's (N = 689) self-reported experience of a number of negative life events, including a number of conflict-related events in relation to gender, age, socioeconomic status, and religious affiliation. These reports suggest that children's experie…
The Legacy of the Troubles on the Young People's Psychological and Social Development and their School Life
Throughout the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, concern has been expressed for the generations that have grown up against a backdrop of political violence. Despite the interest of local and international researchers in the psychological effects of the conflict on children's and adolescents' development, a firm understanding as to the psychological cost of the Troubles has not been reached. This fact largely can be attributed to the co…
Ideological commitment, experience of conflict and adjustment in Northern Irish adolescents
This study aims to assess young people's overall experience of political conflict, as well as the extent of these experiences in relation to gender, religious affiliation and residential location (high or low conflict). Second, this study assesses the impact that young people's ideological commitment and experiences of the conflict have on their self-esteem and mental health. A sample of 96 Protestant and Catholic young people (mean age 15.2), dr…
Applying Social Psychology
As an applied science standing at the crossroads of so many disciplines, social psychology should have great potential for offering insight into countless aspects of our social lives. But teachers and students of social psychology often lament that the relevance of the subject to 'the real world' can remain obscure, as can the applicability of theories and models which continue to provide th4e foundation of the subdiscipline. Applying Social Psyc…
Author's response
Children of the Troubles: The Impact of Political Violence in Northern Ireland
This article explores the effects of political violence on children and young people in Northern Ireland. The article begins with a brief historical account of the Northern Irish conflict and the recently negotiated Belfast Good Friday Agreement of 1998. This account illustrates, as is the case with many conflicts, its basis is religious, national, economic, and political, despite its frequent construction as a battle between Protestant and Roman…
Young Men as Victims and Perpetrators of Violence in Northern Ireland: A Qualitative Analysis
This article explores issues of masculinity and violence in the lives of young men in disadvantaged areas in Northern Ireland. Qualitative data were collected in four focus groups, one group of young men from the Catholic community, one group of young men from the Protestant community, one group of community representatives, and one group of Young Offenders (N= 28). Themes were extracted from the data using a grounded approach. Results indicate t…
The Moral Boundaries of the Nation: The Constitution of National Identity in the Southeastern Border Counties of Ireland
This article argues that nationalism is more varied in the way that it constructs its boundaries than contemporary scholarship suggests. In an interdisciplinary, multi-stranded qualitative study of ethno-national identity on the Southern side of the Irish border, it shows the moral repertoires that qualify, conflict with, and on occasion replace, territorial, ethnic and state-centred aspects of national identity. It refocuses attention on the cul…
Religion, Ethnicity and Group Identity: Irish Adolescents’ Views
The article examines aspects of religious identity for young people living along the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in terms both of religious and ethno-national content and encompassing personal as well as collective components. Religion is seen as both positive and negative. It is constructed as strengthening family bonds, providing a sense of belonging and history and fostering tolerance and acceptance. Paradoxical…
Adolescents’ views of food and eating: Identifying barriers to healthy eating
Contemporary Western society has encouraged an obesogenic culture of eating amongst youth. Multiple factors may influence an adolescent's susceptibility to this eating culture, and thus act as a barrier to healthy eating. Given the increasing prevalence of obesity amongst adolescents, the need to reduce these barriers has become a necessity. Twelve focus group discussions of single‐sex groups of boys or girls ranging from early to‐mid adolescence…
No War, No Peace: Northern Ireland after the Agreement
In 1998 a historic agreement, commonly known as the Belfast or Good Friday Agreement, formed the basis of a negotiated settlement for the future of Northern Ireland. Since that time the level of violence in Northern Ireland has reduced but many problematic issues related to governance, sectarianism, and community relations remain on the political agenda and have destabilized the post‐peace accord environment. Many of these issues can be viewed as…
Religious and National Identity after the Belfast Good Friday Agreement
National and religious identification processes can be seen as the basis of the conflict in Northern Ireland, and over the course of the conflict preferred social and political identities became increasingly oppositional and entrenched. This paper reviews this evidence using population‐level studies of self‐categorized national and religious identity. In an attempt to explore the bases of these identities, two interrelated qualitative studies exa…
Adolescents' Explanations for Paramilitary Involvement
Current understanding of the motivations of young people who engage in paramilitary activity is poor. The youth bulge literature has made important advances in understanding determinants of political violence at population level; however, the psychological processes that underpin engagement with political violence among young people are less clearly understood. Further, the pathologization of terrorist activity has hampered deeper understanding o…
The Media and Memories of Conflict in Northern Ireland: The views of Protestant and Catholic adolescents in the border counties
As part of a larger analysis of the transmission of ethno‐national identity across generations, some 800 adolescents from the border areas of Ireland recalled events related to the troubles in Northern Ireland and the source of their knowledge. They also completed a scale that measured the extent of their interest in current events. Substantial agreement in the memories of the conflict recorded by adolescents from Northern Ireland and the Republi…
Religious and Ethnonational Identification and Political Violence
Religious and national identification are often elided when describing the Troubles in Northern Ireland: Catholicism with Irishness and Protestantism with Britishness. However, these categories do not coincide completely, and a third national identity label ‘Northern Irish’ has recently been seen to emerge, with some respondents from both major religious groupings claiming this identity. A survey study of residents in Northern Ireland (n = 359) e…
Irish children and teenagers in a changing world
Citizenship attributes as the basis for intergroup differentiation: Implicit and explicit intergroup evaluations
Recent research (e.g. Barnes, Auburn & Lee, 2004 ) suggests that citizenship opportunities and resources may be afforded or denied to individuals according to their group memberships. We consider how the generic processes of intergroup differentiation by which groups are socially devalued and excluded can reflect divergent conceptualizations of citizenship among different groups. As part of a wider investigation of social exclusion, a combination…
Social Identity, Groups, and Post‐Traumatic Stress Disorder
As with the identification and labelling of many mental health problems, the adoption of PTSD within DSM can be said to arise from contemporaneous social and political contexts: specifically the return to the United States of many war‐affected veterans from Vietnam (Scott, 1993). The specific circumstances of the recognition of PTSD within DSM‐III have led several commentators to discuss it in terms of social construction (e.g., Summerfield, 2001…
Social Dominance in Context and in Individuals: Contextual Moderation of Robust Effects of Social Dominance Orientation in 15 Languages and 20 Countries
We tested the internal reliability and predictive validity of a new 4-item Short Social Dominance Orientation (SSDO) scale among adults in 20 countries, using 15 languages ( N = 2,130). Low scores indicate preferring group inclusion and equality to dominance. As expected, cross-nationally, the lower people were on SSDO, the more they endorsed more women in leadership positions, protecting minorities, and aid to the poor. Multilevel moderation mod…
Community identity as resource and context: A mixed method investigation of coping and collective action in a disadvantaged community
Social identities enhance members' well‐being through the provision of social support and feelings of collective efficacy as well as by acting as a basis for collective action. However, the precise mechanisms through which identification acts to enhance well‐being can be complicated by stigmatisation, which potentially undermines solidarity and collective action. The present research examines a real‐world stigmatised community group in order to i…
Shared national identification in Northern Ireland: An application of psychological models of group inclusion post conflict
The common ingroup identity model (CIIM) holds that viewing former outgroup members as part of a larger shared ingroup can allow social categorisation to be harnessed for social cohesion. The ingroup projection model (IPM) suggests that even where shared identification occurs, social divisions can be transposed into superordinate groups. Here we explore the potentially inclusive national identity in a region (Northern Ireland) which has historica…
Father Identity, Involvement and Work–Family Balance: An In‐depth Interview Study
Work and family roles have changed considerably in the past number of decades. Fathers are now expected to fulfil the role of ‘new father’ that involves actively caring and sharing in child rearing and, at the same time, maintain commitment to their occupational role. As a consequence, men are subject to the same pressure that women were when they initially entered the workplace decades ago and indeed still are today. This study aims to explore t…
Stigmatised Identity and Service Usage in Disadvantaged Communities: Residents', Community Workers' and Service Providers' Perspectives
The impact of community stigmatisation upon service usage has been largely overlooked from a social identity perspective. Specifically, the social identity‐mediated mechanisms by which stigmatisation hinders service use remain unspecified. The present study examines how service providers, community workers and residents recount their experience of the stigmatisation of local community identity and how this shapes residents' uptake of welfare, edu…
Something That Unites Us All’: Understandings of St. Patrick's Day Parades as Representing the Irish National Group
The present study investigates how attendees at national celebratory crowd events—specifically St. Patrick's Day parades—understand the role of such events in representing and uniting the national community. We conducted semi‐structured interviews with people who attended St. Patrick's Day parades in either Dublin or Belfast. In year 1, full‐length interviews were conducted before and after the events ( N = 17), and in years 1 and 2, shorter inte…
Ordinary decent domestic violence’: A discursive analysis of family law judges’ interviews
This study examined judges’ constructions of the ‘best interests of the child’ in child custody and access arraignments where there were allegations of domestic violence within the context of an interview. Using interviews with six Irish District Court judges, a micro-structural discourse analysis enabled the identification of socio-cultural discourses, scientific knowledge and judges’ own values and beliefs biases about custody arraignments in c…
Psychology (67 works) · Social Psychology (48 works) · Political science (47 works) · Sociology (42 works) · Social Psychology (37 works) · Law (31 works) · Politics (30 works) · Social group (24 works) · Social identity theory (24 works) · Law (23 works)