TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2016//
TI  - The effects of social identity threat and social identity affirmation on laypersons' perception of scientists
JO  - Public understanding of science
A1  - Nauroth, Peter
A1  - Gollwitzer, Mario
A1  - Kozuchowski, Henrik
A1  - Bender, Jens
A1  - Rothmund, Tobias
SP  - 754
EP  - 770
VL  - 26
IS  - 7
N2  - Public debates about socio-scientific issues (e.g. climate change or violent video games) are often accompanied by attacks on the reputation of the involved scientists. Drawing on the social identity approach, we report a minimal group experiment investigating the conditions under which scientists are perceived as non-prototypical, non-reputable, and incompetent. <br><br>RESULTS show that in-group affirming and threatening scientific findings (compared to a control condition) both alter laypersons' evaluations of the study: in-group affirming findings lead to more positive and in-group threatening findings to more negative evaluations. However, only in-group threatening findings alter laypersons' perceptions of the scientists who published the study: scientists were perceived as less prototypical, less reputable, and less competent when their research results imply a threat to participants' social identity compared to a non-threat condition. Our findings add to the literature on science reception research and have implications for understanding the public engagement with science.<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 0963-6625
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0963662516631289
ID  - ref1
ER  -