The Bahá’í Faith was founded in 1863 in Persia and first publicly mentioned in the United States at the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions. Growing throughout the first decades of the twentieth century, the germinal American Bahá’í communities established different periodicals with varied foci. The first American Bahá’í periodical to fall under the full aegis of American Bahá’í administrative control was the magazine, World Order (1935-1949). Bahá’ís and non-Bahá’ís published within it and, while not the explicit focus, made many attempts to merge, reconcile, debate, and apply Bahá’í scriptural imperatives and Bahá’í-informed perspectives to the social and spiritual problems of racial prejudice, inequality, segregation, and disunity. But their vast heterogeneity, and sometimes strange, divergent, and contradictory stances on the very definition of “race” together gesture toward the need to understand how, why, and which strategies and logics functioned to mutually constrain and enable the American Bahá’í discursive articulation of the “race” concept. Toward that end, I map the landscape of such discourse with attention to how race was simultaneously understood as both a “cultural” marker and a category like “caste”. I thus explore these discursive uses as they developed against the backdrop of the Great Depression, eugenic race science and its backlash, Aryanism in World War II, and the continued debate over Jim Crow, racial equality, and the scientific and religious connotations of the category of “race” itself.

Many mergers and acquisitions (M&As) fail, and an emerging body of literature highlights the role of prejudice in derailing the M&A process. While prejudice is frequently observed in M&As, strategies to mitigate these biases remain underexplored. Adopting a qualitative case study approach, this study focuses on Chinese acquisitions in the UK and examines how managers from both the acquired and acquiring organizations navigate prejudice through emotional sensemaking. The findings demonstrate that emotional sensemaking plays a critical role in shaping the post-acquisition integration (PAI) process and its outcomes. Specifically, sensemaking supported by emotional intelligence facilitates the accommodation or reduction of prejudice, while emotionally unintelligent sensemaking tends to reinforce it. By focusing on the dynamic, interactive emotional exchanges between managers at the micro level, this study offers a fresh lens on the integration process beyond traditional strategic or structural explanations. The study contributes to the literature by advancing the understanding of micro-level emotional sensemaking in the PAI, emphasizing the dynamic, interactive nature of emotional sensemaking between acquirer and acquiree managers, and its impact on the integration process and outcomes.

Microaggressions have been a topic of significant debate in the psychological and social sciences. Despite an extensive body of empirical evidence, numerous misconceptions persist. This paper deconstructs common misconceptions surrounding microaggressions and addresses their origins, underlying biases, and empirical refutations. We explain the mechanisms that cause and maintain microaggressions through a CBT lens. We examine widely propagated misconceptions, including claims that microaggressions lack scientific validity, are too subjective to measure, and are not indicative of racism or other forms of prejudice. Drawing on the substantial literature base, including validated psychometric scales, experimental studies, and cross-cultural analyses, we demonstrate that microaggressions are not only real but also have significant psychological and social consequences. Empirical evidence links microaggressions to outcomes such as depression, anxiety, and lower self-esteem, reinforcing their relevance in clinical, educational, and workplace settings. CBT models provide a useful lens for understanding how individuals navigate the psychological complexities associated with microaggressive behaviours, helping explain why some people resist acknowledging microaggressions and their consequences. Lastly, we highlight the importance of education for reducing the prevalence of microaggressions and mitigating their harmful effects. Our goal is to provide clinicians with correct information so that they may skilfully and empathetically help clients experiencing microaggressions, and to no longer accept microaggressions as a harmless, misunderstood, or dismissed phenomenon. By debunking these misconceptions, this work contributes to a more scientifically grounded understanding of microaggressions, emphasizing the necessity of continued research and intervention efforts to address the impact of discrimination in society.

Key learning aims

1. (1) Build awareness around the various misconceptions associated with microaggressions.

2. (2) Knowledge of why these misconceptions exist, where they came from, and why they are important to consider and refute.

3. (3) Refuting misconceptions with scientific explanations and evidence.

4. (4) Understand how CBT clinicians can better prevent and respond to microaggressions.

In The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu announces that he would be the happiest of mortals if he could help men cure themselves of their prejudices. Though he demands that we understand prejudice’s role in his work, scholars have not excavated his whole strategy regarding it. Preliminary investigations have concluded that he sought to destroy prejudices because he had a high estimation of popular reason. This article argues that, while he does seek to eliminate prejudices that support despotism, he also encourages salutary ones for liberty. His whole strategy regarding prejudices shows that his use of them reflects a modest assessment of reason. By demonstrating that two of his well-known strategies for political reform—reinterpreting Christianity and encouraging commerce—concern salutary prejudices, this article reveals the centrality of prejudices to his political project overall.

Negative out-group attitudes are often attributed to perceptions of competition or threat. We propose an alternative source: culture, conceptualized as cultural scripts—interconnected networks of meanings that link particular group identities to negatively connoted phenomena. Evidence comes from three studies on the reactivation of the cultural script of traditional antisemitism in Germany. We begin our analysis by isolating the cultural script through automated analysis of a corpus of antisemitic texts. Next, using survey data collected during the COVID-19 pandemic (n = 17,800), we document an increase in antisemitism among Christian believers. This, we argue, is due to the pandemic activating the cultural script of traditional antisemitism, which links Judaism with the spread of disease. By means of an additional survey (n = 2,000) and a concept association task, we demonstrate the presence of the cultural script in the minds of Christian believers. Two priming experiments explore how elements of the script can be triggered. Our work demonstrates the deep cultural roots of negative out-group attitudes and suggests a novel set of methods for studying them.

Pro-refugee philanthropy is beneficial for refugee integration and an important contributor to intergroup relations in a South African context. No study, however, has provided an in-depth quantitative analysis of what factors drive this type of behaviour. This article investigates what cultural, social and religious factors may predict participation in charitable behaviour towards refugees in South Africa. Three types of behaviours were examined: (i) material donations; (ii) volunteer activities; and (iii) information sharing. Using data from a 2019 Ipsos Migration Survey, the study found that intergroup threat was a robust predictor of charitable behaviour of all kinds. Friendship contact with a pro-refugee volunteer was also positively associated with philanthropic behaviour. Institutional trust and religious orientation were correlated with volunteer activities and information sharing but not donations. Study findings can be utilised to design interventions that increase public participation in actions that help refugees in an African context.

This study provides quantitative evidence on UK public attitudes towards stateless people, comparing them with attitudes towards refugees and asylum seekers. A cross-sectional UK survey (n = 385) was conducted. Network analysis modelled associations between social policy attitudes and prejudice towards stateless people, refugees, and asylum seekers, alongside other variables, including political orientation and perceived threat. Social policy attitudes were more restrictive towards stateless people than refugees, but less restrictive than towards asylum seekers. Prejudice towards stateless people was not significantly different to that towards refugees or asylum seekers. Prejudice and social policy attitudes were highly interrelated between all three groups, with political orientation and perceived threat the strongest predictors. Findings demonstrate similarities in UK public attitudes towards stateless people, refugees, and asylum seekers. Awareness-raising interventions and interventions addressing political and threat-based narratives may be most effective in reducing discrimination and fostering inclusion of stateless people.

Traditional sexualities are in decline. Across the world, individuals in liberal democracies are increasingly identifying with sexual identities that challenge the heteronormative status quo. Today, an average of one in five young people identify with a sexually inclusive identity. How do members of the sexual majority group in liberal democracies respond to this change? Women are far more likely to express public support for sexual minorities, but does this public support translate into private behaviour? Do women accommodate potential partners with gender-inclusive dating preferences more than men? Relying on three novel pre-registered experiments – a double-list experiment, a visual conjoint, and a vignette study – I demonstrate that: i) the sexual majority group penalises sexually inclusive individuals on the dating market, and ii) women in the sexual majority group are far more likely to reject gender-inclusive and sexually inclusive partners compared to men. Empirically, I show that the sizeable difference in the penalty exhibited against sexually inclusive men, an empirical expectation equally anticipated by men and women, can be explained by women perceiving sexually inclusive men as deviating from traditional gender norms. These findings reveal a critical disconnect between public support for LGBTQ+ inclusion and actual behaviour in intimate contexts. They highlight how entrenched expectations of gender-congruent behaviour continue to shape interpersonal dynamics, even in ostensibly liberal societies. As a result, sexually inclusive men face distinct and intensified pressures to conform, which may help explain patterns of identity suppression among young men.

Did George Floyd’s murder and its ensuing protests produce a racial reckoning? Conventional social-science accounts, emphasizing the stability of racial attitudes, dismiss this possibility. In contrast, we theorize how these events may have altered Americans’ racial attitudes, in broadly progressive or in potentially countervailing ways across partisan and racial subgroups. An original content analysis of partisan media demonstrates how the information environment framed Black Americans before and after the summer of 2020. Then we examine temporal trends using three different attitude measures: most important problem judgments, explicit favorability towards Whites versus Blacks, and implicit associations. Challenging the conventional wisdom, our analyses demonstrate that racial attitudes changed following George Floyd’s murder, but in ways dependent upon attitude measure and population subgroup.

StopAsianHate protests arose in the West during the COVID-19 pandemic, opposing a perceived increase in hate incidents directed against Asians in general and Chinese people in particular. These events raise a question: what is the nature of attitudinal biases about Chinese people in the English-speaking world today? Here, we seek answers with AI and big data. Using BERT language models pre-trained on massive English-language corpora (books, news articles, Wikipedia, Reddit and Twitter) and a new method for measuring natural-language propositions (the Fill-Mask Association Test, FMAT), we examined three components of attitudinal biases about Chinese people: stereotypes (cognitive beliefs), prejudice (emotional feelings) and discrimination (behavioural tendencies). The FMAT uncovered relative semantic associations between Chinese people and (1) cognitive stereotypes of low warmth (less moral/trustworthy and less sociable/friendly) and somewhat low competence (less assertive/dominant but equally capable/intelligent); (2) affective prejudice of contempt (vs admiration); and (3) behavioural discrimination of active/passive harm (vs help/cooperation). These findings advance our understanding of attitudinal biases towards Chinese people in the English-speaking world.

Research on whether religiosity promotes or reduces prejudice has produced plenty of paradoxical findings. In this article, we address the relationship between religiosity and anti-diversity attitudes (xenophobia and homophobia) among Christians in Western Germany. We ask what the relationship between religiosity and anti-diversity attitudes is and how it can be explained. Two (complementary) theoretical explanations are presented: the religious-ideology explanation emphasizes the role of fundamentalism, and the loss-of-privileges explanation underscores the importance of perceived disadvantage. Our analysis is based on a representative sample of Christians in Western Germany and provides evidence of a curvilinear religiosity–prejudice relationship. Up to a certain level of religiosity, xenophobia and homophobia decrease as religiosity increases; however, the relationship then reverses—anti-diversity attitudes are particularly pronounced among the highly religious. The level of xenophobia among the highly religious is fully explained by fundamentalism and perceived disadvantage, whereas their level of homophobia is only partially explained.