The Population, Society & Inequality Colloquium Series presents

“The Social Psychology of an Economic Collapse”
with Hulda Thorisdottir, Assistant Professor, Political Science, University of Iceland

April 23, 2013
12:30–1:30 p.m.
Social Science Plaza B, Room 4250

The economy of Iceland collapsed with a bravado in the fall of 2008 making the country one of the first victims of the economic crisis that has since hit most of the West. In the first half of this talk, Thorisdottir will examine how social psychological theories can be applied to provide explanations for people’s behavior leading up the crisis and how that behavior may have facilitated the collapse. Issues such as motivated cognition, social identity, system justification and several cognitive biases will be discussed. In the second half of the talk, Thorisdottir will report data from a study seeking to understand how people assign blame for the economic crisis, whether they attribute it to systematic or human failure. Results show that the more people justify the system the less likely they are to believe moral failures, stupidity, politicians, or businessmen caused the economic crisis. The angrier people are, the more likely they are to blame moral failure for the crisis.

A light lunch will be served to early arrivers.

Sponsored by the Gender, Work, and Family Research Group and Center for the Study of Democracy.

For further information, please contact Jayne Lee Yang, jayne.lee@uci.edu or 949-824-2566.