Halime Unver

Biography

My research interest is intergroup process, including intergroup contact, social identity, intergroup attitudes and emotions, group status and political solidarity with minorities in cross-cultural contexts. During my PhD, I have tried to find answers to the questions: 1) how the effects of intergroup contact with a proximal outgroup can be transferred to other distal groups that are not involved in the contact situation? 2) What are the underlying mechanisms of this generalisation process? And 3) how such group interactions across a conflictual society can be used as a tool for political solidarity with severally disadvantaged and uncontacted minority groups. To do so, I have been conducting a series of studies that will focus on intergroup contact with its extended effect on the associations among intergroup attitudes, intergroup emotions, perceived group status and support for policies benefitting severally disadvantaged groups e.g. refugees, in a cross-country perspective. I have been conducting cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys and field experiments in mostly non-WEIRD contexts.

My first supervisor is Huseyin Cakal and second is Masi Noor. 

Research and scholarship

My research interests include social identity, intergroup contact, and the acceptance of refugees. Much research has studied the relationship between social identity and intergroup contact on prejudice reduction. Relatedly, not much known on how dimensions of social identity (e.g. subgroup and common ingroup identity) and secondary transfer effect of intergroup contact underpin refugee acceptance via attitudes. To this end, my research focuses on intra and intergroup processes such as salience and strength of identity at the group level and explores how contact with any outgroup extends its effect on other outgroups in the cross-cultural context. In particular, I am trying to answer questions; Does contact with existing outgroups extend its effect distal outgroups such as refugees? Is there any effect of different layers of social identity on the acceptance of refugees and support for policies benefitting them? Does secondary transfer effect of contact and social identity interact as a predictor of acceptance of refugees and support for policies benefitting them? To do so, I propose a series of studies that will focus on intergroup contact with its extended effect, on the associations between social identity, perceptions power, and status, intergroup attitudes, acceptance and support for policies benefitting refugees in a cross-country perspective. To answer these research questions, I am conducting cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys and experiments in mostly non-WEIRD contexts. I use Structural Equation Modelling to analyse my data.