A psicologia social do complexo de vira-lata: conciliando distintividade positiva e justificação do sistema

• Autor(a) principal: Santos, Marcos Francisco dos
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da UFPB
• Texto Completo: https://repositorio.ufpb.br/jspui/handle/123456789/16795
• topic: Complexo de vira-lata; Identidade social; Racismo; Discriminação; Preconceito; Mongrel complex; Social identity; Racism; Discrimination; Prejudice; Atividades Sociais; Identidade social – Brasil; Psicologia Social; CNPQ::CIENCIAS HUMANAS::PSICOLOGIA

The mongrel complex described in 1958 by the Brazilian journalist Nelson Rodrigues is “a kind of inferiority that Brazilians feel, voluntarily, when compared with the rest of the world.” In the current work our research question is to know if the Brazilian individuals are “voluntarily” motived by the effect of the “mongrel complex”. Based on theories of Social Identity (Tajfel &Turner, 1979), System Justification (Jost & Banaji, 1994) and in the history of the formation of Brazilian culture, we have hypothesized that "mongrel complex" is a multifaceted phenomenon rather than merely outgroup favoritism. We propose that the “mongrel complex” is a national identity management strategy characterized by the negation of African cultural origin, marked by the black skin of the Brazilian population, and by the accentuation of aspects reminiscent of the European origin of this population. We tested this hypothesis in three studies using the experimental paradigm developed by Oliveira (2013),the participants indicated the compensation to be attributed to a victim of police violence. In Study 1, the participants were randomly assigned to one of six conditions according to the factorial design of type 2 (skin color of the victim: black vs. white) x 3 (origin of the victim: Africa, Brazil and Europe). The results show the presence of a selective “mongrel complex effect”: the participants "voluntarily" attributed lower indemnity to the Brazilian victim than to the European victim, but demonstrated ingroup favoritism when they attributed greater compensation to the Brazilian victim than to the African victim. We also verified this effect was motivated, primarily, by racism: the participants value the white victim more than the black one, this valorization being enhanced by the information about the victim's cultural origin. Study 2 replicated this effect, showing the victim's skin color as a central factor for the emergence of the “mongrel complex effect”. Study 3 analyzed the mechanism that mediates the “mongrel complex effect”. Specifically, it showed that the perception of injustice in the detention and treatment given by the police to the victim acts as mediator of the effect of the color and the cultural origin of the victim in the attributed indemnity. The discussion of the results suggests a "mongrel complex" in the participants' behavior and that this complex may represent a compromise between the desire to reaffirm the status quo of race relations in Brazil and their motivation to positively distinguish the national identity of attributes Africanized.