Emma F Thomas
Biographic Data
| ID | 166456 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Emma F Thomas |
| GIVEN NAMES | Emma F |
| FAMILY NAME | Thomas |
| SIGNATURE | THOMAS E F |
| AFFILIATIONS | Flinders University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8664-9748 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 62 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 576 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 62 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
From referendum to reconciliation: How shared values and identities align with a commitment to long‐term collective action
One formal mechanism for effecting change to progress the rights of structurally disadvantaged groups is via citizen referenda. However, referenda are often characterized by divisive public debate. We suggest that sustaining action for long‐term change (beyond a referendum itself) may be associated with identifying with an opinion‐based group and perceiving shared values between advantaged and disadvantaged groups. Among a nationally representati…
Are they virtue-signalling or sincere? The impact of perceived motives on the effectiveness of online collective action
Social media is an important tool used by supporters of modern social movements to persuade others to participate. However, people who engage in online collective action often face speculation about their motives and may be perceived as acting for self-serving reasons. How do these perceptions impact the effectiveness of collective action? In three experiments ( N = 916), participants viewed posts (Study 1) or an immersive social media feed (Stud…
Intrinsic Value Framing and Consensus Increase Commitment to Radical Action to Protect the Environment
Moral conviction reflects an absolute stance about an issue and is linked to both conventional and radical action. We suggest that moral conviction can arise from ascribing intrinsic value to the environment (Study 1) and non-human animals (Study 2) and, therefore, affect conventional and radical action – but the latter primarily where there is consensus about the sharedness of those values. Two experiments ( N = 238, 166) examined effects of int…
The Affect, Context, and Target (ACT) Framework: A systematic and narrative review of emotions and collective action across democratic‐authoritarian regimes and tight‐loose cultures
Drawing on research from the past 30 years, this systematic and narrative review introduces the Affect, Context, and Target (ACT) Framework and synthesizes findings on how emotions shape collective action across different cultural and political contexts. Specifically, it examines the cultures and regimes studied, the types of emotions involved, their emotional targets, and the forms of collective action analyzed. Our systematic review ( N = 156 a…
Mapping the moral domain in a modern town hall: Moral foundations’ effects on collective action conditioned by ideology and issue
We examine a year of political debate in a modern town hall to understand the following: when does moral talk turn to talk about action? For which ideological groupings do specific moral foundations matter and in the context of which issues? We analysed 210,170 tweets about the Australian television programme Q&A – a panel show with synchronous live and online audiences. We examined the topics, prevalence of different moralities and how these mor…
I Get Knocked Down but I Get Up Again: Autonomous Motivation Sustains Identification and Collective Action After (Specific) Failure
Movements often experience setbacks while striving to achieve (or prevent) social change. We examined whether autonomous motivation—which captures supporters’ internalized commitment to a cause—would sustain identification with the movement and collective action after experiencing failure (vs. success) outcomes following the marriage equality vote in Australia (Study 1; N = 186), and an experimental induction of movement failure (Study 2; N = 137…
Beyond Boundaries: How Group Identification Influences Prosocial Behaviors Among Iranian Citizens and Afghan Immigrants via Aspirations
In this paper, we consider how aspirations for “who I can be” in the future could shape support for prosocial actions that benefit an ethnic out-group, relative to their own group. We suggest that aspirations are, in turn, influenced by individuals’ group memberships, which vary in their degrees of collective agency. The hypotheses were tested using data collected from Afghan youth immigrants ( N = 392) and Iranian youth ( N = 672), representing …
How leading climate movement advocates perceive collective gridlock in social change advocacy
Despite mass mobilization efforts, most countries are failing to meet their internationally agreed 2030 goals to mitigate climate change, representing a failure of the climate movement to achieve their key aspirations. Most research on failure and collective action examines one‐off failures but does not address lasting failure. We conceptualize this ongoing failure as collective gridlock: times in social change advocacy where insufficient progres…
Utopian Institutions of Society and Governance: The Case of Global Geopolitics
From the rise of China and the relative decline of the United States to regional instabilities throughout Eurasia, we are living in a geopolitically dynamic time. Despite the relative neglect of international relations as an influence on domestic political behavior, geopolitics can play a critical role in domestic politics and citizens’ societal engagement. This is likely pronounced in Australia as a middle power in a geopolitically uncertain and…
What Is, What Was and What Could Be: Simultaneously Comparing How Emotional Reactions to the Past, Present and Future Predict Collective Action
Although separate research programs examine how emotional reactions to the past, present and future predict collective action, research has yet to compare them simultaneously. Across three studies ( N = 2764) and two social issues (plastic pollution and abortion), we examined whether reflecting on a positive or negative past, present or future elicits distinct emotions which indirectly predict collective action. Results revealed multiple counterv…
When the Smoke Will Not Clear: Examining the Longitudinal Effects of Political Despair on Well‐Being and Collective Climate Action
Averting the existential risks that climate change poses requires sustained collective action, yet little is known about the factors that maintain versus undermine such commitment over time. This study tests whether participants' ( N = 871) experience of political despair about climate change undermines long‐term collective climate action engagement both directly and indirectly because it diminishes well‐being (operationalised as stress, resilien…
No Matter What We Do, Nothing Is Enough: A Qualitative Investigation of Political Despair
People often report experiencing despair about social issues like racial inequality and climate change. We conceptualise these feelings as political despair and consider: what causes political despair, that is, what are the antecedent appraisals? Participants, who felt despair about racial inequality ( N = 196) or climate change ( N = 179), responded to a prompt about why they feel despair about this issue. A framework analysis of participants re…
Overcoming Climate Gridlock: Perspectives of Climate Leaders on How to Achieve Social Change During Persistent Failure in Australia
Despite sustained efforts of social movements worldwide, there has been a lack of progress on mitigating climate change. Recent research examined the psychological consequences of one‐off collective action failures, but there has been little research on how to overcome persistent failure to create social change. This qualitative research ( N = 26) interviews leaders, founders, experienced advocates, and philanthropists from organisations ranging …
When (and where) do pandemics foster anti-migrant actions? Individual-, contextual- and societal-level drivers affecting social cohesion during the Covid-19 pandemic
International audience
Does majority support for minority rights impact perceived norms and psychological well‐being? An application to the LGBTIQ + context
Several legislative changes following popular votes have transformed the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex, and queer (i.e., LGBTIQ+) people. We suggest these decisions to change laws serve as strong signals of public support (i.e., shifting the perceived societal norms), which may not only impact the well‐being of individuals directly targeted by these votes (LGBTIQ+ people) but also members of advantaged groups (cis‐heterosexual…
Conspiracy beliefs and democratic backsliding: Longitudinal effects of election conspiracy beliefs on criticism of democracy and support for authoritarianism during political contests
There are widespread concerns that conspiracy theories undermine democracies. But do conspiracy beliefs increase criticism of democracy and/or support for authoritarianism? Or are antidemocratic people more likely to endorse conspiracy beliefs? To answer these important questions, we collected longitudinal data during two concurrent democratic elections—the 2020 US Presidential Election (N = 609) and the 2020 General Election in New Zealand (N = …
The impact of religious identification on national identification and engagement in collective action to support Rohingya refugees: A comparison between Australia and Malaysia
Research comparing how people engage in collective action in different nations to promote justice for disadvantaged groups is scarce. We investigated the effects of national identification (glorification/attachment) and religious identification across two nations (Australia, N = 358 and Malaysia, N = 300) on collective action to support Rohingya refugees of the 2017 refugee crisis. Specifically, we tested whether the relationship between national…
Autonomous Motives Foster Sustained Commitment to Action: Integrating Self-Determination Theory and the Social Identity Approach
Social change movements may take years or decades to achieve their goals and thus require ongoing efforts from their supporters. We apply the insights of self-determination theory to examine sustained collective action over time. We expected that autonomous motivation, but not controlled motivation, would predict sustained action. We also examine whether autonomous motivation shapes and is shaped by social identification as a supporter of the cau…
Is doomscrolling related to celebrity worship? A cross‐cultural study
Building upon evidence supporting the co‐occurrence of behavioural addictions, this study delved into the relationship between social media doomscrolling and celebrity worship among university student social media users in Iran and the United States. Objectives were threefold: (a) provide psychometric support for the Social Media Doomscrolling Scale (SMDS), (b) examine psychological correlates of doomscrolling and celebrity worship, and (c) explo…
The Nature of Shared Traumatic Experiences: When, How, and How Often Do We Share Trauma With Others
Across two studies, we investigated when, how, and how often people share traumatic events ( N = 1008). In Study 1, most participants (78.5%) perceived their most stressful/traumatic event as shared primarily due to knowing others were present during the event (physical sharing), knowing/believing others had experienced or could experience a similar event (relational sharing), discussing the event with others (verbal sharing), or having the same …
More support, less distress? ”: Examining the role of social norms in alleviating practitioners’ psychological distress in the context of assisted dying services
This study explores how providing assisted dying services affects the psychological distress of practitioners. It investigates the influence of professional norms that endorse such services within their field. Study 1 included veterinarians ( N = 137, 75.2% female, M age = 43.1 years, SD age = 12.7 years), and Study 2 health practitioner students ( N = 386, 71.0% female, M age = 21.0 years, SD age = 14.4 years). In both studies, participants indi…
My Body, My Choice? Examining the Distinct Profiles Underlying Attitudes Toward Abortion and Covid-19 Mandates
Protestors recently repurposed the abortion rights’ mantra, “my body, my choice,” to oppose COVID-19 mandates. But do those who oppose public health mandates fully support the right to choose? We answer this question by using exploratory analyses to identify the unique response patterns underlying support for abortion and COVID-19 mandates in random samples from the United States (Study 1; N = 2,331) and New Zealand (Study 2; N = 33,310). Latent …
We despair’: Examining the role of political despair for collective action and well‐being
Anecdotally, people often report feeling despair about the political status quo. We conceptualise these feelings as political despair. But what is political despair, and what are its effects? We adapt intergroup emotion theory to analyse political despair in the context of racial inequality (Studies 1 and 2) and climate change (Study 3). Three cross‐sectional studies (total N = 866) tested the measurement of political despair (relative to anger a…
Using Latent Profile Analysis to Understand Health Practitioners’ Attitudes Toward Voluntary Assisted Dying
Prior work has documented considerable diversity among health practitioners regarding their support for voluntary assisted dying (VAD). We examined whether their attitudes are characterised by different combinations of personal support, normative support by other health practitioners, and whether they are predisposed to vicariously experience others' emotions (i.e., empathy). We also examined whether these profiles experienced different mental he…
It’s About Time! Identifying and Explaining Unique Trajectories of Solidarity-Based Collective Action to Support People in Developing Countries
Social change occurs over years and decades, yet we know little about how people sustain, increase or diminish their actions over time, and why they do so. This article examines diverging trajectories of solidarity-based collective action to support people in developing nations more than 5 years. We suggest that sustained, diminished, and/or increased action over time will be predicted by identification as a supporter, group efficacy beliefs, and…
Social identities facilitate and encapsulate action-relevant constructs: A test of the social identity model of collective action
Three studies explore the recently elaborated social identity model of collective action (SIMCA) and an alternative, the encapsulated model of social identity in collective action (EMSICA). These models both afford a central role to the function of social identities in promoting collective action, through affective reactions to injustice and group efficacy, but in different ways. Combined analyses of three samples ( N = 305) using multigroup stru…
New Technologies, New Identities, and the Growth of Mass Opposition in the Arab Spring
The recent revolutions known as the Arab Spring have been characterized as the products of social media. However, there is an alternative view that revolution takes place on the street or the battlefield and that the role of social media has been overstated. We argue that some new technologies can serve to facilitate rapid social change when they provide ways to overcome restrictions on the freedoms of expression and association. In doing so, com…
We Must Be the Change We Want to See in the World: Integrating Norms and Identities through Social Interaction
In this article, we propose a social psychological mechanism for the formation of new social change movements. Here, we argue that social change follows the emergence of shared injunctive social norms that define new collective identities, and we systematically spell out the nature of the processes through which this comes about. We propose that these norms and identities are created and negotiated through validating communication about a normati…
The Volatility of Collective Action: Theoretical Analysis and Empirical Data
Collective action is volatile: characterized by swift, unexpected changes in intensity, target, and forms. We conduct a detailed exploration of four reasons that these changes occur. First, action is about identities which are fluid, contested, and multifaceted. As the content of groups’ identities change, so do the specific norms for the identities. Second, social movements adopt new tactics, or forms of collective action. Tactical changes may a…
Collective Action as the Material Expression of Opinion‐Based Group Membership
In this article, we argue that progress in the study of collective action rests on an increasingly sophisticated application of the social identity approach. We develop the view, however, that the application of this theoretical perspective has been limited by theoretical and empirical difficulties in distinguishing between social categories and psychological groups. These problems have undermined the ability of researchers to correctly specify t…
Mobilise: A Higher‐Order Integration of Collective Action Research to Address Global Challenges
The past decade has witnessed rapid growth in popular protest, alongside an upsurge in research on collective action. The proliferation of research has been both productive and fragmenting: We have an excellent understanding of the many factors that shape participation in collective action, but we lack a framework that explains how these factors fit together. TheModel of Belonging, Individual differences, Life experience and Interaction Sustainin…
Group interaction as the crucible of social identity formation: A glimpse at the foundations of social identities for collective action
Many of the world’s biggest problems are being tackled through the formation of new groups yet very little research has directly observed the processes by which new groups form to respond to social problems. The current paper draws on seminal research by Lewin (1947) to advance a perspective as to how such identities form through processes of small group interaction. Multilevel structural equation modelling involving 58 small group discussions (w…
We may be pirates, but we are not protesters: Identity in the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
Radical activist organizations face the complex task of managing their identity so as to draw political attention but also to appear legitimate and thus gain public support. In this article we develop a picture of the identities of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) members, a group mostly known for their direct action against whaling, via a thematic analysis of material from the SSCS website and interviews with SSCS members. In online comm…
The “Activist Identity” and Activism across Domains: A Multiple Identities Analysis
Two correlational studies of activists examined the association between belonging to community organizations or groups and sustained activism within a particular domain. In Study 1 ( N = 45) larger activist networks, controlling for activist identification and greater political knowledge, were associated with stronger activism intentions. In Study 2 ( N = 155), larger Time 1 peace activism social networks were associated with more Time 2 peace ac…
Social interaction and psychological pathways to political engagement and extremism
Although psychology has recently witnessed a burgeoning interest in the predictors of social and political action generally, little research has considered the psychological mechanisms by which people come to choose extreme or radical forms of action. How and why do groups come to favor radical or extreme solutions (radicalization) over conventional political pathways (politicization)? Theory in both political science and psychology suggests that…
Doing Democracy: The Social Psychological Mobilization and Consequences of Collective Action
Participating in collective actions, or acts of social protest, is one of the primary means that citizens have of participating in democracy and seeking social change. In this article, we outline the ways in which: social identity provides a psychological foundation for collective actions; social norms shape the mobilization and particular direction (disruptive vs. conventional) of that protest; and participating in collective actions is psycholo…
When and how social movements mobilize action within and across nations to promote solidarity with refugees
When and how do social movements form to mobilize action across national boundaries? In the context of the 2015 movement to support Syrian refugees, we develop an integrative model of transnational social movement formation shaped by pre‐existing world‐views (social dominance orientation and right‐wing authoritarianism) and social media exposure to iconic events, resulting in an emergent group consciousness (“we are”, “we believe”, “we feel”). Gr…
Whatever happened to Kony2012? Understanding a global Internet phenomenon as an emergent social identity
Kony2012 was a viral Internet video that attracted unprecedented online interest in promoting a campaign to arrest the leader of an African militant group. The current research considers the social psychological bases of social media‐based collective action. In three cross‐sectional surveys ( N = 304) collected before, on, and after the key action date of 20 April 2012, we consider the nature (opinion based or global) and function (emergent or tr…
Vegetarian, vegan, activist, radical: Using latent profile analysis to examine different forms of support for animal welfare
There are many different ways that people can express their support for the animals that exist in factory farms. This study draws on insights from the social identity approach, and adopts novel methods (latent profile analysis [LPA]) to examine the qualitatively different subgroups or profiles that comprise broader community positions on this issue. North American participants ( N = 578) completed measures of the frequency with which they engaged…
Social psychology of Making Poverty History: Motivating anti-poverty action in Australia
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) represent the first global, tractable effort to combat world poverty and preventable disease. The success of the MDGs, however, depends critically upon the support of the people who do not themselves experience the disadvantage: That is, the people and governments of developed countries. In this paper it is argued that the solution to combating poverty and preventable disease in developing nations lies in c…
The role of social media in shaping solidarity and compassion fade: How the death of a child turned apathy into action but distress took it away
An image of drowned Syrian toddler, Aylan Kurdi, was popularly shared through social media and this promoted a surge of solidarity with Syrian refugees in September 2015. However, this response was not sustained. We explore the role of social media engagement in the emergence of solidarity and its decline (compassion fade). We collected data when sympathy for refugees was peaking (September 2015), and 1 year later. Latent change score modeling ( …
Resisting perspective-taking: Glorification of the national group elicits non-compliance with perspective-taking instructions
Protesting for stability or change? Definitional and conceptual issues in the study of reactionary, conservative, and progressive collective actions
Over the last quarter of a century, social psychological research on collective action has grown exponentially and progressed through four distinct phases. While the first phase showed that identity, efficacy, and injustice motivate the aggrieved to protest on behalf of their ingroup, the second phase acknowledged that protests could involve collaborations between the disadvantaged and their advantaged allies. The third phase of research examined…
I don't really want to be associated with the self-righteous left extreme”: Disincentives to participation in collective action
This paper considers collective action non-participation by people sympathetic but not committed to participating in actions for social change (‘sympathisers’). We conducted a thematic analysis of open-ended written accounts of the barriers to participating in sustained collective action (N = 112), finding that people can be reluctant to engage in some types of collective action. Participants wrote about the potential for detrimental consequences…
Messages of Hope: Using Positive Stories of Survival to Assist Recovery in Rwanda
For the past twenty years, the overriding story of Rwanda has been centred around the events and consequences of the genocide. In Rwanda, public expressions of that story have occurred in the gacaca courts, where survivors and perpetrators testified about their experiences and actions, during ongoing annual remembrance and mourning commemorations, and in memorial sites across the country that act as physical reminders of the genocide. While impor…
That's not funny!’ Standing up against disparaging humor
Reaching consensus promotes the internalization of commitment to social change
Solving the world’s most pressing problems (climate change, global poverty) will require the commitment of large numbers of people. The current research draws upon the joint insights of self-determination theory and the social identity perspective to consider the mechanisms through which social interaction engenders commitment to social change. Participants ( N = 137) engaged in a small group discussion to plan strategies for providing safe drink…
There but for the grace of God go we”: Prejudice toward asylum seekers
Australia receives relatively few asylum seekers, but the public debate on this issue is intense and there is widespread prejudice toward them. The current research considers the role of two approaches in explaining prejudice toward asylum seekers: similarity priming and affective reactions of empathy. Participants (N = 119) were primed that asylum seekers were either “similar” to or “different” from them and were asked whether these similarities…
Do the means affect the ends? Radical tactics influence motivation and action tendencies via the perceived legitimacy and efficacy of those actions
Identity, injustice and group efficacy are key motivations for collective action engagement. However, little work has examined factors that influence their emergence. Across three studies (total N = 938), we test whether exposure to different actions (i.e., radical or conventional) and the perceived legitimacy and efficacy of those actions (‘the means’) predict observers’ sense of injustice, identity, group efficacy about the issue, and in turn, …
I feel you feel what I feel: Perceived perspective‐taking promotes victims' conciliatory attitudes because of inferred emotions in the offender
In the context of bullying in a nursing workplace, we test the argument that an offender's perspective‐taking promotes victim conciliation, mediated by perceived perspective‐taking, that is, the extent to which the victim perceives the offender as taking their perspective. Perceived perspective‐taking facilitates the attribution of moral emotions (remorse, etc.) to the offender, thereby promoting conciliatory victim responses. However, perceived …
Aligning Identities, Emotions, and Beliefs to Create Commitment to Sustainable Social and Political Action
In this article the authors explore the social psychological processes underpinning sustainable commitment to a social or political cause. Drawing on recent developments in the collective action, identity formation, and social norm literatures, they advance a new model to understand sustainable commitment to action. The normative alignment model suggests that one solution to promoting ongoing commitment to collective action lies in crafting a soc…
Transforming “Apathy Into Movement”: The Role of Prosocial Emotions in Motivating Action for Social Change
This article explores the synergies between recent developments in the social identity of helping, and advantaged groups’ prosocial emotion. The authors review the literature on the potential of guilt, sympathy, and outrage to transform advantaged groups’ apathy into positive action. They place this research into a novel framework by exploring the ways these emotions shape group processes to produce action strategies that emphasize either social …
The role of efficacy and moral outrage norms in creating the potential for international development activism through group‐based interaction
This paper adopts an intergroup perspective on helping as collective action to explore the ways to boost motivation amongst people in developed countries to join the effort to combat poverty and preventable disease in developing countries. Following model of collective action, we investigated the role of norms about an emotional response (moral outrage) and beliefs about efficacy in motivating commitment to take action amongst members of advantag…
Collective Action as the Material Expression of Opinion‐Based Group Membership
In this article, we argue that progress in the study of collective action rests on an increasingly sophisticated application of the social identity approach. We develop the view, however, that the application of this theoretical perspective has been limited by theoretical and empirical difficulties in distinguishing between social categories and psychological groups. These problems have undermined the ability of researchers to correctly specify t…
Social psychology of Making Poverty History: Motivating anti-poverty action in Australia
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) represent the first global, tractable effort to combat world poverty and preventable disease. The success of the MDGs, however, depends critically upon the support of the people who do not themselves experience the disadvantage: That is, the people and governments of developed countries. In this paper it is argued that the solution to combating poverty and preventable disease in developing nations lies in c…
Social identities facilitate and encapsulate action-relevant constructs: A test of the social identity model of collective action
Three studies explore the recently elaborated social identity model of collective action (SIMCA) and an alternative, the encapsulated model of social identity in collective action (EMSICA). These models both afford a central role to the function of social identities in promoting collective action, through affective reactions to injustice and group efficacy, but in different ways. Combined analyses of three samples ( N = 305) using multigroup stru…
Doing Democracy: The Social Psychological Mobilization and Consequences of Collective Action
Participating in collective actions, or acts of social protest, is one of the primary means that citizens have of participating in democracy and seeking social change. In this article, we outline the ways in which: social identity provides a psychological foundation for collective actions; social norms shape the mobilization and particular direction (disruptive vs. conventional) of that protest; and participating in collective actions is psycholo…
There but for the grace of God go we”: Prejudice toward asylum seekers
Australia receives relatively few asylum seekers, but the public debate on this issue is intense and there is widespread prejudice toward them. The current research considers the role of two approaches in explaining prejudice toward asylum seekers: similarity priming and affective reactions of empathy. Participants (N = 119) were primed that asylum seekers were either “similar” to or “different” from them and were asked whether these similarities…
We may be pirates, but we are not protesters: Identity in the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
Radical activist organizations face the complex task of managing their identity so as to draw political attention but also to appear legitimate and thus gain public support. In this article we develop a picture of the identities of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) members, a group mostly known for their direct action against whaling, via a thematic analysis of material from the SSCS website and interviews with SSCS members. In online comm…
When Will Collective Action Be Effective? Violent and Non-Violent Protests Differentially Influence Perceptions of Legitimacy and Efficacy Among Sympathizers
Collective action will be effective in achieving broader social change goals to the extent that it influences public opinion yet the degree to which collective action “works” in changing opinion is rarely studied. Experiment 1 ( n = 158) showed that, consistent with a logic of strategic non-violence, non-violent collective action more effectively conveys a sense of the illegitimacy of the issue and the efficacy of the group, thereby promoting sup…
Messages of Hope: Using Positive Stories of Survival to Assist Recovery in Rwanda
For the past twenty years, the overriding story of Rwanda has been centred around the events and consequences of the genocide. In Rwanda, public expressions of that story have occurred in the gacaca courts, where survivors and perpetrators testified about their experiences and actions, during ongoing annual remembrance and mourning commemorations, and in memorial sites across the country that act as physical reminders of the genocide. While impor…
Social interaction and psychological pathways to political engagement and extremism
Although psychology has recently witnessed a burgeoning interest in the predictors of social and political action generally, little research has considered the psychological mechanisms by which people come to choose extreme or radical forms of action. How and why do groups come to favor radical or extreme solutions (radicalization) over conventional political pathways (politicization)? Theory in both political science and psychology suggests that…
New Technologies, New Identities, and the Growth of Mass Opposition in the Arab Spring
The recent revolutions known as the Arab Spring have been characterized as the products of social media. However, there is an alternative view that revolution takes place on the street or the battlefield and that the role of social media has been overstated. We argue that some new technologies can serve to facilitate rapid social change when they provide ways to overcome restrictions on the freedoms of expression and association. In doing so, com…
Group interaction as the crucible of social identity formation: A glimpse at the foundations of social identities for collective action
Many of the world’s biggest problems are being tackled through the formation of new groups yet very little research has directly observed the processes by which new groups form to respond to social problems. The current paper draws on seminal research by Lewin (1947) to advance a perspective as to how such identities form through processes of small group interaction. Multilevel structural equation modelling involving 58 small group discussions (w…
Collective harmdoing: Developing the perspective of the perpetrator
This Special Issue on collective harmdoing aims to explore, from the perspective of the perpetrator, the association between harmdoing and well-being, and the processes through which people engage and disengage from harmdoing. We present 6 articles, comprising 3 theoretical analyses and 3 empirical articles, that represent a diversity of perspectives on manifestations of collective harmdoing from youth violence to genocide, and from soldiers in c…
Whatever happened to Kony2012? Understanding a global Internet phenomenon as an emergent social identity
Kony2012 was a viral Internet video that attracted unprecedented online interest in promoting a campaign to arrest the leader of an African militant group. The current research considers the social psychological bases of social media‐based collective action. In three cross‐sectional surveys ( N = 304) collected before, on, and after the key action date of 20 April 2012, we consider the nature (opinion based or global) and function (emergent or tr…
We Must Be the Change We Want to See in the World: Integrating Norms and Identities through Social Interaction
In this article, we propose a social psychological mechanism for the formation of new social change movements. Here, we argue that social change follows the emergence of shared injunctive social norms that define new collective identities, and we systematically spell out the nature of the processes through which this comes about. We propose that these norms and identities are created and negotiated through validating communication about a normati…
The “Activist Identity” and Activism across Domains: A Multiple Identities Analysis
Two correlational studies of activists examined the association between belonging to community organizations or groups and sustained activism within a particular domain. In Study 1 ( N = 45) larger activist networks, controlling for activist identification and greater political knowledge, were associated with stronger activism intentions. In Study 2 ( N = 155), larger Time 1 peace activism social networks were associated with more Time 2 peace ac…
I don't really want to be associated with the self-righteous left extreme”: Disincentives to participation in collective action
This paper considers collective action non-participation by people sympathetic but not committed to participating in actions for social change (‘sympathisers’). We conducted a thematic analysis of open-ended written accounts of the barriers to participating in sustained collective action (N = 112), finding that people can be reluctant to engage in some types of collective action. Participants wrote about the potential for detrimental consequences…
The role of social media in shaping solidarity and compassion fade: How the death of a child turned apathy into action but distress took it away
An image of drowned Syrian toddler, Aylan Kurdi, was popularly shared through social media and this promoted a surge of solidarity with Syrian refugees in September 2015. However, this response was not sustained. We explore the role of social media engagement in the emergence of solidarity and its decline (compassion fade). We collected data when sympathy for refugees was peaking (September 2015), and 1 year later. Latent change score modeling ( …
Reaching consensus promotes the internalization of commitment to social change
Solving the world’s most pressing problems (climate change, global poverty) will require the commitment of large numbers of people. The current research draws upon the joint insights of self-determination theory and the social identity perspective to consider the mechanisms through which social interaction engenders commitment to social change. Participants ( N = 137) engaged in a small group discussion to plan strategies for providing safe drink…
I feel you feel what I feel: Perceived perspective‐taking promotes victims' conciliatory attitudes because of inferred emotions in the offender
In the context of bullying in a nursing workplace, we test the argument that an offender's perspective‐taking promotes victim conciliation, mediated by perceived perspective‐taking, that is, the extent to which the victim perceives the offender as taking their perspective. Perceived perspective‐taking facilitates the attribution of moral emotions (remorse, etc.) to the offender, thereby promoting conciliatory victim responses. However, perceived …
Resisting perspective-taking: Glorification of the national group elicits non-compliance with perspective-taking instructions
Emerging research on intergroup prosociality: Group members' charitable giving, positive contact, allyship, and solidarity with others
This paper describes an emerging body of work on intergroup prosociality, drawing together parallel literatures and highlighting some of the themes of the recent research. A broad distinction between benevolence and activism serves as the foundation to explore forms of intergroup prosociality, such as charitable giving, displays of empathy and affirmation (positive and supportive contact), allyship, and solidarity. Gaps and implications for futur…
Transnational contact and challenging global poverty: Intergroup contact intensifies (the right kind of) social identities to promote solidarity‐based collective action for those low in social dominan…
Intergroup contact and collective action have been identified as two important but potentially conflicting ways to improve intergroup relations. However, little research has investigated the effects of contact in promoting solidarity-based collective action amongst advantaged group members, and nor has research considered the effects of contact in transnational (global) contexts. The current research provides a longitudinal test of the idea that …
Psychology (49 works) · Social Psychology (47 works) · Political science (45 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (40 works) · Politics (32 works) · Collective action (30 works) · Law (29 works) · Social Psychology (25 works) · Sociology (22 works) · Law (21 works)