Eric Shuman
Biographic Data
| ID | 1905208 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Eric Shuman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Eric |
| FAMILY NAME | Shuman |
| SIGNATURE | SHUMAN E |
| AFFILIATIONS | New York University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3830-4926 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 77 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 16 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Evidence for the Effectiveness of Large-Scale Disruptive Protests in the Context of Democratic Backsliding
The 2023 pro-democracy movement in Israel was marked by massive protests against proposed judicial reforms. Although they remained nonviolent, these protests became increasingly disruptive, employing roadblocks, strikes, and “days of disruption.” Did the choice to adopt disruptive tactics help or hurt the movement? To answer this question, we conducted a four-wave longitudinal study among 1,004 Israeli respondents. Latent growth-curve analysis re…
Defend, Deny, Distance, and Dismantle
The experience of privilege can trigger psychological conflict among advantaged group members. Nonetheless, little work has explored strategies that advantaged group members use to manage their identities as privileged actors. Building on Knowles et al.’s framework and theories of intergroup relations, we address the conceptualization and measurement of advantaged group identity-management strategies. We aim to refine theorizing and validate a me…
Should I Stay or Should I Go? Motives and Barriers for Sustained Collective Action Toward Social Change
Israel’s year-long protest calling for Prime Minister Netanyahu’s resignation created an opportunity to examine unique factors influencing sustained collective action (SCA; i.e., repeated participation in social movement action for the same cause). As little is known about how to explain such dedication, we compared a well-established set of predictors of one-time collective action (CA) with a new predictors set of SCA, focusing on collective ins…
Increasing Perceived Outgroup Heterogeneity Following Exposure to Extreme Violence
Exposure to political violence often drives individuals toward extreme attitudes and greater support for retaliatory policies, including heightened perceptions of outgroup homogeneity. In violent intergroup conflicts, such perceptions can be especially dangerous, as they may justify indiscriminate violence against the outgroup. The current research aims to address Jewish Israelis’ perceptions of Palestinians’ variability following the October 7 H…
Addressing climate change with behavioral science
Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interve…
Protected by the Emotions of the Group
Psychological processes that hamper activism, such as activist burnout, threaten social change. We suggest that perceived emotional fit (i.e., perceiving to experience similar emotions as other disadvantaged group members) may buffer activist burnout by mitigating the deleterious effects of stressors that are associated with partaking in collective action. We investigated the relation between perceived emotional fit and activist burnout using thr…
Examining real-world legitimization of cross-party violence through two explanatory frameworks
Cross-party violence – violence between opposing partisans – is a growing concern worldwide. Understanding the predictors of the legitimization of violence against political opponents is thus becoming a vital goal. In this work, we propose two potential explanatory frameworks: affective polarization and low non-violent group efficacy. The first reflects an affective motivation to harm the out-party, while the latter reflects an instrumental motiv…
Together we will rise? Perceptions of instrumentality and normalization as motivations for joint collective action among the disadvantaged
The current research examines joint collective action between advantaged and disadvantaged groups, from the perspective of the latter. We hypothesize that joint action poses a dilemma which lies in the tension between perceived instrumentality of joint action (i.e., ability to promote the disadvantaged’s goals) and perceived normalization (i.e., its tendency to blur power relations). We test this idea across three studies in the United States and…
Insights into the accuracy of social scientists' forecasts of societal change
Advancing support for intergroup equality via a self-affirmation campaign
Members of historically advantaged groups are often unwilling to support actions or policies aimed at reducing inequality between advantaged and disadvantaged groups, even if they generally support the principle of equality. Based on past research, we suggest a self-affirmation intervention (an intervention in which people reflect on a positive trait or value in order to affirm their positive self-image) may be effective for increasing the willin…
Does crossing a moral line justify collective means? Explaining how a perceived moral violation triggers normative and nonnormative forms of collective action
In three studies conducted in the United States, we examined whether a perceived moral violation motivates willingness to engage in normative and more radical collective action. Using value‐protection and identity‐formation models, we explored whether increased endorsement of moral convictions and relevant opinion‐based group identification could explain such effects. Study 1, using the “travel ban” for Muslims as the focal issue, experimentally …
Disrupting the system constructively
Collective action research tends to focus on motivations of the disadvantaged group, rather than on which tactics are effective at driving the advantaged group to make concessions to the disadvantaged. We focused on the potential of nonnormative nonviolent action as a tactic to generate support for concessions among advantaged group members who are resistant to social change. We propose that this tactic, relative to normative nonviolent and to vi…
The Quest for Hope
Within contexts of oppression and struggle for social change, in which hope is constantly challenged, do disadvantaged group members still want to feel hope? If so, does this desire translate into actual hope? And does motivation for hope relate to disadvantaged individuals’ collective action tendencies? We suggest that, especially when faced with setbacks in the struggle for social change, disadvantaged group members want to feel hope, but actua…
With or without you
While we have a rich understanding of the motivations of disadvantaged group members to act collectively with their group, especially the important role played by identification, we know less about the disadvantaged's motivations to engage in joint action with the advantaged. This research examines the role of identification in predicting joint and ingroup collective action in intergroup conflicts. Since joint action inherently diffuses the perce…
Anger as a catalyst for change? Incremental beliefs and anger’s constructive effects in conflict
The traditional understanding of the role of anger in conflicts is that it leads to aggressive actions that escalate conflict. However, recent research has found that under certain circumstances anger can have constructive effects such as increasing support for more risky conciliatory steps in negotiation. The current study aims to identify a psychological moderator that determines whether anger has such destructive or constructive effects. We pr…
Explaining Normative Versus Nonnormative Action
The current research investigates what motivates people to engage in normative versus nonnormative action. Prior research has shown that different emotions lead to different types of action. We argue that these differing emotions are determined by a more basic characteristic, namely, implicit theories about whether groups and the world in general can change. We hypothesized that incremental theories (beliefs that groups/the world can change) woul…
Explaining Normative Versus Nonnormative Action
The current research investigates what motivates people to engage in normative versus nonnormative action. Prior research has shown that different emotions lead to different types of action. We argue that these differing emotions are determined by a more basic characteristic, namely, implicit theories about whether groups and the world in general can change. We hypothesized that incremental theories (beliefs that groups/the world can change) woul…
Disrupting the system constructively
Collective action research tends to focus on motivations of the disadvantaged group, rather than on which tactics are effective at driving the advantaged group to make concessions to the disadvantaged. We focused on the potential of nonnormative nonviolent action as a tactic to generate support for concessions among advantaged group members who are resistant to social change. We propose that this tactic, relative to normative nonviolent and to vi…
With or without you
While we have a rich understanding of the motivations of disadvantaged group members to act collectively with their group, especially the important role played by identification, we know less about the disadvantaged's motivations to engage in joint action with the advantaged. This research examines the role of identification in predicting joint and ingroup collective action in intergroup conflicts. Since joint action inherently diffuses the perce…
Anger as a catalyst for change? Incremental beliefs and anger’s constructive effects in conflict
The traditional understanding of the role of anger in conflicts is that it leads to aggressive actions that escalate conflict. However, recent research has found that under certain circumstances anger can have constructive effects such as increasing support for more risky conciliatory steps in negotiation. The current study aims to identify a psychological moderator that determines whether anger has such destructive or constructive effects. We pr…
Examining real-world legitimization of cross-party violence through two explanatory frameworks
Cross-party violence – violence between opposing partisans – is a growing concern worldwide. Understanding the predictors of the legitimization of violence against political opponents is thus becoming a vital goal. In this work, we propose two potential explanatory frameworks: affective polarization and low non-violent group efficacy. The first reflects an affective motivation to harm the out-party, while the latter reflects an instrumental motiv…
Together we will rise? Perceptions of instrumentality and normalization as motivations for joint collective action among the disadvantaged
The current research examines joint collective action between advantaged and disadvantaged groups, from the perspective of the latter. We hypothesize that joint action poses a dilemma which lies in the tension between perceived instrumentality of joint action (i.e., ability to promote the disadvantaged’s goals) and perceived normalization (i.e., its tendency to blur power relations). We test this idea across three studies in the United States and…
Insights into the accuracy of social scientists' forecasts of societal change
Does crossing a moral line justify collective means? Explaining how a perceived moral violation triggers normative and nonnormative forms of collective action
In three studies conducted in the United States, we examined whether a perceived moral violation motivates willingness to engage in normative and more radical collective action. Using value‐protection and identity‐formation models, we explored whether increased endorsement of moral convictions and relevant opinion‐based group identification could explain such effects. Study 1, using the “travel ban” for Muslims as the focal issue, experimentally …
Advancing support for intergroup equality via a self-affirmation campaign
Members of historically advantaged groups are often unwilling to support actions or policies aimed at reducing inequality between advantaged and disadvantaged groups, even if they generally support the principle of equality. Based on past research, we suggest a self-affirmation intervention (an intervention in which people reflect on a positive trait or value in order to affirm their positive self-image) may be effective for increasing the willin…
Explaining Normative Versus Nonnormative Action
The current research investigates what motivates people to engage in normative versus nonnormative action. Prior research has shown that different emotions lead to different types of action. We argue that these differing emotions are determined by a more basic characteristic, namely, implicit theories about whether groups and the world in general can change. We hypothesized that incremental theories (beliefs that groups/the world can change) woul…
Anger as a catalyst for change? Incremental beliefs and anger’s constructive effects in conflict
The traditional understanding of the role of anger in conflicts is that it leads to aggressive actions that escalate conflict. However, recent research has found that under certain circumstances anger can have constructive effects such as increasing support for more risky conciliatory steps in negotiation. The current study aims to identify a psychological moderator that determines whether anger has such destructive or constructive effects. We pr…
The Quest for Hope
Within contexts of oppression and struggle for social change, in which hope is constantly challenged, do disadvantaged group members still want to feel hope? If so, does this desire translate into actual hope? And does motivation for hope relate to disadvantaged individuals’ collective action tendencies? We suggest that, especially when faced with setbacks in the struggle for social change, disadvantaged group members want to feel hope, but actua…
With or without you
While we have a rich understanding of the motivations of disadvantaged group members to act collectively with their group, especially the important role played by identification, we know less about the disadvantaged's motivations to engage in joint action with the advantaged. This research examines the role of identification in predicting joint and ingroup collective action in intergroup conflicts. Since joint action inherently diffuses the perce…
Disrupting the system constructively
Collective action research tends to focus on motivations of the disadvantaged group, rather than on which tactics are effective at driving the advantaged group to make concessions to the disadvantaged. We focused on the potential of nonnormative nonviolent action as a tactic to generate support for concessions among advantaged group members who are resistant to social change. We propose that this tactic, relative to normative nonviolent and to vi…
Advancing support for intergroup equality via a self-affirmation campaign
Members of historically advantaged groups are often unwilling to support actions or policies aimed at reducing inequality between advantaged and disadvantaged groups, even if they generally support the principle of equality. Based on past research, we suggest a self-affirmation intervention (an intervention in which people reflect on a positive trait or value in order to affirm their positive self-image) may be effective for increasing the willin…
Does crossing a moral line justify collective means? Explaining how a perceived moral violation triggers normative and nonnormative forms of collective action
In three studies conducted in the United States, we examined whether a perceived moral violation motivates willingness to engage in normative and more radical collective action. Using value‐protection and identity‐formation models, we explored whether increased endorsement of moral convictions and relevant opinion‐based group identification could explain such effects. Study 1, using the “travel ban” for Muslims as the focal issue, experimentally …
Protected by the Emotions of the Group
Psychological processes that hamper activism, such as activist burnout, threaten social change. We suggest that perceived emotional fit (i.e., perceiving to experience similar emotions as other disadvantaged group members) may buffer activist burnout by mitigating the deleterious effects of stressors that are associated with partaking in collective action. We investigated the relation between perceived emotional fit and activist burnout using thr…
Examining real-world legitimization of cross-party violence through two explanatory frameworks
Cross-party violence – violence between opposing partisans – is a growing concern worldwide. Understanding the predictors of the legitimization of violence against political opponents is thus becoming a vital goal. In this work, we propose two potential explanatory frameworks: affective polarization and low non-violent group efficacy. The first reflects an affective motivation to harm the out-party, while the latter reflects an instrumental motiv…
Together we will rise? Perceptions of instrumentality and normalization as motivations for joint collective action among the disadvantaged
The current research examines joint collective action between advantaged and disadvantaged groups, from the perspective of the latter. We hypothesize that joint action poses a dilemma which lies in the tension between perceived instrumentality of joint action (i.e., ability to promote the disadvantaged’s goals) and perceived normalization (i.e., its tendency to blur power relations). We test this idea across three studies in the United States and…
Insights into the accuracy of social scientists' forecasts of societal change
Addressing climate change with behavioral science
Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interve…
Defend, Deny, Distance, and Dismantle
The experience of privilege can trigger psychological conflict among advantaged group members. Nonetheless, little work has explored strategies that advantaged group members use to manage their identities as privileged actors. Building on Knowles et al.’s framework and theories of intergroup relations, we address the conceptualization and measurement of advantaged group identity-management strategies. We aim to refine theorizing and validate a me…
Should I Stay or Should I Go? Motives and Barriers for Sustained Collective Action Toward Social Change
Israel’s year-long protest calling for Prime Minister Netanyahu’s resignation created an opportunity to examine unique factors influencing sustained collective action (SCA; i.e., repeated participation in social movement action for the same cause). As little is known about how to explain such dedication, we compared a well-established set of predictors of one-time collective action (CA) with a new predictors set of SCA, focusing on collective ins…
Increasing Perceived Outgroup Heterogeneity Following Exposure to Extreme Violence
Exposure to political violence often drives individuals toward extreme attitudes and greater support for retaliatory policies, including heightened perceptions of outgroup homogeneity. In violent intergroup conflicts, such perceptions can be especially dangerous, as they may justify indiscriminate violence against the outgroup. The current research aims to address Jewish Israelis’ perceptions of Palestinians’ variability following the October 7 H…
Evidence for the Effectiveness of Large-Scale Disruptive Protests in the Context of Democratic Backsliding
The 2023 pro-democracy movement in Israel was marked by massive protests against proposed judicial reforms. Although they remained nonviolent, these protests became increasingly disruptive, employing roadblocks, strikes, and “days of disruption.” Did the choice to adopt disruptive tactics help or hurt the movement? To answer this question, we conducted a four-wave longitudinal study among 1,004 Israeli respondents. Latent growth-curve analysis re…
Psychology (15 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (13 works) · Social Psychology (13 works) · Political science (12 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (7 works) · Collective action (6 works) · Disadvantaged (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Politics (5 works) · Social Psychology (5 works)