Protesting to challenge or defend the system? A system justification perspective on collective action

Social identity, shared grievances, and group efficacy beliefs are well-known antecedents to collective action, but existing research overlooks the fact that collective action often involves a confrontation between those who are motivated to defend the status quo and those who seek to challenge it. Using nationally representative data from New Zealand (Study 1; N = 16,147) and a large online sample from the United States (Study 2; N = 1,513), we address this oversight and demonstrate that system justification is negatively associated with system-challenging collective action, but positively associated with system-supporting collective action, for members of both low-status and high-status groups. Group identification, group-based injustice, group-based anger, and system-based dissatisfaction/anger mediated these relationships. These findings constitute the first empirical integration of system justification theory into a model of collective action that explains when people will act collectively to challenge—and, just as importantly, defend—the status quo.     

Internalized equality and protest against injustice: The role of disadvantaged group members’ self-respect in collective action tendencies

Recent research shows that self-respect (defined as seeing yourself as a person with equal rights) predicts assertive but not aggressive responses to injustice in interpersonal contexts. The present research focuses on the antecedents of self-respect and its consequences for collective action tendencies among members of disadvantaged groups. Across three studies (N = 227, N = 454, N = 131) using different contexts and samples (discrimination of Muslims in Germany; women regarding gender inequality), experiences with equality-based respect (defined as being treated as someone of equal worth) predicted self-respect. Moreover, across all three studies, self-respect predicted intentions for cooperative or normative but not support for hostile or non-normative protest. The results demonstrate the potential of self-respect for facilitating collective action in the face of injustice while still enabling positive intergroup relations.     

Ideologies of Diversity and Inequality: Predicting Collective Action in Groups Varying in Ethnicity and Immigrant Status

Ideological positions regarding social diversity and status inequality are examined as predictors of people's willingness to engage in collective action. Using social dominance theory and social identity theory, we hypothesized that the relationships between ideology, ethnic identification, and orientation toward collective action will vary depending on the position of one's group. Comparisons were made between four U.S. groups: White natives, White immigrants, Black/Latino natives, and Black/Latino immigrants. Groups differed in their endorsement of social diversity and social inequality, as well as in their orientation toward collective action and their ethnic group identification. For all groups, ethnic identity mediated the link between ideology and collective action, but the valence and magnitude of paths differed as a function of ethnicity and immigrant status. Social diversity was more critical for U.S. immigrants (White and Black/Latino); social inequality accounted for more variance in native-born U.S. groups (although in opposite directions for the two groups).     

The role of attitudinal motivations and collective efficacy on Chinese consumers’ intentions to engage in personal behaviors to mitigate climate change

The Chinese government has recently pledged to reduce its CO₂ emissions by 2030. Industrial use of energy, however, is just one source of greenhouse gas emissions. Chinese consumers’ more affluent lifestyles also lead to increased consumption of energy, which can result in greenhouse gas emissions. Based on a survey of 516 Chinese consumers, the present investigation examined whether their attitudinal motivations and collective efficacy are related to their intentions to engage in personal actions that may help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Results show that the utilitarian motivation related to the effectiveness of personal actions to alleviate climate change, motivation to express their moral values, self-esteem maintenance motivation, and collective efficacy predicted their attitudes toward these personal actions. Collective efficacy was in turn predicted by future orientation, norms, and the utilitarian motivation. Finally, attitudes and collective efficacy were two major considerations that predicted behavioral intentions. Implications for programs to promote low-carbon actions and lifestyles among Chinese consumers are discussed.     

The Power of Political Déjà Vu: When Collective Action Becomes an Effort to Change the Future by Preventing the Return of the Past

This article examines the conditions under which political déjà vu (PDV), a perceived analogy between past and present societal-level traumatic events, can mobilize people to support system-changing collective action. We propose that individuals' perceptions of PDV can evolve both social identification with a group that sustains the victimized and disidentification with the perceived perpetrators. We further suggest that disidentification and identification can form two distinct psychological paths to collective action through the sequential effects of moral outrage and collective efficacy beliefs. We tested these ideas in a cross-sectional field study (N = 272) in the context of antigovernment protests over a missing activist in Argentina, a country with a legacy of enforced disappearances. The findings demonstrated that perceiving two events from different times as similar simultaneously predicted identifying as a supporter of the victimized and disidentifying with the perceived wrongdoer. Disidentification was found to predict collective action intentions through the sequential effect of collective efficacy beliefs and moral outrage, whereas the indirect effect of social identification was nonsignificant. Results provide an intriguing example of the effects of perceived PDV in social mobilization and extend our understanding of disidentification as a powerful predictor of collective action.     

社会认同对集体行动的作用：群体情绪与效能路径*

为探究多元社会认同如何通过群体情绪、自我和群体效能路径,影响现实或网络集体行动参与,研究者分别以中日撞船事件、利比亚事件和就业性别歧视现象为背景蓝本,开展问卷调查和实验研究,结果发现：群体愤怒情绪主要对现实集体行动有显著影响,效能感对现实和网络集体行动皆有显著影响;与事件相关的、更大范畴的社会类别认同,通过情绪路径或效能路径影响集体行动参与,与集体行动组织方的认同则只通过效能路径影响集体行动参与;两类社会认同与两条路径之间是调节而非中介关系。不同事件背景与不同行动场域下的综合分析表明网络集体行动参与决策更具工具理性特征。     

Unintentional collective action

In this paper, I examine the manner in which analyses of the action of single agents have been pressed into service for constructing accounts of collective action. Specifically, I argue that the best analogy to collective action is a class of individual action that Carl Ginet has called ‘aggregate action.’ Furthermore, once we use aggregate action as a model of collective action, then we see that existing accounts of collective action have failed to accommodate an important class of (what I shall call) ‘unintentional collective actions.’     

“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 normative conflict; resulting in an identity‐norm nexus (INN), whereby people become the change they want to see in the world. We suggest that injunctive norms are routinely negotiated, validated, and integrated with shared identity in order to create the potential to effect change in the world. Norms and identities need not be integrated or connected in this way, but the power of social actors to form new social movements to bring about sociopolitical change will tend to be severely limited unless they can bring about the integration of identity and action.