Empowerment and threat in response to mass protest shape public support for a social movement and social change: A panel study in the context of the Bersih movement in Malaysia

One path to social change is through sustained collective action. Although such actions often explicitly target the public audience to raise support for a movement's cause, we know little about how the public psychologically responds to protests. To examine this question, a sample of Malaysians was surveyed before and immediately after the occurrence of mass street protests in Malaysia (N = 422) using a two-wave longitudinal design. Analyses revealed that (beyond pre-existing levels of movement identity and support for social change) experiencing empowerment in response to the protests promoted a supportive movement identity and more support for social change after the protests, whereas experiencing threat in response to the protests promoted an oppositional movement identity and less support for social change after the protests. This research suggests that the psychological impact of ongoing protests on the public can determine subsequent public support for the movement and its goals.     

Victim and Perpetrator Groups’ Divergent Perspectives on Collective Violence: Implications for Intergroup Relations

Groups in conflict develop strikingly different construals of the same violent events. These clashing perceptions of past violence can have detrimental consequences for intergroup relations and might provoke new hostilities. In this article, we integrate and juxtapose what we know about construals of collective violence by delineating the different dimensions along which these construals differ between victim and perpetrator groups: regarding the question of who is the victim, who is responsible for the harm doing, what the perpetrator’s intent was, how severe the violence was, and when it took place. Then, we discuss the individual‐ and group‐level factors (e.g., collective narratives, social identities) that shape these construals, as well as their implications for attitudes regarding the conflict and support for relevant policies. We distinguish two different core motives that drive construals and their outcomes among victim and perpetrator groups: Perpetrator groups try to cope with moral identity threats and preserve a positive image of the ingroup, while victim groups try to protect their ingroup from future harm doing and desire acknowledgment of their group’s experiences. Lastly, we discuss implications for strategies and interventions to address victim and perpetrator groups’ divergent perspectives of collective violence.     

Negative Intergroup Contact and Radical Right‐Wing Voting: The Moderating Roles of Personal and Collective Self‐Efficacy

This study examines whether negative contact with immigrants promotes voting for radical right‐wing parties, to what extent this relationship can be explained by feelings of outgroup threat, and whether this relationship depends on perceived personal and collective self‐efficacy. Hypotheses were tested among 630 native Dutch respondents, mainly living in multicultural neighborhoods. The results show that negative contact with immigrants is associated with feelings of personal (egocentric) and group (sociotropic) threat, and both these feelings, in turn, are associated with radical right‐wing voting. However, negative intergroup contact is less strongly related to egocentric threat when individuals feel able to personally address negative situations with other people (personal self‐efficacy). Furthermore, the findings suggest that negative intergroup contact is less strongly related to sociotropic threat when individuals believe that people in their neighborhood are able to collectively address some negative situations (collective self‐efficacy).     

National Days,National Identity,and Collective Memory: Exploring the Impact of Holocaust Day in Israel

This study uses the case of Holocaust Day in Israel to examine the premise that national days impact national identity and collective memory. Specifically, the study examines whether a very unique type of national day—Holocaust Day—impacts national identification, nationalism, and collective memory in the form of Israeli Jews' perceptions of the “lessons” of the Holocaust. This study uses panel survey design data on national identity and perceptions of the Holocaust's lessons from the same sample of Israeli Jews (N = 665) collected two months prior to Holocaust Day and again during and after Holocaust Day. During and after Holocaust Day, respondents expressed increased levels of nationalism and more perceptions of both particularistic and universalistic Holocaust lessons. Participation in Holocaust Day practices had a stronger relationship with nationalism and national identification during Holocaust Day than before but a weaker relationship with the perception of a universalistic lesson during Holocaust Day. These findings indicate that Holocaust Day impacts national identity and collective memory and highlights the multifaceted nature of the relationships between national identity, collective memory, and national days. The theoretical implication of the findings as well as the case comparability are discussed in light of the findings.     

Intuitive Political Theory: People's Judgments About How Groups Should Decide

Societies must make collective decisions even when citizens disagree, and they use many different political processes to do so. But how do people choose one way to make a group decision over another? We propose that the human mind contains an intuitive political theory about how to make collective decisions, analogous to people's intuitive theories about language, physics, number, minds, and morality. We outline a simple method for studying people's intuitive political theory using scenarios about group decisions, and we begin to apply this approach in three experiments. Participants read scenarios in which individuals in a group have conflicting information (Experiment 1), conflicting interests (Experiment 2), and conflicting interests between a majority and a vulnerable minority who have more at stake (Experiment 3). Participants judged whether the group should decide by voting, consensus, leadership, or chance. Overall, we find that participants prefer majority‐rule voting over consensus, leadership, and chance when a group has conflicting interests or information. However, participants' support for voting is considerably diminished when the group includes a vulnerable minority. Hence, participants showed an intuitive understanding of Madison's concerns about tyranny of the majority.     

National Identity,Collective Events,and Meaning: A Qualitative Study of Adolescents’ Autobiographical Narratives of Flag Ceremonies in Finland

Although collective events are central to group identity processes, little is known about how young people experience and remember national ceremonies in which they have participated. This qualitative study analyzes 80 autobiographical narratives written by upper secondary school students about flag ceremonies from their past in Finland. The analysis reveals that the narratives fall into three categories ((Dis)honored, Deserved and Loved Flag) according to how the social context, participants’ actions, narrator’s role, and emotions are described, all of which combine to create a dense web of meanings associated with this common national ceremony. The results also indicate that different group contexts—family and peer group networks and the national context—are inextricably linked in the narratives and that the meanings associated with these contexts tend to fuse. The findings highlight the importance of analyzing national collective events and related autobiographical memories to better understand the sources of national identity’s emotional power.     

Identity,representations, religion,and apologizing for past wrongdoings: Muslim discourse about Indonesia's 1965–66 massacres of communists

Since 1965, in Indonesia, people labelled as communists and their descendants have been mistreated. Recently, there has been an issue to apologize to them, but up until now, no official apology has been offered by the Indonesian government. The present study aims to understand how communism is perceived in Indonesia and why communism attributes labelled to a person can lead to negative effects, such as social exclusions. We interviewed 23 Muslims living in Jakarta (i.e., majority group) and used a thematic analysis to organize and describe the data. We found that Muslims who see communists as non‐believers view communist members as dangerous and a threat for the unity of the Republic of Indonesia. Among participants with such beliefs, the past maltreatments to accused communists are justified and legitimate; any apology toward the victims is considered not needed. The findings are discussed in the context of collective blaming and group essentialization, and ways to solve the problems are suggested.     

Investigating the effects of age and gender on cowitness suggestibility during blame attribution

Despite a large body of research investigating the effects of age and gender on eyewitness suggestibility, the majority of studies has focussed on the impressionability of participants when attempting to recall the presence of items from an event. Very little research has attempted to investigate the effects of age and gender on the suggestibility of eyewitnesses when attempting to attribute blame. Participants (N = 268) viewed and discussed a crime (video) with cowitnesses before giving individual statements. Confederates were used to expose the participants to misinformation during the discussion, suggesting that the wrong bystander was responsible for the offence. Findings indicated that participants who encountered the misinformation were more likely to make a false blame attribution and were more confident in their erroneous judgements. The results found no significant age‐ or gender‐related differences in blame conformity rates; however, male eyewitnesses showed greater levels of overconfidence in their false responses than female participants, after encountering cowitness misinformation.     

群体认同在集群行为中的作用机制

在集群行为背景下, 群体认同对个体的集群行为意愿既具有直接的动员作用, 同时也可以调节群体情绪和群体效能变量与人们行为意愿间的关系。政治认同、共同认同与双重认同等特殊形式的群体认同对集群行为的发生具有不同的影响。从动态性研究的角度看, 参与集群行为会强化个体对内群体的认同感, 而强烈的群体认同则会对参与者的行动产生持续影响。今后的研究应根据集群行为的不同触发情境、不同形式及不同发展阶段对群体认同的复杂工作机制进行探讨。     

Rape Myth Acceptance in Sexually Assaulted Adolescents' School Contexts: Associations with Depressed Mood and Alcohol Use

High school students exposed to sexual assault (SA) are at risk for negative outcomes like depressed mood and high‐risk drinking. Although evidence suggests that both social contexts and internalized stigma can affect recovery from SA, no research to date has directly examined the presence of stigma in social contexts such as high schools as a correlate of adjustment after SA. In this study, the self‐reported rape myth acceptance (RMA) of 3080 students from 97 grade cohorts in 25 high schools was used to calculate grade‐mean and school‐mean RMA, which was entered into multilevel models predicting depressed mood and alcohol use among N = 263 SA survivors within those schools. Two forms of RMA were assessed (i.e., rape denial and traditional gender expectations). Results indicate that higher grade‐mean rape denial was associated with higher risk for depressed mood among high school boys and girls exposed to SA, and higher grade‐mean traditional gender expectations were associated with higher risk for alcohol use among girls exposed to SA. Survivors' own RMA and school‐level RMA were not significantly associated with their depressed mood or alcohol use. Although causality cannot be concluded, these findings suggest that interventions that reduce stigma in social contexts should be explored further as a strategy to improve well‐being among high‐school‐aged survivors of SA.