Emma F. Thomas

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 social identity with a relevant pattern of norms for emotion, efficacy, and action. Rather than viewing group emotion, collective efficacy, and action as group products, the authors conceptualize norms about these as contributing to a dynamic system of meaning, which can shape ongoing commitment to a cause. By exploring emotion, efficacy, and action as group norms, it allows scholars to reenergize the theoretical connections between collective identification and subjective meaning but also allows for a fresh perspective on complex questions of causality.

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 cohesion or social change. These prosocial emotions have a critical but underrecognized role in creating contexts of in-group inclusion or exclusion, shaping normative content and meaning, and informing group interests. Furthermore, these distinctions provide a useful way of differentiating commonly discussed emotions. The authors conclude that the most “effective” emotion will depend on the context of the inequality but that outrage seems particularly likely to productively shape group processes and social change outcomes.

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 van Zomeren, Spears, Leach, and Fischers (2004) 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 advantaged groups. Norms about outrage and efficacy were harnessed to an opinion-based group identity (Bliuc, McGarty, Reynolds, & Muntele, 2007) and explored in the context of a novel group-based interaction method. Results showed that the group-based interaction boosted commitment to action especially when primed with an (injunctive) outrage norm. This norm stimulated a range of related effects including increased identification with the pro-international development opinion-based group, and higher efficacy beliefs. Results provide an intriguing instance of the power of group interaction (particularly where strengthened with emotion norms) to bolster commitment to positive social change.

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 structural equation modelling showed that both SIMCA and EMSICA fit the data well but that the path from group efficacy to action was of small size. Results showed that social identity processes can both facilitate and encapsulate other action-relevant constructs, and highlight the importance of considering multiple causal pathways to action.

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 support for future non-violent actions. Experiment 2 (n = 139) explored the moderating role of allegations of corruption. A social context of corruption effectively undermined the efficacy and legitimacy of non-violent collective action, relative to support for violence, thereby promoting (indirectly) support for future extreme action. The implications of this research, for the logic of strategic non-violence and mobilizing supportive public opinion, are discussed.

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 creating sufficient political will among people in developed countries such as Australia. The authors draw on social psychological insights to explore ways to inspire social and political action in support of the anti-poverty cause. Taking a social identity perspective, the role is reviewed of three key variables in promoting anti-poverty action: (a) the presence of meaningful social identities that prescribe action, (b) motivating group emotions, and (c) group efficacy beliefs. A method is described that crystallises these three elements to boost commitment to the anti-poverty cause. The paper concludes by arguing for the importance of meaningful group memberships in motivating social and political action to make poverty history for people in developing countries.

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 (with N = 234) demonstrates that focused group discussion can boost the commitment to take collective action, beliefs in the efficacy of that action, and members’ social identification with other supporters of the cause. The results are consistent with the new commitment to action flowing from emergent social identities.

Where There Is a (Collective) Will, There Are (Effective) Ways Integrating Individual- and Group-Level Factors in Explaining Humanitarian Collective Action

The 21st century has borne witness to catastrophic natural and human-induced tragedies. These disasters necessitate humanitarian responses; however, the individual and collective bases of support are not well understood. Drawing on Duncan’s motivational model of collective action, we focus on how individual differences position a person to adopt group memberships and develop a “group consciousness” that provides the basis for humanitarian action. Longitudinal mediation analyses involving supporters of international humanitarian action (N = 384) sampled annually for 3 years provided support for the hypothesized model, with some twists. The results revealed that within time point, a set of individual differences (together, the “pro-social orientation”) promoted a humanitarian group consciousness that, in turn, facilitated collective action. However, longitudinally, there was evidence that a more general pro-social orientation undermined subsequent identification with, and engagement in, the humanitarian cause. Results are discussed in terms of understanding the interplay between individual and group in collective actions.

Predictions of single-nucleotide polymorphism differentiation between two populations in terms of mutual information

Mutual information (I) provides a robust measure of genetic differentiation for the purposes of estimating dispersal between populations. At present, however, there is little predictive theory for I. The growing importance in population biology of analyses of single‐nucleotide and other single‐feature polymorphisms (SFPs) is a potent reason for developing an analytic theory for I with respect to a single locus. This study represents a first step towards such a theory. We present theoretical predictions of I between two populations with respect to a single haploid biallelic locus. Dynamical and steady‐state forecasts of I are derived from a Wright–Fisher model with symmetrical mutation between alleles and symmetrical dispersal between populations. Analytical predictions of a simple Taylor approximation to I are in good agreement with numerical simulations of I and with data on I from SFP analyses of dispersal experiments on Drosophila fly populations. The theory presented here also provides a basis for the future inclusion of selection effects and extension to multiallelic loci.

Collective Self-Determination: How the Agent of Help Promotes Pride, Well-Being, and Support for Intergroup Helping:

This research integrates self-determination theory and the social identity approach to investigate the notion of collective (group level) self-determination, and to test how the agent of intergroup help (helping initiated by a group representative versus group members) shapes group members’ motives and support for intergroup helping. Study 1 (N = 432) demonstrates that collective self-determination predicts support for intergroup helping, group pride, and well-being, over and above individual-level self-determined motivation. Study 2 (N = 216) confirmed that helping by group members was seen as more collectively self-determined than helping by a group representative, producing effects on pride, well-being, and support. Study 3 (N = 124) explores a qualifier of these effects: People who identify more strongly with the leader who is providing the help also experience representative helping as more collectively self-determined, thereby promoting well-being, group pride, and support. Findings highlight the value of integrating self-determination theory with intergroup theories to consider collective aspects of self-determination.