Kenneth I. Mavor

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.

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.

Interactionism in Personality and Social Psychology: An Integrated Approach to Understanding the Mind and Behaviour

In both personality psychology and social psychology there is a trajectory of theory and research that has its roots in Gestalt psychology and interactionism. This work is outlined in this paper along with an exploration of the hitherto neglected points of connection it offers these two fields. In personality psychology the focus is on dynamic interactionism and in social psychology, mainly through social identity theory and self‐categorization theory, it is on the interaction between the individual (‘I’) and group (‘we’) and how the environment (that includes the perceiver) is given meaning. What emerges is an understanding of the person and behaviour that is more integrated, dynamic and situated. The aim of the paper is to stimulate new lines of theory and research consistent with this view of the person. Copyright

Beyond prevalence to process : the role of self and identity in medical student well-being

Problematic stress levels among medical students have been well established. This stress can lead to depression, suicidal ideation, substance abuse, burnout and cynicism, having a negative effect on students and their patients.

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.

Discipline Social Identification, Study Norms and Learning Approach in University Students.

Adopting a deep approach to learning is associated with positive academic outcomes. In the current paper, we extend this analysis in a university context by recognising that learners are not isolated individuals, but share important social identifications with others. Using online surveys at an Australian university, we examine the effects of discipline social identification and educational norms on the adoption of learning approaches. Students from a range of academic disciplines indicated their social identification with their discipline, their perceptions of peer norms within their discipline of study, and what their own learning approaches were. Results demonstrate a significant role of discipline-related social identification in predicting learning approaches, even after controlling for personal factors and quality of teaching. Moreover, perceived norms moderated this effect. Students’ approaches to learning are affected not simply by their salient self-concepts, but by their salient discipline-related self-concepts and the norms embodied in the learning environment.

Looking Beyond Personal Stressors: An Examination of How Academic Stressors Contribute to Depression in Australian Graduate Medical Students

Background: Medical school is a challenging environment that requires students to deal effectively with stress borne out of the medical education environment, as well as their personal lives. Previous research has not systemically distinguished between academic and personal sources of stress, and in particular has not explored the independent contribution that academic stressors make to medical student depression. Purposes: This study aimed to investigate whether academic stressors make a unique contribution to the level of depressive symptoms in medical students, over and above the contribution made by personal stressors alone. Methods: Sixty-seven medical students completed an online questionnaire designed to measure the total number of recent life events (personal and academic), and their perceived impact, using a modified version of the Psychiatric Epidemiology Research Interview Life Events Scale. Depressive symptoms were measured using the Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale. Results: Both the total number of personal stressors, r(67) = .363, p = .003, and their perceived impact, r(67) = .412, p = .001, were found to be positively related to depressive symptoms. A positive relationship was also observed between depressive symptoms and the total number of academic stressors, r(67) = .321, p = .008, and their perceived impact, r(67) = .489, p < .001. In addition, it was found that the perceived impact of academic stressors was able to explain higher levels of depressive symptoms in medical students over and above the effect afforded by personal stressors alone. Conclusion: The findings of this study suggest that stress borne out of the medical school environment contributes to depressive symptoms in medical students over and above the contribution made by personal stressors alone. This indicates that although it is important to help students cope with stress borne out of their personal lives, interventions by medical schools aimed at reducing the impact of academic stressors on medical student depression may also be of great importance.

Blinded by Beauty: Attractiveness Bias and Accurate Perceptions of Academic Performance

Despite the old adage not to ‘judge a book by its cover’, facial cues often guide first impressions and these first impressions guide our decisions. Literature suggests there are valid facial cues that assist us in assessing someone’s health or intelligence, but such cues are overshadowed by an ‘attractiveness halo’ whereby desirable attributions are preferentially ascribed to attractive people. The impact of the attractiveness halo effect on perceptions of academic performance in the classroom is concerning as this has shown to influence students’ future performance. We investigated the limiting effects of the attractiveness halo on perceptions of actual academic performance in faces of 100 university students. Given the ambiguity and various perspectives on the definition of intelligence and the growing consensus on the importance of conscientiousness over intelligence in predicting actual academic performance, we also investigated whether perceived conscientiousness was a more accurate predictor of academic performance than perceived intelligence. Perceived conscientiousness was found to be a better predictor of actual academic performance when compared to perceived intelligence and perceived academic performance, and accuracy was improved when controlling for the influence of attractiveness on judgments. These findings emphasize the misleading effect of attractiveness on the accuracy of first impressions of competence, which can have serious consequences in areas such as education and hiring. The findings also have implications for future research investigating impression accuracy based on facial stimuli.