Collective action I

Question 1

Recent protest movements

Answer 1

Mapping protests held in solidarity with Palestine

Question 2

Street pulse

Answer 2

• 1979 to 2019
• protest intensity over time
• over 40 years- 1979 to 2019
• This intensity of global protests varies over time
  Close up zooming into last 10 years
• Strike in 2011 as well as 2008 after global financial crisis
• More recently in 2019 there is an increase in global protest intensity. There was a second wave of Arab uprisings at that point as well as several uprisings around the world such as in Chile for example..

Question 3

Why should we study collective actions

Answer 3

Not just because its a regular feature of group behaviour but also due to the profound effects on our societies. Collective action is one of the most important ways in which groups challenge or defend their social and political systems and existing group hierarchies. This is historically how people have challenged unfair policies.

Question 4

Terminology:
Collective action

Answer 4

“A group member engages in collective action anytime that he or she is acting as a representative of the group and the action is directed at improving the condition of the entire group.” (Wright, Taylor, & Moghaddam, 1990)

“Collective action is traditionally defined as any action that aims to improve the status, power, or influence of an entire group, rather than that of one or a few individuals” (van Zomeren & Iyer, 2009)

Question 5

Points to keep in mind:

Answer 5

• An individual can engage in collective action alone
  eg. greta thumburg engaged in regular school strikes on her own,
• People can engage in collective action to defend other groups: solidarity-based collective action, allyship

Question 6

Examples of non-violent collective action compared to violent collective action

Answer 6

Nonviolent collective action
eg. petition, protests

Violent collective action
eg. riots

Question 7

What may collective action seek to?

Answer 7

• attenuate an existing hierarchy (human rights groups)
• Defend or enhance an existing hierarchy or create a new hierarchy (e.g. right-wing groups).
  (Sidanius & Pratto, 2012)

Question 8

What social psychological factors associated with collective action?

Answer 8

1. Grievances/ perceived injustice
2. Efficacy
3. Social identity

Question 9

Grievances examples

Answer 9

Black lives matter, cuts affecting education fees (after 2008 financial crisis), increasing restrictions for right to protest in UK, fight against fossil fuel projects and climate change, Palestine

Question 10

Grievances meaning

Answer 10

People generally take collective action to oppose an injustice against a group blamed on an outgroup

Question 11

Grievances:
- what is greater perceived injustice against ones group associated with?
- what are grievances at the heart of?
- what different types can grievances be?

Answer 11

• Greater perceived injustice against one’s group is associated with greater engagement in collective action (meta-analysis by van Zomeren et al., 2008 shows correlational and causal links, 65 independent samples, N=15,855)
• Grievances are at the heart of both nonviolent and violent collective action
• Grievances can be of different types: social, economic, political, environmental grievances. (van Stekelenburg & Klandermans, 2013)

Question 12

Grievances: group deprivation
Relative Deprivation Theory

Answer 12

– Awareness of shared grievances
– Egoistic (personal) vs fraternal deprivation (or group deprivation) eg. people demand removal of the regime- shared group
– See meta-analysis by Smith and Ortiz (2002) and by Smith et al. (2012)

Question 13

Grievances: relative deprivation
Relative Deprivation Theory

Answer 13

What matters is people’s subjective relative sense of deprivation (relative) rather than their objective deprivation (Smith et al., 2012)

Question 14

Grievances: relative deprivation
- what does relative deprivation rest on?
- what do group members experience deprivation depending on?
- what can deprivation result from comparison with?

Answer 14

• Relative deprivation rests on social comparison.
• Group members experience deprivation depending
  on their reference point.
• Deprivation can result from comparison with:
  – an outgroup
  – the ingroup’s past situation
  – a desired situation for the ingroup

Question 15

Although people are discontented in many places all over the world, what do they not always protest about?

Answer 15

Their state of affairs

Question 16

What is Group efficacy?

Answer 16

The belief that it is possible to address grievances through collective action.

Question 17

Efficacy

Answer 17

If people one day choose life, then destiny must respond- conveys sense of confidence that protestors have in their ability to achieve social change which they aspire for

Meta-analysis by van Zomeren et al. (2008) shows that efficacy perceptions positively predict collective action (correlational and causal links, using 53 independent samples, N = 12,758)

Question 18

What is the social identity approach and social identification?

Answer 18

Social Identity approach: individuals take collective action on behalf of groups their care about and identify with. (Tajfel & Turner, 1979)

Social identification: “that part of an individual’s self-concept which derives from his [sic] knowledge of membership of a social group (or groups) together with the emotional significance attached to that membership” (Tajfel, 1981, p.251).

They must care about their group to begin with and identify with their group

Question 19

Identity

Answer 19

Direct positive effects of social identification with a disadvantaged group or social movement on collective action (meta-analysis by van Zomeren et al., 2008 shows correlational and causal links, using 64 independent samples, N= 10,051).

Question 20

Collective action model

Answer 20

Perceived injustice (Grievances) + Perceived efficacy + Identification → Collective action

Question 21

Social Identity Model of Collective Action (SIMCA):
meta-analysis by van Zomeren et al. (2008)

Answer 21

Identity→Perceived injustice (Grievances), Perceived efficacy, collective action

Perceived injustice (Grievances) → collective action

Perceived efficacy→ collective action

According to this model, social identification has both direct and indirect effects on collective action.

Direct effects- identification with one’s group basically creates an inner obligation to engage in collective action on behalf of the group

Indirect effects:
- perceive injustice (those who identify the most with their group are the ones that are more likely to view a disadvantage that hits their group as being unfair and this in turn motivates them to partake in collective action)
- perceived efficacy (those who identify most with their in group are more likely to feel they have the power to achieve a desired social change for the group through collective action and this is in turn what pushes them to become active)

Question 22

Social Identity Model of Collective Action (SIMCA):
meta-analysis by van Zomeren et al. (2008)
- what does social identity have and what are the indirect effects?

Answer 22

Social identity has both direct and indirect effects
on collective action

Indirect effects:
- identification with one’s group is linked to stronger
feelings of injustice against one’s group, which leads
to greater collective action engagement
- Identification with one’s group is linked to a
stronger sense of efficacy to achieve the desired
social change for the group, which leads to greater
collective action engagement

Question 23

Emotions:
- affective reactions linked to injustice
- what is anger?

Answer 23

• Affective reactions to injustice are more powerful predictors than perceptions of injustice or relative deprivation (see meta analyses by van Zomeren et al., 2008; Smith et al., 2012).
• Anger is a prototypical emotion associated with collective action

Question 24

What were there in Arab uprisings

Answer 24

“Days of wrath” or “days of rage”

Question 25

Emotions:
- what can different emotions predict?
- what is group-based anger towards the outgroup positively associated with?
- what is violent collective action?
- what is contempt?

Answer 25

• Different emotions can predict different types of collective action.
• Group-based anger toward the outgroup is positively associated with nonviolent forms of collective action (e.g. Tausch et al., 2011).
• Violent collective action: emotions other than anger may be at play: Contempt (Tausch et al., 2011)
• contempt is thought by some to be an accumulation of anger which is unresolved

Question 26

Tausch et al. (2011), JPSP
Procedure and results

Answer 26

• Looked at the rules of anger and contempt and motivating non-violence collective action versus aggressive forms of collective action
• Conducted a series of surveys in different contexts like students processing in Germany against the introduction of tuition fees.
• Looked at different types of collective action eg. non-violent which here are seen as normative or moderate non-normative action tendencies vs more violent actions which are denoted by extreme non normative action tendencies on this figure.

found:
- perceived injustice of intuition fees was linked to greater anger which in turn was linked to more non-violent collective action engagement
- contempt against those who were advocating tuition fees was not important for these non violent forms of collective action

Question 27

Tausch et al. (2011), JPSP:
Instead what is found?

Answer 27

• Instead what we find is that perceived injustice also predicts contempt, but contempt in turn predicts tendencies to engage in more violent forms of collective action.
• For those more extreme forms of action, anger did not play a role

Question 28

How do researchers explore the role of different emotions?

Answer 28

– in motivating collective action (e.g. anger, contempt, pride, sympathy, guilt)
– in inhibiting collective action (e.g. fear)

Question 29

Identity
a vs b

Answer 29

a) Identification with a disadvantaged group (e.g. Black, woman)
Vs
b) Politicized identification (e.g. Black Lives Matter, feminist)

Question 30

What is politicised identification?

Answer 30

Identification with a social movement (Simon & Klandermans, 2001) is a more proximal predictor of collective action than identification with the disadvantaged group:
– It specifies the target that we should move against
– It creates an inner obligation to act in line with what the group stands for.
– It can also be more inclusive of people who belong to powerful or third-party groups.
(see van Stekelenburg & Klandermans, 2013)

Question 31

What did a meta-analysis by van Zomeren et al. (2008) show in relation to politicised identification?

Answer 31

Shows politicised identification is a stronger predictor of collective action than identification with the disadvantaged group.

Question 32

Dual pathway model of collective action (Sturmer &
Simon, 2004)
What are the 2 pathways to collective action?

Answer 32

1. Identification pathway (intrinsic motivation)
2. Instrumental pathway (cost-benefit calculations-extrinsic motivation) composed of three motives
   a) Collective motive
   b) Social motive
   c) Reward motive

Question 33

Dual pathway model of collective action (Sturmer &
Simon, 2004)
Identity pathway

Answer 33

• The social identity approach (Tajfel & Turner, 1979)
• Politicized identification as the main proximal
  predictor of collective action

Question 34

Dual pathway model of collective action (Sturmer &
Simon, 2004)
Instrumental pathway: what is the model built on?

Answer 34

The expectancy-value theory: behavior results from the value of the expected outcomes of that behavior. (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980). The more we expect a certain action and the more we value that outcome, the more likely we are to engage in the behaviour

Question 35

Dual pathway model of collective action (Sturmer &
Simon, 2004)
Collective motive

Answer 35

• Value of the collective benefits the movement seeks to acquire (e.g. equal pay, anti-discrimination law, policy change)
• Expected achievement of the collective benefits through collective action

Question 36

Dual pathway model of collective action
(Sturmer & Simon, 2004)
Social motive

Answer 36

• Collective action does not happen in a social vacuum.
• Collective action happens within social networks (e.g. family, friends, co-workers). Provide people with support, politics ect.

Question 37

Dual pathway model of collective action
(Sturmer & Simon, 2004)
Social motive (sometimes called normative motive)

Answer 37

• The more connected an individual is to others
  1. who encourage protesting (expectancy)
  2. Whom they care about (value)
  the more likely they are to take part in collective action.

Question 38

Dual pathway model of collective action
(Sturmer & Simon, 2004)
Reward motive

Answer 38

Personal outcomes affect whether people take part in collective
action:

• Individuals are more motivated to engage if they expect
  important personal benefits from engagement:
  – e.g. social contact (fun with friends)
• Individuals are less motivated to engage if they expect important personal costs/losses from engagement:
  – e.g. risks from repression (e.g. losing one’s job, risk to safety, arrests, injuries, killings) or other risks (e.g. risk to health while protesting during the pandemic)

Question 39

Dual pathway model of collective action (Sturmer &
Simon, 2004)
Instrumental pathway: What is the model also built on?

Answer 39

Collective action theory: collective benefits of social
movement participation are insufficient because people may free-ride, so they need selective benefits for participation (incentives) (e.g. Olson, 1968)

Question 40

Evidence supporting dual pathway model

Answer 40

Paper looking at 4 studies conducted in different contexts to test out this model. 4 social movements include: german older peoples movement, US gay movement, german gay movement and US fat acceptance movement.

Found:
- Identification with the movement of organisation (politicised identification): across all 4 studies this played a role
- Identification with disadvantaged group didn’t play a role in any study
- the motives: in some studies each played a role but not in every study.
- Across the board you can see that at least one of the motives in the instrumental pathway played a role.
- It wasn’t just identification that was important. There were also some extrinsic concerns that played a role.