16. Collective action II

Question 1

What are barriers to perceiving injustice?

Answer 1

Discourses, practices, or policies that legitimise inequalities are a barrier to perceiving injustice (grievances)

Evidence:

• Social creativity (Becker, 2012)
• Benevolent prejudice (Becker & Wright, 2013)
• Stigmatization (Gorska et al., 2017)

Question 2

How might people change their identity?

Answer 2

• According to Social Identity Theory (SIT) (Tajfel & Turner), people want positive distinctiveness in their identities
• They can do this through collective action, individual mobility or social creativity

Question 3

Social creativity

Answer 3

Methods of achieving positive identity:

• Compensating bias - highlighting attributes the ingroup is superior in to the outgroup
• Downward comparison - compare group with one of lower status
• Re-evaluate value of comparison - ‘it’s not that important’

No structural change in condition for in- or outgroup, just change in perception

Question 4

How does social creativity prevent collective action?

Answer 4

• Participants showed less interest in collective action after comparing their group to richest 10% on warmth (Becker, 2012)
• Women showed more interest in collective action after comparing themselves to men but less when comparing themselves to women 50 years ago (Becker, 2012)

∴ Social creativity decreases perception of injustice (grievances), preventing collective action

Question 5

What is benevolent prejudice?

Answer 5

• Prejudice that emphasises positive aspects of the inferior class
• ‘The velvet glove’ Jackman (1994)
• A way for prejudice to seem kind - ‘Women are just better at childcare’

Question 6

What is required to maintain male dominance?

Answer 6

• punish women who challenge male dominance (e.g., feminists, career women, sexually liberal women)
• reward women who accept male dominance & perform gender roles

Question 7

What are the two types of sexism (ambivalent sexism theory)?

Answer 7

• Hostile
• Benevolent

Question 8

Dangers of benevolent sexism in men

Answer 8

They are:
- NOT more likely to oppose early marriages for girls (Turkish sample; Malatyalı, Kaynak, & Hasta, 2017)
- NOT more likely to oppose sexual harassment (Russell & Trigg, 2002)
- NOT more likely to reject wife abuse (Glick et al., 2002)
- MORE likely to blame a female victim of an acquaintance rape if she violated gender role expectations for feminine purity and chastity (Abrams, Viki, Masser, & Bohner, 2003)

Question 9

Dangers of benevolent sexism to women

Answer 9

• Women view benevolent sexism as less harmful than hostile sexism (Barreto et al., 2005)
• Women under-estimate the possibility that hostile and benevolent sexism can co-exist in same man (Kiliansky & Rudman, 1998)
• Benevolent sexism reduces collective action because people see the system as fairer (Becker & Wright, 2011)

Question 10

How does stigmatisation reduce collective action (LGB)?

Answer 10

• Anti-gay (heterosexist) legislation decreases collective action in LGB inidividuals (Gorska et al., 2017)
• Mediators: Internalized homophobia and ingroup identification (Radke et al., 2016)

Question 11

How does stigmatisation reduce collective action?

Answer 11

• Feminist identification predicts participation in feminist activism (Nelson et al., 2008; Yoder, Tobias, & Snell, 2011).
• Stigmatization of feminists leads women to not identify as feminists, even if they believe in the cause (Yoder et al., 2011; Zucker, 2004)
• Evidence (not recent) that men and women rate feminists more negatively (Twenge & Zucker, 1999) & more “aggressive, opinionated, forceful, non-conformist, anti-male, stubborn, tense, and egotistical” (Berryman-Fink & Verderber, 1985).

Question 12

Stigmatisation of violent crowds

Answer 12

(Reicher & Stott, 2011)

• The stigmatisation of violent crowds as mindless has allowed governments to ignore their demands, present them as terrorists, and deal with them violently.