The Barriers and Facilitators to System Challenging Collective Action Across Group Lines
Creators: name: Vossoughi, Nadia
Publisher: name: My University
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: collective action
subject: cross-racial solidarity
subject: Psychology
subject: FOS: Psychology
subject: Social Sciences

description: In social psychology the predominant focus in collective action research has been on how social identity motivates collective action on behalf of one’s ingroup (see Agostini &amp; van Zomeren, 2021, for a review). Although such research furthers our understanding of the psychological underpinnings of collective action engagement, there has been a lack of research explaining the psychological processes that motivate system-challenging collective action across socially salient group lines (e.g., across racial groups; Radke et al., 2020). This is the case even though cross-group collective action has historically been influential for positive social change (e.g., see Gilmore &amp; Nham, 2022). Thus, this dissertation attempts to contribute to our understanding of collective action across group lines, by examining the role ideology and perceived group commitments play in motivating cross-group collective action. In the first chapter of this dissertation, I briefly summarize the state of social psychological research on collective action, before introducing the two empirical chapters of the dissertation. The first of these empirical chapters (Chapter 2) examines whether egalitarian ideology (i.e., one’s preference for intergroup equality) can motivate support for system-challenging collective action, despite, and even in opposition to, one’s group-based interests. Across three studies (n = 2,890), we find support for our proposition, such that across racial groups with various social statuses in the U.S., egalitarianism is related to support for collective action to challenge racial inequality. Moreover, the relationship between egalitarianism and collective action holds even among White people when it is salient that their group stands to lose power from such action, and even among those relatively identified with White people. In the second empirical chapter (Chapter 3), I turn my attention to the state of alliances between people who racially self-identify as Black-White multiracial and Black monoracial, an alliance of great historical and contemporary importance in the United States. Specifically, in Chapter 3, across three studies (n = 2,449), I measure Black-White multiracial people’s reported racial group commitments to each of Black people and White people, as well as, Black people’s perceptions of Black-White multiracial people’s racial group commitments. We find that Black-White multiracial participants are more in alignment with Black people than with White people. However, they are not in complete alignment with Black people (e.g., Black participants report more solidarity with Black people than Black-White multiracial participants do). Similarly, Black participants also perceive that Black-White multiracial people have more solidarity with them than with White people but that they are not in complete alignment with Black people. Moreover, increasing Black participants’ perceptions of Black-White multiracial people’s solidarity with Black people leads Black participants’ to be more inclusive and trusting of Black-White multiracial people to advocate for Black rights. Therefore, the second chapter in this dissertation expands our understanding of the state of alliances between Black and Black-White multiracial people and highlights the importance of perceived group commitments in maintaining intraminority alliances. Lastly, in Chapter 4, I outline some directions for future research on collective action across group lines, focusing on how such alliances unfold over time, can be undermined, and the impact of structural factors. Taken together, this dissertation elucidates how two critical variables—egalitarian ideology and solidarity concerns—can facilitate or hinder system-challenging collective action across group lines. It also identifies fruitful avenues for research on collective action across group lines.