Social psychology has long claimed neutrality in its explanations of collective behaviour, yet its foundational theories of crowds have repeatedly been co-produced with institutions of authority and mobilized in the reactionary governance of social order. This article challenges the discipline's familiar origin myth-centred on benign laboratory demonstrations of social influence-by re-situating crowd psychology as one of social psychology's earliest and most politically consequential points of emergence. From nineteenth-century crowd theory, through mid-twentieth-century de-individuation research, to contemporary public-order doctrine, assumptions about the inherent irrationality and danger of collective action have been repeatedly reformulated in scientific form, their persistence reflecting institutional and ideological fit rather than explanatory adequacy. Against this background, the article repositions the Social Identity Approach and the Elaborated Social Identity Model (ESIM) not merely as theoretical corrections, but as a reorientation of how psychological knowledge is produced, authorized and used. Drawing on ethnographic participatory action research and sustained engagement with policing institutions in the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States, it conceptualizes collective behaviour as interactional and normatively organized, with policing practices constitutive of crowd dynamics rather than external to them. The article argues that co-production is not a methodological innovation but a historically persistent condition of social psychology and that the ESIM represents a distinctive attempt to govern this condition reflexively by redirecting psychological knowledge towards legitimacy, restraint and the facilitation of democratic rights. The broader implication is that social psychology cannot plausibly claim political neutrality: its concepts travel into institutions and practices, shaping how collective action is anticipated, governed and policed.
Alcoholics anonymous (AA) groups play a central role in facilitating the transition from an 'addicted' identity to a 'recovering' identity; however, empirical research on how this identity transformation is socially constructed, maintained and questioned within group contexts is limited. Drawing on Social Identity Theory (SIT), this qualitative study examines how AA group dynamics shape members' sense of belonging, processes of identity reconstruction and experiences of recovery while also illuminating the vulnerabilities that may destabilize recovery identity. The study involved in-depth interviews with 20 AA members in Istanbul who had participated in meetings for a minimum of 6 months. The data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. The findings were organized into three interrelated themes: (1) AA as an in-group: the construction of a recovery identity, (2) reinforcement of the recovery identity through social interactions and (3) vulnerabilities and threats to the recovery identity. Overall, this study demonstrates that the identity of recovery within AA is a continuous negotiation process shaped by group-based interactions and identity threats. By highlighting the social and relational dimensions of recovery, this study extends SIT to mutual aid groups and emphasizes the central role of collective identity processes in sustaining long-term recovery.
Recent discursive psychology research has sought to respecify social influence as a discursive accomplishment and has also begun to identify how the psychological thesaurus is used to portray social influence in situated talk. The present paper contributes to this project by examining how social influence is depicted in accounts of influencing others in professional settings. Product designers' portrayals of influencing decision-makers to prioritize environmental sustainability, collected through semi-structured research interviews and from conference panel discussions, are analysed. Two recurring ways of constructing social influence are found-morally normative influence involving effort and force against resistance ('pushing') and informational influence through educating. The analysis shows how these depictions of influencing represent situated identity work. Two contributions are made to understanding ways of depicting social influence in professional settings. First, whether people claim entitlement to influence others at work is highlighted as a key element in how an influencer's identity is portrayed. Second, the participants' orientation to moral norms, not just social norms, is offered to extend to the concept of normative social influence in the context of sustainability. Implications for understanding how people relate to the shared moral challenge of environmental sustainability in different interactional contexts are discussed.
The paper reports longitudinal analyses examining the extent to which institutional trust mediates the relationship between individuals' sense of precarity and their adherence to conspiracy beliefs. Across three waves, 925 participants (50.2% female) between the ages of 18 and 85 (M = 49.53; SD = 15.81) reported subjective appraisals of their financial situation (precarity), trust in institutions and adherence to conspiracy beliefs. The current study extends the previous analyses by including three-wave longitudinal data. The preregistered autoregressive cross-lagged panel model supports the notion that a sense of precarity follows adherence to conspiracy beliefs rather than preceding them, while institutional (dis)trust and conspiracy beliefs show a bidirectional pattern. However, the random-intercept cross-lagged panel model does not corroborate this, suggesting that the effects may be driven by stable between-person differences rather than actual within-person changes. Additionally, the latter model reveals two separate temporal patterns linking conspiracy beliefs with either the sense of precarity or institutional trust, opening the possibility that our results were driven by two distinct underlying mechanisms. The paper discusses the importance of longitudinal studies for a more accurate understanding of social-psychological realities in which conspiracy beliefs and suspicions of institutions may flourish.
Research shows that critically reflecting on ingroup privilege can motivate allyship. However, we lack a deeper understanding of how activists make sense of their privilege, how it contributes to their motivation to stay engaged, and how activism recursively affects the meaning-making of social privilege. Building on social representations and identity process theory, we explored the social representation of privilege among allies and the identity processes involved in reconciling with ingroup privilege. We conducted 15 semi-structured interviews with advantaged social justice activists (i.e., activists who are working in organizations to improve conditions for disadvantaged and oppressed groups). Applying thematic network analysis, we found convergent social representations of privilege but varying representations of its (systemic) roots, three types of identity threat elicited by privilege (morality, positionality and social threat) and four ways in which privilege relates to activism (privilege enables action, privilege is a responsibility to act, quest for meaning and relativizing the role of privilege for activism). A key insight concerns the prominent role of the coherence motive, which seems to help (re-)conceptualizing privilege threat(s) in a way that motivates dismantling systems of inequality. We discuss the need for further theorizing on the bidirectional link between allyship and privilege reflection.
Recent developments within social influence research have demonstrated how resistance is temporally and sequentially accomplished within social interaction. The everyday morality of trying to get another person to do something against their will has, however, not been fully explored. Using the example of a sequence from a family mealtime, this paper illustrates how a concept typically understood as an individual concern - food refusal - can be reframed as a social phenomenon involving the delicate management of local identities and moral responsibilities. The study uses a single case analysis of a video-recorded interaction from a UK family mealtime. Using discursive psychology and conversation analysis, we demonstrate that food refusal can be examined as interactional resistance, with different forms of resistance embedded within diverging action trajectories. The analysis illustrates an instance of 'reluctant compliance', involving a complex configuration of complying with a directive while simultaneously displaying unwillingness to do so. Finally, we highlight that dealing with resistance within the family mealtime involves the management of local identities and the moral sensitivity of claiming deontic authority over another person's food consumption. The analysis has implications not only for research on resistance and food refusal but also for the everyday accomplishment of social influence within families.
This study examines motivations for participating in the understudied Indonesian riots of May 1998 targeting the ethnic Chinese minority, using an integrative framework addressing intergroup, intragroup and individual factors. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 31 participants (26 male, 5 female), all aged over 35 and involved in violent acts during the riots, in which thousands of homes and businesses were looted or destroyed, and hundreds of people were raped or murdered. Thematic analysis revealed motivations at three levels: intergroup (ethnic prejudice, animosity towards security forces), intragroup (conformity, fear of missing out) and individual (thrill-seeking, need for significance, greed, impulsivity). Narratives illustrate how these factors interact within a context of socio-political and economic upheaval. Most participants cited motivations at the intragroup and individual levels, with fewer referencing intergroup factors or reporting a single level of motivation. Conformity (an intragroup factor) was reported by all participants. This research highlights the complex interplay of psychological and social dynamics driving collective ethnic violence.
This study examined how conspiracy beliefs influence romantic relationships. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 17 partners (or ex-partners) of conspiracy believers, asking questions about their experiences in their relationships. A thematic analysis generated several key themes. Specifically, participants described how their partner's beliefs led to relational strain in the form of conflict and communication breakdown, which was tied to the psychosocial death of the partner and the relationship. There were several negative effects on participants, as their partner's beliefs not only affected their relationship dynamic but also took a psychological and physical toll on the participants themselves. Sense-making became important as participants tried to understand their partner's beliefs. Ultimately, most relationships deteriorated, and many ended, though some remained intact due to financial or emotional barriers. During this process, participants reported seeking support and started to navigate endings in the case of relationship dissolution. These findings extend current knowledge on the consequences of conspiracy theories for interpersonal relationships, suggesting that they pose significant barriers to successful romantic attachments.
Recent years have seen a resurgence of protest and resistance movements worldwide, reminding deep interconnections between struggles for liberation beyond borders, histories and identities. While activists frequently frame these efforts through the lens of collective liberation, this lens remains absent from mainstream social psychology. In this article, we introduce collective liberation as a framework, concept and practice for social psychology. We critically examine the epistemological, methodological and conceptual constraints that have obscured it, and turn to activist expressions and theorizing to articulate three core components central to collective liberation: interlocked systems of oppression, interdependency of individuals and their freedoms, and shared responsibility for their liberation. We situate collective liberation alongside, yet distinct from, existing research constructs in collective action, resistance, allyship and solidarity, blurring the lines between allyship and resistance. Finally, we propose a research agenda that integrates collective liberation into social psychological theory and practice, offering new avenues for studying sustained activism and resistance, cross-movement solidarity and the psychological processes that support long-term social change.
A growing field of research examines how people experience and resolve cognitive conflicts in their behaviours, particularly in relation to meat consumption. Despite the alleged importance of conflict in behaviour change, most research focuses on how conflict motivates individuals to change or maintain their conflicted behaviour but disregards that conflict may persist even after successful behaviour change. This oversight has contributed to seemingly contradictory conclusions by conflating different kinds of conflicts and has arguably constrained theory development. Our review thus delineates (a) how people with different dietary patterns in meat consumption are affected by meat-related ambivalence and dissonance, (b) differences in the characteristics (magnitude, frequency, moralization) of these conflicts, (c) boundary conditions of why conflict experiences arise, and (d) how these factors determine the downstream consequences of conflict. This allows us to derive several novel predictions, ranging from why conflict avoidance strategies may sometimes paradoxically increase the likelihood of experiencing conflict to the distinct roles of capability, opportunity, and motivation in shaping the behavioural consequences of conflict. By re-evaluating prevailing assertions in the literature on meat-related conflict, we offer numerous theoretical and practical implications regarding cognitive conflict and the psychology of meat consumption and avoidance.
Psychological research typically distinguishes between normative (e.g., peaceful protests, petitions) and non-normative (e.g., property destruction, riots) collective action. This binary framework has proved useful in exploring the psychological factors that shape different forms of collective action. However, recent critiques suggest it oversimplifies the fluid, contested, and context-dependent nature of collective protest. Our paper develops these critiques through qualitative analysis of walking interview accounts and courtroom transcripts of an event occurring at a 2020 Black Lives Matter rally in the city of Bristol, UK. During this event, a public statue of Edward Colston (1636-1721), a 17th century slaver, was toppled, defaced, and thrown in the River Avon, and four protestors were subsequently charged with, then acquitted of, criminal damage. Implications for conceptualising and investigating collective action are explored and the importance of recovering the situated meanings and consequences of local understandings of normative and non-normative action emphasised.
Sharing ideas and offering suggestions for group improvement, while highly beneficial for the group, can challenge its existing order, potentially creating normative conflict. Integrating this perspective with the multidimensional approach to group identification, this research examined the distinct, even opposing, effects of different identification modes on overt suggestion-making behaviour. In two field studies (n = 599 and n = 412), we hypothesized and found that the affective mode of identification (commitment) positively predicted overt suggestion-making behaviour, whereas the normative mode of identification (deference) predicted it negatively. These effects were consistent when the identification modes and suggestion-making were measured concurrently (Studies 1 and 2), and when suggestion-making was assessed again 2 years later (Study 1). The hypothesized opposing effects of the identification modes were consistent even after accounting for the enduring components of identification and suggestion-making behaviour in a model combining Studies 1 and 2, and were partially mediated by personal values (Study 1). Taken together, our findings reveal that groups seeking to foster high identification among their members should carefully consider the specific mode they aim to encourage, bearing in mind their differential implications.
Disasters create a fertile context for the scapegoating of minority groups, yet the discursive strategies used to legitimize this hostility remain understudied. This study addresses this gap by analysing how anti-refugee sentiment is discursively justified on social media during a crisis. We investigated how language on social media is used to legitimize hostility against refugees during disasters. Using a critical discursive psychology (CDP) approach, we analysed 345 posts on X that targeted Afghan refugees during the devastating July 2021 wildfires in Türkiye. Our analysis identifies three key discursive strategies that function to justify exclusion while avoiding charges of anti-refugee hostility and racism: (1) constructing refugees as a catastrophic threat akin to disasters; (2) circulating conspiracy theories that blame refugees for causing the crisis; and (3) delegitimizing refugees through categorization practices that question their moral worth and right to belong. Rather than relying on overtly racist language, these strategies draw on rational-seeming arguments about security, resource competition and cultural difference to build a warrant for exclusion. Our research expands the literature on the interplay between discourse and racism by demonstrating how racist verbal strategies are leveraged during disasters to legitimize hostility against refugees, thereby reinforcing social hierarchies and naturalizing exclusionary policies.
Populist leaders are known for engaging supporters through compelling rhetoric, sparking debate about what persuasive strategies they use to mobilize voters. While research shows that leaders creatively frame their communication, the role of social media-especially its multimodal affordances-remains poorly understood. This study applies multimodal critical discursive psychology (MCDP) to examine the modalities used in TikTok videos of Finnish right-wing populist politician Sebastian Tynkkynen. Using the integrative social identity model of populist leadership (ISIMPL), we identified eight discursive and multimodal strategies, through which Tynkkynen performs populistic identity leadership and constructs a shared identity: 'performing populist prototypicality' by emphasizing authenticity and ordinariness, 'performing as the voice of the people' through heroism and self-sacrifice, 'mobilizing a populist "us"' through in-group celebration and shared victimhood, and 'othering the elite as "them"' through blame and ridicule. These are accomplished through various discursive and multimodal resources, with co-contextualization of elements playing a crucial role in creating an overall message. This study shows how multimodal communication enables populist politicians to innovatively perform leadership and construct shared identities online, enhancing understanding of the discursive and multimodal construction of populist identity leadership.
The current research examines the relationship between psychological distance and system justification through the lens of the Construal Level Theory. In three experimental studies, we investigated whether and how psychological distance shapes the salience of different levels of social identity relevant to system-justifying tendencies. In Study 1, we investigated the moderating effect of psychological distance on the relationship between membership in different gender-based groups and system justification in the context of gender inequality. In Study 2, we investigated the influence of psychological distance on the extent to which individuals with opposing political ideologies justify the system. Finally, Study 3 deepened Studies 1-2 by comparing the impact of lower- vs. higher-level identity threats as a function of psychological distance. Results suggest that psychological distance reduces system justification among typically high-justifying groups, leading to greater convergence across status and ideological divides. Implications, limitations and future directions are discussed.
Understanding community resilience to disasters is fundamentally important in a world characterized by increasing political and environmental instability. The Social Identity Model of Collective Resilience has examined how the shared identity that emerges among neighbourhood residents affected by disasters can facilitate and coordinate effective collective responses, but has yet to examine impacts on community members beyond those directly affected. This is particularly important given the role of social identities in creating shared vulnerability and resilience to collective trauma among those indirectly affected, as well as evidence that neighbourhood identification can provide residents with collective resilience to a range of shared socio-economic and environmental stressors. The present study addresses this gap through an exploration of residents' accounts of the occurrence and aftermath of a terrorist attack on Manchester, England in 2017. The thematic analysis of retrospective interviews with 18 city residents indirectly affected by the bomb revealed that two key aspects of Mancunian identity - diversity and endurance of the city - were used to interpret the event and reported to facilitate coordinated coping and collective recovery. The implications are that identifying and enhancing local norms of cohesion and endurance can play a part in providing communities with resilience to future disasters.
This study employed critical discursive and rhetorical psychology to analyse the discourses drawn upon to justify an arguably violent protest outside a previously disused hotel in rural Ireland, where 34 male asylum seekers had been accommodated. Interviews with protesters and public representatives were retrieved from three mainstream media platforms. The protesters drew on three contradictory and deracialized discursive strategies to inoculate their justification for the protest against accusations of prejudice, which we label compassionate exclusion. The first is a compassionate concern about the suitability of the accommodation for the asylum seekers, whilst engaging in collective action to force the asylum seekers into homelessness and risk of further violence. The second positions the protesters as compassionate towards the asylum seekers whilst demanding that they receive vetting and that the local community receive prior consultation on their suitability for accommodation. The third presents the 'male' asylum seekers as a threat to women in this isolated rural community, even though the protesters position themselves as compassionate towards the 'lovely men' who are already accommodated. This highlights how compassionate humanitarian concerns can be co-opted to justify an arguably violent demand for the forced removal and exclusion of asylum seekers, whilst avoiding accusations of racism.
Who do we believe deserves rights, and when do we feel personally obligated to protect them? Expanding the moral circle has been seen as a hallmark of moral progress, yet existing research has rarely examined how different kinds of moral judgements, recognizing rights versus endorsing obligations, shape this process. The present research disentangles these judgements across human and non-human entities to better understand how they predict prosocial decision-making. Across three studies (N = 1256), we consistently found that people were more willing to grant moral rights than to endorse moral obligations, particularly for human targets. Yet only obligations emerged as a reliable predictor of prosocial intentions across both high- and low-cost behaviours. Study 3 extended these findings by distinguishing between positive and negative forms of moral judgement, showing that while negative rights and obligations were attributed more broadly, positive obligations most strongly motivated helping, especially towards non-human entities. Together, these findings demonstrate that rights may expand the moral circle symbolically, but obligations, particularly positive obligations, supply the motivational force that is most closely tied to prosociality. This distinction offers new theoretical insight into moral cognition and highlights practical avenues for fostering prosocial engagement in a time of expanding but often inconsistent moral concern.
Research on social identification in marginalized populations has documented both social cure and social curse effects, suggesting that distinct identification dimensions may underlie opposite outcomes. This study integrated the Social Identity Approach to Health with stigma and social exclusion research to explore a dual pathway in which ingroup ties and identity centrality are respectively associated with greater or lower well-being among prisoners through their links with self-stigma and perceived social exclusion. A path analysis was conducted with a sample of 160 prisoners. Findings suggest that belonging and connectedness derived from identifying with fellow prisoners (i.e., ingroup ties) are associated with reduced psychological distress via lower perceived exclusion. In a context characterized by disconnection, social identification may provide a form of reconnection that supports well-being. Conversely, the personal importance attributed to the prisoner identity (i.e., identity centrality) was associated with greater self-stigma and perceived exclusion, with the latter mediating its negative association with well-being. Within a highly stigmatized group, the centrality of group identity may amplify feelings of exclusion, undermining well-being. Overall, the study advances understanding of the dual effects of social identification in marginalized groups and underscores the value of applying established psychosocial frameworks to hard-to-reach populations.
Are concerns for future generations and present-day prosociality at odds? Across three studies, we test the common assumption of a tradeoff between future-oriented concern and immediate helping behaviour. Drawing on theories of moral expansiveness, we examine whether individuals who report greater concern for the far future (as measured by 'intergenerational concern' and 'impartial intergenerational beneficence') are also more likely to engage in or express interest in organ donation, a costly and urgent form of present-day prosociality. In Study 1 (a large-scale survey), Study 2 (a pre-registered experiment) and Study 3 (a comparison of living organ donors, often termed 'extraordinary altruists', with demographically similar controls), concern for future generations predicts donor status, comfort discussing donation and intentions to register. These findings extend psychological theory on prosocial concern across time and provide initial evidence for a novel, theoretically grounded pathway by which future-oriented concern may strengthen rather than compete with present-day prosociality and altruism.