When Voting Becomes Protest:Mapping Determinants of Collective Action Onto Voting Behavior

Do people signal protest by bringing out a protest vote when they feel they have been collectively disadvantaged? Political scientists have been interested in "protest voting" yet theoretical understanding is limited. Social psychologists have studied other forms of collective protest extensively. The present study integrates insights from the political science approach to protest voting and the social psychological approach to protest behavior to study how a context of perceived collective disadvantage influences voting for protest parties. We conducted a field study with a quasi-experimental design. This allowed us to study effects of a plausibly exogenous variable-the presence versus absence of societal disadvantage (the experience of man-made earthquakes)-on both determinants of and on subsequent protest voting. Results reveal that the presence of earthquakes affects levels of protest voting via (national) trust, regional identification, and perceptions of efficacy.</p

Caught in a social crossfire:Exploring the social forces behind and experience of ambivalence about potential social change

Social psychological research on societal debates about potential social change (e.g., abortion, racial segregation) often focuses on those who take clear positions in these debates. Yet, little is known about the often invisible yet potentially influential group that experiences ambivalence in societal debates. Extending and integrating ambivalence and social change research, we explore the relation between social forces in societal debates and the experiences of ambivalence about social change within these debates. Thematic analysis of extensive interviews with 15 Dutch students experiencing ambivalence in a heated Dutch societal debate revealed that different social forces (e.g., interpersonal relations, groups people belong to, societal systems) facilitate felt ambivalence about potential social change. Moreover, this ambivalence was often experienced as feeling caught in a social crossfire. Our work contributes to a richer psychological understanding of ambivalence about potential social change and reveals the complexity of decision making in the context of societal debates

Broadening perspectives on achieving social change

The articles in this special issue challenge readers to reconsider the relationships among individual mobility, collective action, and social change. Taken together, they reveal an increasing and broadening interest in the concept of social change and raise important questions about its societal applications. In this commentary, we expand on this rich body of research by considering how surface indicators of (lack of) social change such as individual versus collective action may be related to a wider range of motives than has been assumed. Moreover, we consider more carefully what constitutes social change, and discuss different forms of equality as a means to conceptualizing social change. In doing so, we attempt to move beyond implied dichotomies between individual and collective strategies and actions to consider alternative perspectives on classifying and studying social change.<br/

Community Collectivism:A social dynamic approach to conceptualizing culture

Culture shapes individuals, but the measurement of cultural differences has proven a challenge. Traditional measures of cultural values focus on individual perceptions. We suggest that values are established and maintained within social communities of proximate others, such as the family and its social environment. Within such communities, values serve to maintain collective harmony whilst preserving individual agency. From a social-dynamic analysis of communities, we infer that community values of loyalty regulate individual commitment, values of honor regulate norm compliance, and values of group hierarchy maintain a division of labor. In addition, communities may regulate the ways in which individuals have independent agency. A new scale to measure these values was validated in four studies (N = 398, 112, 465 and 111) among Dutch (religious and non-religious), Turkish-Dutch, Surinamese and Turkish groups. Values and practices were measured at the level of the individual ('What do you value?') and at the level of the perceived community ('What does your community value?'). Results show that, unlike individual-level measures of individualism/collectivism, this scale has excellent reliability, differentiates between cultural groups, and has predictive validity for future (voting) behavior. This approach provides a new way of conceptualizing culture, a new measure of collectivism and new insights into the role of proximate others in shaping culture

Dynamic, Not Stable:Daily Variations in Subjective Age Bias and Age Group Identification Predict Daily Well-Being in Older Workers

This work examines the hypothesis that older workers' responses to negative events at work depend, in part, on daily fluctuations of subjective age bias (SAB; how old people feel compared to their actual age) and age group identification (age GI). We tested whether SAB and age GI fluctuate over time, whether they influence attributions of negative daily work events as age-related, and thereby predict older workers' daily affect and cognitive engagement in their work. A diary study with 169 older workers (aged 50-70 years) demonstrates that there are substantial daily variations in SAB and GI. Daily fluctuations of SAB and age GI respectively predicted attributions of negative personal (e.g., forgetfulness) and social (e.g., social exclusion) work events to age. Age attributions, in turn, negatively predicted affect and daily cognitive engagement over and above event occurrence. In other words, when confronted with negative daily work events, the short-term dissociation from one's chronological age and age group (i.e., feeling younger and identifying less with other older adults) seems to benefit older workers' well-being