Influence of socially threatening information on high and low identifiers’ support toward collective action : a study of high and low-identifiers’ reactions to threatening information with hindsight on appraised emotions and their role of mediators toward support of collective action

Collective actions are actions undertaken by a group in order to provoke social change. In the 20th and early 21 th century, collective actions have become, more than ever, an important tool to induce changes in the world. Collective action has traditionally been studied from the point of view of low-status group members. However, support from high-status group members is important in achieving social change. This research thus aims at filling a gap in the literature concerning high-status group members’ support toward collective action initiated by low-status group members. In this research, the role of image threat in moderating the attitudes of low and high-identifiers who belong to high-status groups has been examined. More precisely, we investigated how low and high-identifiers reacted to two different newspaper article presenting a bogus story about refugees being denied access to the UK: one article was highly threatening for their social identity and the other was not. One of the main interest of this research was to study the role played by identification and visibility of the collective action in the prediction of the support demonstrated from participants towards refugees. The mediating roles of social identity threat (threat to the group image) and multiple emotions were explored. In conclusion, in an illegitimate situation involving a misdeed from a high-status group to a low-status group, high-status group members’ support toward the collective action depended on their level of identification and on the visibility of the collective action. Support from participants was predicted by image threat and sympathy towards the refugees. The more image threat and sympathy they felt, the more support toward the collective action they expressed. However, high and low-identifiers were found to react differently to the manipulation of visibility of the collective action. Low-identifiers expressed more support towards the collective action when the visibility was high rather than low and this was explained by a higher level of image threat. High-identifiers expressed less support toward collective action when the collective action was highly visible rather than lowly visible and this was explained by lower levels of sympathy toward the refugees.