Date: April 9th 2021
Time: 11am Melbourne local time
The Misinformation Lab kicked off our 2021 seminar series in April with an outstanding talk from friend-of-the-lab Dr Morgana Lizzio-Wilson [@dr_morganalw]. Dr Lizzio-Wilson was previously a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Queensland with Dr Winnifred Louis and has now joined Flinders University as a post-doctoral fellow with Dr Emma Thomas.
Dr Lizzio-Wilson is a social and feminist psychologist, who conducts research in allyship, collective action, and violence against women. Not surprisingly, given the national, political climate (especially in Canberra), her talk was a timely and important one.
How Collective-Action Failure Shapes Group Heterogeneity and Engagement in Conventional and Radical Action Over Time
Extensive research has identified factors influencing collective-action participation. However, less is known about how collective-action outcomes (i.e., success and failure) shape engagement in social movements over time. Using data collected before and after the 2017 marriage-equality debate in Australia, we conducted a latent profile analysis that indicated that success unified supporters of change (n = 420), whereas failure created subgroups among opponents (n = 419), reflecting four divergent responses: disengagement (resigned acceptors), moderate disengagement and continued investment (moderates), and renewed commitment to the cause using similar strategies (stay-the-course opponents) or new strategies (innovators). Resigned acceptors were least inclined to act following failure, whereas innovators were generally more likely to engage in conventional action and justify using radical action relative to the other profiles. These divergent reactions were predicted by differing baseline levels of social identification, group efficacy, and anger. Collective-action outcomes dynamically shape participation in social movements; this is an important direction for future research.