When social movements fail or succeed: social psychological consequences of a collective action's outcome.

Collective actions occur all around the world and, in the last few years, even more frequently. Previous literature has mainly focused on the antecedents of collective actions, but less attention has been given to the consequences of participating in collective action. Moreover, it is still an open question how the consequences of collective action might differ, depending on whether the actions are perceived to succeed or fail. In two studies we seek to address this gap using innovative experimental studies. In Study 1 (N = 368) we manipulated the perceptions of success and failure of a collective action in the context of a real social movement, the Chilean student movement from last decade. In Study 2 (N = 169), in addition to manipulating the outcome, we manipulated actual participation, using a mock environmental organization aiming to create awareness in authorities, to test the causal effect of both participation and success/failure on empowerment, group efficacy, and intentions of future involvement in normative and non-normative collective actions. Results show that current and past participation predict overall participation in the future, however, in Study 2 the manipulated participation was associated with having less intentions of participating in the future. In both studies, perception of success increases group efficacy. In Study 1, we found that when facing failure, participants increase their willingness to participate more in the future as opposed to non-participants that actually decrease theirs. In Study 2, however, failure increases the perception of efficacy for those with a history of non-normative participation. Altogether these results highlight the moderating role of the outcome of collective action to understand the effect of participation on future participation. We discuss these results in light of the methodological innovation and the real world setting in which our studies were conducted.

Is Support for Feminism Enough for Change? How Sexism and Gender Stereotypes Might Hinder Gender Justice.

Even though formal processes (i.e., gender quotes) are necessary to achieve gender justice, attitudinal changes (i.e., support of egalitarian social norms) are also essential. The endorsement of sexism and gender stereotypes perpetuate inequality on a daily basis, and can be seen as barriers that prevent societies from reaching social justice. Therefore, changing sexist social norms can be understood as a fundamental step in accomplishing gender justice. With the aim of studying Chileans' sexist norms, we conducted a survey with a representative sample (N = 490) exploring levels of sexism and gender stereotypes, as well as support for the feminist movement. Using Latent Profile Analysis, we identified four groups of citizens: (1) a first group that shows high levels of sexism and low support for the feminist movement (9%); (2) a second group, with low levels of sexism and high support for the feminist movement (20%); (3) a third group with high levels of sexism and high support for the feminist movement (65%); and (4) a fourth group with mid-levels of sexism and support of the feminist movement (6%). We called these groups the Sexist, Feminist, Inconsistent, and Moderate Group, respectively. The four groups showed similar high endorsement of gender stereotypes. These results are twofold. First, they hint that although nowadays gender equality seems to be generally accepted, this coexists with a high prevalence of sexist social norms, represented by the inconsistent group being the most prevalent. Second, gender stereotypes are still deeply rooted in Chilean culture, surprisingly even among feminist citizens.

Ladies First: Gender Stereotypes Drive Anticipatory Eye-Movements During Incremental Sentence Interpretation.

Immediate contextual information and world knowledge allow comprehenders to anticipate incoming language in real time. The cognitive mechanisms that underlie such behavior are, however, still only partially understood. We examined the novel idea that gender attitudes may influence how people make predictions during sentence processing. To this end, we conducted an eye-tracking experiment where participants listened to passive-voice sentences expressing gender-stereotypical actions (e.g., "The wood is being painted by the florist") while observing displays containing both female and male characters representing gender-stereotypical professions (e.g., florists, soldiers). In addition, we assessed participants' explicit gender-related attitudes to explore whether they might predict potential effects of gender-stereotypical information on anticipatory eye movements. The observed gaze pattern reflected that participants used gendered information to predict who was agent of the action. These effects were larger for female- vs. male-stereotypical contextual information but were not related to participants' gender-related attitudes. Our results showed that predictive language processing can be moderated by gender stereotypes, and that anticipation is stronger for female (vs. male) depicted characters. Further research should test the direct relation between gender-stereotypical sentence processing and implicit gender attitudes. These findings contribute to both social psychology and psycholinguistics research, as they extend our understanding of stereotype processing in multimodal contexts and regarding the role of attitudes (on top of world knowledge) in language prediction.

The intergenerational transmission of participation in collective action: The role of conversation and political practices in the family.

In this study, we examined the intergenerational transmission of collective action from parents to children. Using a mixed-method approach combining quantitative and qualitative analysis, we analysed data from 100 dyads of activist parents in Chile (involved in the mobilizations against the dictatorship during the 1980s) and their adult children (N = 200). The quantitative analysis addressed the role of conversations about politics in the family. The results provided evidence of a direct association between those conversations and the frequency of participation in conventional and radical actions by the children, and an indirect association via children's knowledge about parental involvement in past social movements. The qualitative phase, which used interviews and thematic analysis on a subsample of 24 dyads (N = 48), confirmed the role of political conversations, but also revealed the influence of other factors such as cultural consumption and joint political participation. This phase allowed the identification of factors that facilitate or hinder family transmission. Overall, the study highlights the relevance of family as a critical site of socialization that enables the intergenerational transmission of protest.

An Exploratory Study on Mind Wandering, Metacognition, and Verbal Creativity in Chilean High School Students.

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between mind wandering, metacognition, and creativity in a sample of Chilean high school students. Two hundred and twenty-eight secondary students took three self-report scales on mind wandering, metacognitive strategies and reading difficulties, two verbal creativity assessments, a test of fluid intelligence and a measure of attentional capacity. Correlational analysis, a single multiple hierarchical regression, and a three-way moderation model were performed on data. Controlling for fluid intelligence and reading difficulties, metacognition and attention predicted creativity while mind wandering did not. Additionally, a three-way interaction showed that mind wandering had a positive impact on creativity only among students with both high attention and high metacognition. These results reflect the relevance of cognitive self-regulation for creativity during the high school years. Educational implications are discussed.