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.

Implicit pattern learning predicts individual differences in belief in God in the United States and Afghanistan.

Most humans believe in a god, but many do not. Differences in belief have profound societal impacts. Anthropological accounts implicate bottom-up perceptual processes in shaping religious belief, suggesting that individual differences in these processes may help explain variation in belief. Here, in findings replicated across socio-religiously disparate samples studied in the U.S. and Afghanistan, implicit learning of patterns/order within visuospatial sequences (IL-pat) in a strongly bottom-up paradigm predict 1) stronger belief in an intervening/ordering god, and 2) increased strength-of-belief from childhood to adulthood, controlling for explicit learning and parental belief. Consistent with research implicating IL-pat as a basis of intuition, and intuition as a basis of belief, mediation models support a hypothesized effect pathway whereby IL-pat leads to intuitions of order which, in turn, lead to belief in ordering gods. The universality and variability of human IL-pat may thus contribute to the global presence and variability of religious belief.

The psychology of revolution.

Revolutions are attempts to forcibly overthrow the political and social order. However, most revolutions fail to generate longer-term psychological changes to bring about a match between the behavior of the population and the espoused goals of the revolution. Attempts by the new ruling 'revolutionary' elite to re-establish order in society often result in a resurgence of repression and corruption, and imprisonment for those considered 'anti-revolutionary'. Recent psychological research on revolutions explains this failure through limitations in political plasticity, the speed and extent to which political behavior does or does not change, which constrain the impact a revolution can have on individual and collective behavior.

The power of norms to sway fused group members.

Whitehouse adapts insights from evolutionary anthropology to interpret extreme self-sacrifice through the concept of identity fusion. The model neglects the role of normative systems in shaping behaviors, especially in relation to violent extremism. In peaceful groups, increasing fusion will actually decrease extremism. Groups collectively appraise threats and opportunities, actively debate action options, and rarely choose violence toward self or others.

The staircase to terrorism: a psychological exploration.

To foster a more in-depth understanding of the psychological processes leading to terrorism, the author conceptualizes the terrorist act as the final step on a narrowing staircase. Although the vast majority of people, even when feeling deprived and unfairly treated, remain on the ground floor, some individuals climb up and are eventually recruited into terrorist organizations. These individuals believe they have no effective voice in society, are encouraged by leaders to displace aggression onto out-groups, and become socialized to see terrorist organizations as legitimate and out-group members as evil. The current policy of focusing on individuals already at the top of the staircase brings only short-term gains. The best long-term policy against terrorism is prevention, which is made possible by nourishing contextualized democracy on the ground floor.