Benefits and potential backlashes of allies engaging in solidarity-based collective action

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Julia Christina Becker
• Subject Area: Social Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology
• Term: from 2016 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 321116626

The aim of this project is to study the benefits and potential backlashes of allies engaging in solidarity-based collective action from four perspectives: a) the third party perspective, b) the authority’s perspective, c) the minority’s perspective, and d) the perspective of allies.The project made significant progress so far. We have conducted six of the proposed eight studies and conducted eight additional studies in order to more systematically examine the research questions in response to the reviewers’ comments. Given that reviewers criticized the lack of a strong theoretical foundation, we wrote a theoretical review paper on different “types” of allies. We propose that advantaged group allies can be motivated 1) by personal benefits (personal self-interest motivation), 2) on the condition that the status of their own group is maintained (ingroup protection motivation), and/or 3) to improve the status of the disadvantaged group knowing that this will affect the status of their own group (outgroup-focused motivation). Comparing the effects of members of advantaged and disadvantaged groups, we found that, as expected, allies have beneficial effects on observers; they are more likely to identify with the protest movement when more allies are present. In contrast, the presence of allies did not greatly affect targets – allies are evaluated negatively only when they displayed dominant behavior. In terms of mutual evaluations of targets and allies, targets are more likely to positively evaluate allies, whereas allies are more likely to positively evaluate targets. Further, we found that cross-group contact with disadvantaged group members does not turn advantaged group members into allies. Instead, advantaged group members are more likely to engage in solidarity-based collective action only if they engage in politicized contact and like their contact partner.We ask for a renewal for further 18 months. Although the project went very well and revealed important findings, it needs additional work to explain unexpected results and to complete a comprehensive study of ally action. The renewal proposal has three main objectives. First, we aim to finish two projects examining the effects of allies on decision-makers (project 2), and different motivations of allies compared to targets (project 3). Second, we need to collect additional data for two projects. In project 4, we aim to examine more carefully which types of actions allies are willing to engage in. In project 5, we will test for boundary conditions of ally support and aim to manipulate the mediators in order to find more evidence for our proposed causal model. Third, we aim to write manuscripts for project 1 and 7. This renewal would greatly benefit the project by allowing us to systematically examine the questions, resulting in more and higher impact publications. Further, we aim to organize a special issue on ally action, which would help to make our research more visible.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Canada
• Co-Investigator: Professorin Dr. Birte Siem
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dr. Stephen Wright