Craig McGarty

Background/Objectives: In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Australian state and federal governments enacted boarder closures, social distancing measures, and lockdowns. By the end of October 2020, the 112-day lockdown in the Australian state of Victoria was the longest continuous lockdown period internationally. Previous studies have examined how the COVID-19 pandemic and government restrictions have affected Australians’ mental health and well-being; however, less is known about the relationship between psychological variables and well-being. Methods: We administered a national survey of Australians aged 16 years and over (N = 1380) in November 2020 to examine the psychological factors that promoted and hindered Australians’ well-being and resilience during the first year of the pandemic. Results: Our study found that Australians reported normal to moderate levels of anxiety, moderate stress, mild depression, and moderate to high loneliness. Interpersonal trust was consistently a protective factor for well-being and resilience and was associated with less depression, anxiety, stress, and loneliness, and greater resilience. Participants with greater inhibitory anxiety (intolerance of uncertainty) and an external locus of control were more likely to be depressed, anxious, stressed, and lonely, and less resilient, compared with those with less inhibitory anxiety and those who believed that these outcomes were determined by their own actions. COVID-19 beliefs were associated with more depression, anxiety, stress, and resilience. Conclusions: This study seeks to inform the development of mental-health, well-being, and resilience strategies by government agencies, non-government organisations, and healthcare providers in times of crisis and in “ordinary” times.

In October 2019, student protests in Chile quickly expanded into a mobilization of more than three million citizens, who protested for nearly a year and successfully brought about sociopolitical change. To gain a comprehensive understanding of the social‐psychological processes behind the Chile despertó, we analyze the protests using the group‐consciousness model. The model assumes that collective action is fuelled by a sense of belonging to a group formed around the unifying idea of sociopolitical change through a new constitution, anger at the current status quo, and a belief that protesters can work together to effect the desired change. Data from over 700 Chileans collected in May 2020 indicate that (1) group consciousness is an important construct related to participation in collection action, (2) the main predictors of the group consciousness of Chile despertó are perceived social inequality and unfairness of authorities, and (3) family support and left‐wing ideology are positively related to participation in collection action, which are partially mediated by group consciousness. Thus, the current study highlights unique factors that contributed to the Chile despertó and highlights the commonalities of key social‐psychological processes in collective action.

Public health restrictions during the Covid-19 emergency context placed limits on gathering that inevitably limited the ways that people could express dissent. The target of many protests has included the limitations placed by governments on the rights to have mass, public protests. Despite the physical limits on street protests the use of online methods to promote support for protest has increased in this context. People turned to online methods (petitions, confrontations, and discussions) and engaged in other forms of direct disruptive action to express their views about how the world should be. These observations demand a closer examination of the changing nature of collective action during the pandemic. The aim of the chapter is to study the relation between the type of collective action (offline vs. online) and the process of mobilisation for social change during the Covid-19 pandemic, comparing Italy and Australia. Two integrated models have been tested: The Social Identity Model of Collective Action, and the Encapsulation Model of the Social Identity of Collective Action. Results showed online collective action as a future way to engage, because of its “simple” and immediate way to make one's voice heard when everyone's rights and liberties seem to be endangered.

Social psychology’s search for ways to address intergroup inequality has grappled with two approaches that have been considered incompatible: (a) the prejudice reduction approach, that argues that changing individual negative attitudes will undermine the basis for discrimination and lead to intergroup harmony; and (b) the collective action approach, that argues that social protest and activism can improve the position of disadvantaged groups. The problem is that efforts toward prejudice reduction may serve to suppress genuine efforts to change. We propose the Achieving Multicultural Integration of Groups Across Society (AMIGAS) model, in which a multicultural commitment is proposed as a driver of both improved intergroup evaluations and promotion of collective action for reduced inequality, especially in contexts where there are conditions for a respectful intercultural dialogue. The AMIGAS model is a theoretical advance in the field of intergroup relations and a basis for implementing effective egalitarian policies and practices.

The social identity model of collective action (SIMCA) and the encapsulation model of the social identity of collective action (EMSICA) are well‐known models that have been applied to protest action. The current study tests the predictive value of the core constructs in the models (social identification, perceived injustice and group efficacy) in a peaceful pro‐environmental program. Specifically, we sought to answer whether the two models provide equally good accounts of (self‐reported) past participation and of intended participation. To do so, we conducted a survey of 382 participants of a sustained environmental collective action program (Nature Cleaners) in Iran. Our findings underlined the important role of social identification in predicting environmental action. The results also showed that SIMCA was more relevant for intentions to participate, whereas paths specified by EMSICA better predicted past participation. The results provide a demonstration of the applicability of collective action models to the domain of pro‐environmental action in the Iranian cultural context where collective action is rarely studied. Overall, the findings highlight the importance of studying collective action in a wider range of situations and contexts.

In this study, we analyze the evolution of the protests after the election of the Venezuelan Constitutional Assembly in 2017. We adopt the idea of a social conflict over diverging opinions about how the world should be. Sharing similar opinion is one basis for a sense of collective identity that facilitates participation in action to bring about desired changes in the world. We approach social conflict as an interaction between different opinion-based groups, in which opinions are formed and transformed leading and supporting different forms of collective action. We analyze Twitter conversations before, during, and after the events of the summer 2017 anti-regime protests in Venezuela. Correspondence and cluster analysis of a corpus of 60,036 tweets is used to investigate the theme and opinions from July to September 2017. Results show that opinions become more extreme and one-sided in response to overt repression and the authority’s lack of negotiation with movements. After the repression of the protests and President Maduro’s successful implementation of an elected Constitutional Assembly, tweets supporting the rule of law and democratic procedures dissipated, while more radical positions strengthened. These finding suggests that democratic principles rest on a precarious relationship between the individual and the authority. Protest movements may arrive at the paradoxical position in which radicalization is the most straightforward response to repression: The most radical positions survive, while the moderate ones are co-opted or suppressed by the regime. We argue that this dynamic may have potentially negative consequences for democracy and social change.

This article investigates whether the perceived threat of terrorism explains the support for right-wing Eurosceptic parties and Euroscepticism above and beyond other relevant variables, including perceived economic and immigration threats. We first examined the entire Eurobarometer samples of 2014 and 2015, and then conducted survey experiments in four European Union (EU) countries, that is, United Kingdom (N = 197), France (N = 164), Italy (N = 312), and Romania (N = 144). Our findings suggest that the perceived threat of terrorism has a small effect on the negative attitudes toward the EU above and beyond the effect of immigration and economic threats and other basic control variables. The relationship between these variables varies across countries and it is less linear than we might expect.