The relationship between the self and the collective is discussed from the perspective of self-categorization theory. Self-categorization theory makes a basic distinction between personal and social identity as different levels of self-categorization. It shows how the emergent properties of group processes can be explained in terms of a shift in self perception from personal to social identity. It also elucidates how self-categorization varies with the social context. It argues that self-categorizing is inherently variable, fluid, and context dependent, as sedf-categories are social comparative and are always relative to a frame of reference. This notion has major implications for accepted ways of thinking about the self: The variability of self-categorizing provides the perceiver with behavioral and cognitive flexibility and ensures that cognition is always shaped by the social context in which it takes place.

In this article the authors explore the social psychological processes underpinning sustainable commitment to a social or political cause. Drawing on recent developments in the collective action, identity formation, and social norm literatures, they advance a new model to understand sustainable commitment to action. The normative alignment model suggests that one solution to promoting ongoing commitment to collective action lies in crafting a social identity with a relevant pattern of norms for emotion, efficacy, and action. Rather than viewing group emotion, collective efficacy, and action as group products, the authors conceptualize norms about these as contributing to a dynamic system of meaning, which can shape ongoing commitment to a cause. By exploring emotion, efficacy, and action as group norms, it allows scholars to reenergize the theoretical connections between collective identification and subjective meaning but also allows for a fresh perspective on complex questions of causality.

Social psychology has much to say about conditions under which people will take action to overcome their own, or another group's, disadvantage. Starting with Le Bon's (1895/1947) analysis of crowd behavior, social psychologists have explored the psychological motivators and processes underpinning collective action for over a century (for reviews see Haslam, 2001; Klandermans, 1997). This paper focuses on two recent developments in that tradition that emphasize a central role of social identity. Specifically, van Zomeren, Postmes, and Spears (2008) have recently conducted an integrative meta-analysis of collective action research, yielding what van Zomeren et al. (2008) call the social identity model of collective action (SIMCA). Thomas, McGarty, and Mavor (2009a) proposed an alternative complementary role for social identity in the encapsulation model of social identity in collective action (EMSICA). This paper provides direct empirical tests of SIMCA and EMSICA with some new twists. Both models afford a central role to the function of social identities in promoting collective action.

Research on group identification has shown it to be a surprisingly weak predictor of intentions to take large-scale social action. The weak links may exist because researchers have not always examined identification with the type of group that is most relevant for predicting action. Our focus in two studies (one in Romania and one in Australia, both Ns ¼ 101) was on opinion-based groups (i.e. groups formed around shared opinions). We found that social identification with opinion-based groups was an excellent predictor of political behavioural intentions, particularly when items measuring identity certainty were included. The results provide clear evidence of the role of social identity constructs for predicting commitment to social action and complement analyses of politicised collective identity and crowd behaviour.

This article explores the synergies between recent developments in the social identity of helping, and advantaged groups' prosocial emotion. The authors review the literature on the potential of guilt, sympathy, and outrage to transform advantaged groups' apathy into positive action. They place this research into a novel framework by exploring the ways these emotions shape group processes to produce action strategies that emphasize either social cohesion or social change. These prosocial emotions have a critical but underrecognized role in creating contexts of in-group inclusion or exclusion, shaping normative content and meaning, and informing group interests. Furthermore, these distinctions provide a useful way of differentiating commonly discussed emotions. The authors conclude that the most "effective" emotion will depend on the context of the inequality but that outrage seems particularly likely to productively shape group processes and social change outcomes.

In this article, we argue that progress in the study of collective action rests on an increasingly sophisticated application of the social identity approach. We develop the view, however, that the application of this theoretical perspective has been limited by theoretical and empirical difficulties in distinguishing between social categories and psychological groups. These problems have undermined the ability of researchers to correctly specify the collective identities that actually underpin many instances of collective action. As a partial solution to this problem we focus on collective identities based on shared opinion (opinion-based groups). We develop the proposition that much collective action reflects the crystallization or instantiation of opinion-based groups. We also outline an intervention aimed at stimulating commitment to collective action through group-based interaction involving opinion-based group members. We conclude by emphasizing that opinion-based groups tend to be most successful when they present themselves as

In this article, we propose a social psychological mechanism for the formation of new social change movements. Here, we argue that social change follows the emergence of shared injunctive social norms that define new collective identities, and we systematically spell out the nature of the processes through which this comes about. We propose that these norms and identities are created and negotiated through validating communication about a normative conflict; resulting in an identity-norm nexus (INN), whereby people become the change they want to see in the world. We suggest that injunctive norms are routinely negotiated, validated, and integrated with shared identity in order to create the potential to effect change in the world. Norms and identities need not be integrated or connected in this way, but the power of social actors to form new social movements to bring about sociopolitical change will tend to be severely limited unless they can bring about the integration of identity and action.Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. (Robert F. Kennedy)The Occupy Movement, the Arab Spring, Kony 2012, and countless instances of NIMBY (Not in My BackYard) activism suggest that new social movements continue to emerge to create sociopolitical change. Here, we ask to what extent can political psychology explain the origin of new movements. As we detail below, the major research streams in both political science and social psychology are best suited to explaining social change in terms of existing social movements, institutions, and identities. This has been a productive focus: social movements often arise from conflict between groups defined by class, ethnicity, language and religion, and from political institutions. However, cases where social changes begin without preexisting political parties or Smith et al. 2 544Smith et al.

Whether the Australian government should officially apologize to Indigenous Australians for past wrongs is hotly debated in Australia. The predictors of support amongst non-Indigenous Australians for such an apology were examined in two studies. The first study (N=164) showed that group-based guilt was a good predictor of support for a government apology, as was the perception that non-Indigenous Australians were relatively advantaged. In the second study (N=116) it was found that group-based guilt was an excellent predictor of support for apology and was itself predicted by perceived non-Indigenous responsibility for harsh treatment of Indigenous people, and an absence of doubts about the legitimacy of group-based guilt. National identification was not a predictor of group-based guilt. The results of the two studies suggest that, just as individual emotions predict individual action tendencies, so group-based guilt predicts support for actions or decisions to be taken at the collective level.