Survivors of disasters commonly provide each other with social support, but the social‐psychological processes behind such solidarity behaviours have not been fully explicated. We describe a survey of 1240 adults affected by the 2010 Chile earthquake to examine the importance of two factors: observing others providing social support and social identification with other survivors. As expected, emotional social support was associated with social identification, which in turn was predicted by disaster exposure through common fate. Observing others' supportive behaviour predicted both providing emotional social support and providing coordinated instrumental social support. Expected support was a key mediator of these relationships and also predicted collective efficacy. There was also an interaction: social identification moderated the relationship between observing and providing social support. These findings serve to develop the social identity account of mass emergency behaviour and add value to disaster research by showing the relevance of concepts from collective action.

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This article tests a longitudinal model of the antecedents and consequences of changes in identification with indigenous (Mapuche) among indigenous and nonindigenous youth in Chilean school contexts over a 6-month period (633 nonindigenous and 270 Mapuche students, M ages = 12.47 and 12.80 years, respectively). Results revealed that in-group norms supporting contact and quality of intergroup contact at Time 1 predicted student's changes in Mapuche identification at Time 2, which in turn predicted changes in support for adoption of Chilean culture and maintenance of Mapuche culture at Time 2; some of the relationships between these variables were found to be moderated by age and ethnicity. Conceptual and policy implications are addressed in the Discussion.

To what extent does social origin impact the disposition of students toward becoming politically involved in their future adult life? Using Chilean data from Civic Education Study, 1999 (N = 5688), and International Civic and Citizenship Education Study, 2009 (N = 5192), the present research analyzes, on the one hand, the impact of socioeconomic variables on attitudes toward future political participation and, on the other hand, explores to what extent the association between social origin and participation has changed over time. The analysis is performed in a multilevel framework, to account for both family socioeconomic status and individual school characteristics. The results support the hypothesis that social origin continues to have a strong influence on students' attitudes toward political participation, in the context of the two measurement points. The resulting discussion focuses on the role of schools in reducing socioeconomic differences, an issue that acquires additional relevance in societies with high inequality such as Chile.

Resumen: Chile es uno de los países con mayor concentración del ingreso a nivel mundial. Dada la relación entre alta desigualdad económica y patrones de estratifi cación social, en tal contexto se esperaría una alta dispersión de las percepciones respecto del propio estatus o estatus social subjetivo. Sin embargo, la evidencia internacional señala una marcada tendencia hacia la media del estatus subjetivo, es decir, existirían distorsiones del estatus subjetivo respecto del estatus objetivo. La presente investigación intenta profundizar en este aspecto para el caso de Chile, particularmente en la relación entre estatus socioeconómico, clase social y estatus subjetivo. Los datos a analizar corresponden al módulo de desigualdad económica de la encuesta International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), en su versión del año 2009 para Chile. Los resultados indican una marcada tendencia en la población hacia la media del estatus subjetivo, principalmente de parte de aquellos con mayor estatus objetivo.

In recent years, multiple social movements have emerged around the world. In addition, public surveys indicate the highest recorded levels of support for protest. In this context of acceptance of collective action, we examine the role of nonactivists in the perceived legitimacy of social movements, as this “passive” support can contribute to social change. Given that antecedents of legitimacy have been neglected in the literature, we carried out a survey ( N = 605) among a general sample of the population in Chile to shed light on this issue. We found that social identification with movements and perceived instability predicted the perceived legitimacy of protests by social movements, and that both variables had only indirect effects through group efficacy. This suggests that perceiving social movements as able to achieve success can lead nonactivists to perceive their actions as legitimate, highlighting the importance to movements of being seen to be effective.

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The current study explores different routes to civic involvement by identifying how a context-specific dimension of empathy and beliefs of autonomy and dependency might jointly predict different types of giving behaviors (i.e., monetary donations), which in turn should predict civic engagement. The sample consisted of 1,294 participants (656 females) between the ages of 18 to 64 (M(age) = 38.44, SD = 14.71), randomly selected from seven different cities in Chile. Even after controlling for gender, age, and the socioeconomic status of participants, results mainly support the role of giving behaviors as drivers of actual engagement in civic life. Monetary donations, in turn, are predicted by higher levels of empathy toward poverty and autonomy-oriented beliefs. Implications of these findings are discussed in terms of agentic perspectives on civic participation.