This mixed-methods study examines how political leaders mobilize collective intentionality during the COVID-19 pandemic in nine US States, and how collective intentionality differs across republican and democratic administrations. The results of our qualitative and quantitative analyses show that i) political leaders establish collective intentionality by emphasizing unity, vulnerability, action, and community boundaries; ii) political leaders’ call to collective action clashes with the inaction required by health guidelines; iii) social inequalities received little attention across all states compared to other themes; iv) collective intentionality in democratic administrations is linked to individuals’ agency and actions, suggesting a bottom-up approach. Conversely, in republican administrations individuals’ contributions are downplayed compared to work and state-level action, indicating a top-down approach. This study demonstrates the theoretical and empirical value of collective intentionality in sociological research, and contributes to a better understanding of leadership and prosociality in times of crisis.
Social norms can facilitate societal coexistence in groups by providing an implicitly shared set of expectations and behavioral guidelines. However, different social groups can hold different norms, and lacking an overarching normative consensus can lead to conflict within and between groups. In this chapter, we present an agent-based model that simulates the adoption of norms in two interacting groups. We explore this phenomenon while varying relative group sizes and homophily/heterophily (two features of network structure), and initial group norm distributions. Agents update their norm according to an adapted version of Granovetter's threshold model, using a uniform distribution of thresholds. We study the impact of network structure and initial norm distributions on the process of achieving norma-(eds). Computational Conflict Research. Cham: Springer Nature.) 1 2 J. Kohne, N. Gallagher, Z.M. Kirgil, R. Paolillo, L. Padmos, F. Karimi tive consensus and the resulting potential for intragroup and intergroup conflict. Our results show that norm change is most likely when norms are strongly tied to group membership. Groups end up with the most similar norm distributions when networks are heterophilic, with small to middling minority groups. High homophilic networks show high potential intergroup conflict and low potential intragroup conflict, while the opposite pattern emerges for high heterophilic networks.
Prior work has suggested that existential threats in the form of terror attacks may shift liberals’ reliance on moral foundations to more resemble those of conservatives. We therefore hypothesized that endorsement of these moral foundations would have increased when the COVID-19 epidemic became a salient threat. To examine this hypothesis we conducted a longitudinal study with 237 American participants across the liberal-conservative spectrum, in which their endorsement of various moral foundations were measured before and after the advent of the pandemic. We did not find evidence of any systematic change in the endorsement of any moral foundation, neither in general nor specifically among liberals or specifically among those who perceived the greatest threat from COVID-19. We conclude that the threat from the pandemic does not seem to have had any substantial effect on the moral foundations that people rely on. We discuss how this finding relates to other longitudinal studies of the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on measures related to conservatism.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.