Feeling and thought in collective action on social issues: Toward a systems perspective

Abstract

Theories of action have tended to view it—and its basis in thought and feeling—as static, discrete, mechanistic, and decontextualized. Moreover, studies of action have tended to be fragmented in academic silos. The consequences of these problems include a lack of cumulative and contextualized theory‐building, and an inability to recognize emergent, dynamic, and non‐linear causality, especially across levels of analysis. We argue that such problems could be partly alleviated with increased engagement with a meta‐theoretical perspective that has long been advocated for in psychology—the systems approach. In this view, thought, feeling, motivation, action, and context can be viewed as co‐evolving, inextricably linked, systems of systems. We illustrate the need for and benefit of this approach in the domain of collective action on social issues. We conclude that systems perspectives allow more contextualized, generalizable, conceptually rich, and applied directions for research in this domain.

MOBILISE: A Higher‐Order Integration of Collective Action Research to Address Global Challenges

“…As Ellemers (2013) points out, accumulation of research findings does not necessarily build an integrative knowledge base. In the context of collective action specifically, Bou Zeineddine and Leach (2021) recently argued that our science suffers from a lack of cumulative and contextualized theory building, writing:

Yet theories of social action have tended to view it—and its basis in thought and feeling—as static, discrete, mechanistic, and decontextualized. This mismatch between the reality of action and our approaches to understanding it has hampered the development of cumulative, generalizable theory, and empirical knowledge.

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The Moderating Effects of “Dark” Personality Traits and Message Vividness on the Persuasiveness of Terrorist Narrative Propaganda

“…Despite research on the respective effects of personality factors and terrorist messaging, the interaction between them remains unexplored. 1 This oversight is notable and unfortunate, as the persuasiveness of a message is contingent not only on its content or presentation, but also on the psychological features of those to whom it is presented (e.g., Gerber et al, 2013;Chuang and Tabak, 2015;Lawson et al, 2017;Wall et al, 2019;Zeineddine and Leach, 2021). The present study addresses this gap in the literature.…”

“Some uninteresting data from a faraway country”: Inequity and coloniality in international social psychological publications

“…This pattern is consistent with the idea that coloniality shapes what researchers see as important in the content of internationalized psychology (e.g., Adams et al., 2015). If it is difficult to get Northern‐dominated, international journals to publish topics seen as important to non‐Northerners, and if these topics are also more sensitive and subject to political repression (e.g., corruption in the Middle East; Hawi et al., in press), then this manifestation of coloniality opens the possibility that research on such topics does not get published at all, resulting in a biased research archive that is less valid, relevant, and representative (see similar arguments in collective action literature, e.g., Ayanian et al., 2020; Bou Zeineddine & Leach, 2021).…”