Our group is worth the fight: Group cohesion is embedded in willingness to fight or die for relatively deprived political groups during national elections.

Abstract

National elections heighten the risk for political violence. Using the U.S. 2022 midterm election and the Brazilian 2022 runoff presidential election as a context, the research presented here implicates the role of leadership in constructing a sense of group cohesion for which constituents may be willing to violently defend from their political rivals. Specifically, that feeling represented by one's political leader (i.e., that one's political leader is prototypical) enhances perceptions of political group entitativity, which in turn predicts willingness to fight or die to defend the in-group against a political outgroup. This relationship is strengthened by the perception that constituents are unjustly deprived of societal wealth and resources compared to other groups in their respective society. These findings are consistent across two correlational samples (total N = 680) during the heated 2022 U.S. midterm elections and the runoff vote for Brazil's 2022 presidential election. Our findings add to a social identity-based analysis of leadership, particularly how prototypical leaders may engage in identity entrepreneurship to enhance group cohesion by uniting group members with a collective narrative of deprivation which may ultimately motivate political violence.What is the significance of this article for the general public? Political identities are complex and dynamic. We discuss a framework for understanding how our political leaders shape and clarify our political identities, which are necessarily defined by comparisons to other political identities. When these comparisons are unfavorable for one's own political group, there may be a heightened risk for violence between groups.

Psychology and social cohesion.

“…Finally, Syfers et al (2023) discuss potential negative outcomes of some forms of social cohesion, showing how group solidarity can lead to willingness to engage in aggression and violence to protect an in-group. This is a particularly important process to understand for researchers invested in reducing conflict and violence.…”

“…This is evidenced by the varying definitions of social cohesion adopted by different research teams. Some focus on within-group cohesion and related constructs like entitativity, “a structural property of groups that allows a collection of individuals to be perceived as a cohesive and distinct entity, which is clearly differentiated from other groups” (Syfers et al, 2023). Likewise, Tarpy et al (2023) highlight distinct types of group-based cohesion: “Social cohesion refers to the degree to which group members are attracted to the group due to positive social relationships with other members, whereas task cohesion concerns attachment and attraction to the group based on its commitment to achieving the group’s goals.”…”