Understanding allies’ participation in social change: A multiple perspectives approach

Abstract

The introduction to the EJSP special issue brings together recent literature on allyship. We present and discuss different definitions of allyship and highlight a multiple perspectives approach to understanding the predictors and consequences of allyship. This approach suggests that engagement in allyship can be driven by egalitarian and non‐egalitarian motivations and that the behaviours identified as allyship can have different meanings, causes and consequences depending on whether researchers take into account the allies’ perspective or the disadvantaged groups’ perspective. We use this approach as an organizing principle to identify themes that emerge in the papers included in this special issue. We start with four papers that consider the perspective of the advantaged group, followed by two papers that consider the perspective of the disadvantaged group. Finally, we introduce two theoretical papers that examine the relations between disadvantaged groups and allies, and we set out directions for future research.

Applying the Dynamic Dual Pathway Model of Approach Coping to Collective Action Among Advantaged Group Allies and Disadvantaged Group Members

“…The strengths of our study include that we used a multiple perspectives approach ( Kutlaca et al, 2020a ) to apply the dynamic dual pathway model ( Van Zomeren et al, 2012 ) to a sample of protesters. By using a multiple perspectives approach, new possibilities for understanding the causes and consequences of allyship in an ecologically valid way can be achieved.…”

“…Yet it is only recently that the psychological literature has sought to understand allies’ motivations to engage in collective action for disadvantaged groups [see Radke et al (2020) , for an overview]. And few studies use a multiple perspectives approach ( Dixon et al, 2012 ; Di Bernardo et al, 2019 ; Hässler et al, 2020 ) which simultaneously considers the experiences of both advantaged and disadvantaged group members ( Kutlaca et al, 2020a ). Moreover, much of the previous research on this topic has focused on intentions to engage in collective action among members of the general population rather than those who are actively protesting as part of a movement.…”

Helping in the context of refugee immigration

“…Similarly, not all forms of activism seem to benefit the disadvantaged groups. For instance, allyship, that is, support for a target group of injustice (e.g., refugees) among advantaged group members (residents [49]) can be driven by four different motives [50,51]:…”

Exploring collective costs and individual benefits of neoliberal feminism

“…It would also be beneficial for future research to examine men's support for the neoliberal feminist focus on building women's individual resilience to advance gender equality. Due to increasing recognition that the gender system cannot change without men's acceptance of and participation in change efforts (Connell, 2005), men's efforts to advance gender equality are receiving more attention (e.g., see Drury & Kaiser, 2014;Kutlaca et al, 2020). Yet for many men, appearing to support change may be more attractive than actually supporting change (for related theorising, see Radke et al, 2020).…”