Values, Activism and Changing Attitudes: Individual-Level Moral Development in Social Movement Contexts

Abstract

Lately, several studies have added crucial knowledge to our understanding of social movement participation by demonstrating its processual nature and how it relates to individual-level movement outcomes. Still, moral factors like values remain understudied. This paper develops a model of relationships between two types of value predispositions—self-transcendence and conformity—and differential participation in humanitarian activities, political protest and civil disobedience and their consequences for attitudinal changes of loss of institutional trust and an altered view of refugee policies. We use cross-sectional survey data from the mobilisation of the Danish refugee solidarity movement, which was revitalised in response to the 2015 refugee crisis. The main finding is that values, in accordance with our theoretical expectations, mainly influence attitudinal outcomes mediated by contexts of different kinds of movement activities. Conformity relates to participation in non-contentious humanitarian support activities that do not relate to any attitudinal outcomes. The non-conform and self-transcendent respondents participate to a higher degree in contentious political protest and civil disobedience, which relates to a loss of trust in the political institutions. The results suggest that heterogeneity of values and contexts of activism within a movement have implications for social movements’ role in the struggles for society’s fundamental morality, individual-level biographical outcomes of activism and movements’ internal processes related to collective identity.

From Silence to Social Awakening: Exploring the Personal Trajectories of Activists in Morocco's Post-Arab Spring Movements

“…In this regard, movement activities are not actions in themselves but are considered contexts that activate values. Values do not necessarily lead to certain lines of action; on the contrary, in certain contexts, certain values and attitudes are activated, prompting individuals to decide to join activism (Toubøl & Gundelach, 2023). The mention of the movement's demands and the realization that protests had succeeded in creating change in neighboring countries were sufficient to mobilize them and alter the course of their lives.…”