Researching Attitude–Identity Dynamics to Understand Social Conflict and Change

Abstract

Societies undergo constant change, manifested in various ways such as technological developments, economic transitions, reorganization of cultural values and beliefs, or changes in social structures. Individuals play an active role in shaping social and societal change by interactively negotiating its manifestation. However, this shaping of change is seldom harmonious; instead, it is often characterized by dissent and conflict. This special section gathers a collection of articles concerned with the role of attitude–identity dynamics in contexts of contemporary conflict and change. The corpus of research that builds this special section describes mutual impacts of attitudes and identities, explores different actors in social debates and covers a wide range of both established and innovative research methodology. This introduction summarizes and synthesizes the various contributions and offers insights into future research directions.