Individuals in Movements: A Social Psychology of Contention

Abstract

Social psychology is interested in how social context influences individuals’ behavior. The prototypical social psychological question related to collective action is that of why some individuals participate in social movements while others do not, or for that matter, why some individuals decide to quit while others stay involved. The social psychological answer to these questions is given in terms of typical psychological processes such as identity, cognition, motivation, and emotion. People—social psychologists never tire of asserting—live in a perceived world. They respond to the world as they perceive and interpret it, and if we want to understand their cognitions, motivations, and emotions we need to know their perceptions and interpretations. Hence, social psychology focuses on subjective variables and takes the individual as its unit of analysis.