The goal of this research is to identify the psychological and social factors that shape people’s willingness to participate in protests and engage in political action in contemporary contexts, including anti-immigration rallies and counterprotests.
Zafer Özkan, Małgorzata Kossowska, Melis Ulug, Anna Potoczek
The goal of this research is to identify the psychological and social factors that shape people’s willingness to participate in protests and engage in political action in contemporary contexts, including anti-immigration rallies and counterprotests.
The study examines how core processes such as anger, social identity, efficacy beliefs, group norms, and system justification relate to protest intentions, drawing on established frameworks like the Dual Pathway Model of Collective Action and System Justification Theory. It also explores whether these mechanisms operate differently in system-defending versus system-challenging settings. The project adds several new contributions by using a longitudinal design with Random Intercept Cross Lagged Panel Models to track within-person changes over time, by testing whether earlier protest participation leads to positive self-transcendent emotions that shape future intentions, and by examining for the first time how identity fusion predicts both peaceful and violent protest tendencies. Data from Poland, the United Kingdom, and Turkey collected with comparable methods will allow for meaningful cross-national comparisons in settings that differ in refugee numbers and protest dynamics. By clarifying why some people oppose immigrants while others mobilize to defend them, the study aims to provide insights that can support policymakers and civil society groups working toward greater tolerance, social cohesion, and constructive intergroup relations.
