Factors that facilitate or hinder

individual activist participation in

social movements

Dimitris Barkas
Department of Psychology
Panteion University
Athens, Greece
Research Question

 This research project is concerned with the

factors that might facilitate or hinder political
participation at an individual level.
 The interaction between personal factors and the
socio-historical context: how the socio-political
context has an effect on the individual decision for
collective action
Social psychological theories
Tajfel (1974)

Two belief systems influence strategies for

coping with a devalued identity:

 Social mobility belief system (permeability of

group boundaries)  Individual mobility
 Social change belief system (impermeability of
group boundaries)  collective change
Social psychological theories
Klandermans 1997
 Social movement participation involves 4 steps:
 Becoming part of a mobilisation potential

 Becoming target of mobilisation attempts

 Becoming motivated to participate

 Overcoming barriers to participation

Social psychological theories
Klandermans 1997

 Three different motives of participation:

 Collective motive: the subjective value of the
collective goals of the movement and the
subjective expectation that these goals would be
reached
 Social motive: the expected reactions of
significant others to the participation in the
movement
 Reward motive: personal costs and benefits
Social psychological theories
Simon and Klandermans 2001

 Politicized Collective Identity

 Three “critical pillars”:

 Collective identity,
 Struggle of power,
 Wider societal context
Social psychological theories
Simon and Klandermans 2001
 Politicized Collective Identity evolves in
three stages:
 awareness of shared grievances,
 adversarial attributions,
 involvement of the society or of a third party in
the ingroup-outgroup conflict.
 Triangulation of the power struggle 
politicization of the collective identity
Theory reviewed
 Tajfel 1974
 Klandermans 1997

 Simon and Klandermans 2001

Representation of the social context

Research question reloaded
 Organization of the representation

 Personal experience
 Interpersonal relations
 Positioning
 Ideological beliefs
Empirical investigation
 Wider socio-historical context
 Personal experience & history of participation
through autobiographical accounts

 Immediate context (Interpersonal relations)

 Investigating the social motive the role of
significant others in the decision to participate
Empirical investigation
 Self-Positioning Collective identity
 Victims of asymmetric power relations
[/exploitation] (i.e. working class, lower-middle
class, immigrants)
 Others’-Positioning Social Representation
in terms of others’ oppression
 Privileged groups
 Victims of asymmetric power relations with false
consciousness
Empirical investigation
 Ideological context
 Left/right political beliefs
 Beliefs about individual mobility or social change
 Beliefs about the role of the state and politics
 Beliefs about globalization
 Beliefs about social hierarchies (SDO, “just world”,
negative interdependence, group interests, system
justification)
 Perceptions of the goals and of the social
representation of society held by the activist
organization
Empirical investigation
 Sample :
1. 18-30 years old
2. Students vs. workers
3. Activists vs. non-activists
4. Greek citizens vs. immigrants
5. Different social classes
 Various methodologies
(interviews, surveys, experiments)