No abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic represents a massive global health crisis. Because the crisis requires large-scale behaviour change and places significant psychological burdens on individuals, insights from the social and behavioural sciences can be used to help align human behavior with the recommendations of epidemiologists and public health experts. Here we discuss evidence from a selection of research topics relevant to pandemics, including work on navigating threats, social and cultural influences on behaviour, science communication, moral decision-making, leadership, and stress and coping. In each section, we note the nature and quality of prior research, including uncertainty and unsettled issues. We identify several insights for effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and also highlight important gaps researchers should move quickly to fill in the coming weeks and months.

The study comprises an analysis of processes of psychological change among participants at an environmental protest. A participant observation study found evidence of a radicalized self concept among a number of crowd members, and indicates a link between radicalization, an asymmetry of categorical representations between protesters and the police, and the subsequent interaction premised on these divergent representations. The analysis supports an elaborated social identity model of crowd behaviour (Reicher, 1996, 1997a, 1997b; Stott & Reicher, 1998). It is argued that, in order to account for both social determination and social change in collective behaviour, it is necessary to analyse crowd events as developing interactions between groups. Where crowd members hold a different understanding of their social position to that held by an out-group (e.g. the police) and where the out-group has the power to treat crowd members in terms of its understandings, then those members who act on the basis of one understanding of their social relations find themselves in an unexpected and novel set of social relations. This then provides the basis for a series of changes, including the self-understanding of crowd members.

An ethnographic study of two crowd events was carried out in order to develop a hypothesis about the experience of empowerment in collective action. Qualitative comparison of an anti-roads occupation and a mass eviction suggests that empowerment as an outcome of collective action is a function of the extent to which one's own action is understood as expressing social identity, a process we term collective self-objectification. The comparison indicates that empowerment is not reducible to the experience of success. While both events came to be construed by participants as 'victories', their associated emotions (joy versus despair and anger) and rationales for future participation (confidence versus enhanced self-legitimacy) were different. The relation between collective self-objectification and self-efficacy is discussed. Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.'Empowerment' might be defined as a social-psychological state of confidence in one's ability to challenge existing relations of domination. A number of political, anecdotal, historical, autobiographical and journalistic as well as social-scientific accounts have shown that collective action may engender experiences of empowerment, both for the individual participant and for the collective as a whole, typically accompanied by positive affect (e.g. Barker, 1999; Benford & Hunt, 1995, p. 90; Gallacher, 1936, pp. 43, 199; Gregoire & Perlman, 1969, p. 37; Harford & Hopkins, 1984, pp. 92-93; Kelly & Breinlinger, 1996, p. 122; McAdam, 1982, pp. 48-51; Pelton, 1974, p. 134; Piven & Cloward, 1977, pp. 3-4).If the feeling of empowerment endures beyond the collective action itself, it could affect participants' personal lives and motivate involvement in further collective action. The obvious significance of this is in terms of social change. To the extent that people feel increasingly able to participate in collective actions such as protests, demonstrations and other social movement events, then society may change as a result.

The issue of psychological empowerment in crowd events has important implications for both theory and practice. Theoretically, the issue throws light on both intergroup conflict and the nature and functions of social identity. Practically, empowerment in collective events can feed into societal change. The study of empowerment therefore tells us something about how the forces pressing for such change might succeed or fail. The present article first outlines some limitations in the conceptualization of both identity and empowerment in previous research on crowd events, before delineating the elaborated social identity model of crowds and power. We then describe recent empirical contributions to the field. These divide into two areas of research: (1) empowerment variables and (2) the dynamics of such empowerment. We finally suggest how psychological empowerment and social change are connected through crowd action. We conclude with some recommendations for practice following from the research described.