Aspirations for a cooperative community and support for mental health advocacy: a shared orientation through opinion‐based group membership

Abstract

This research examines the role of aspirations for cooperative relations between people with mental disorders and other community members in influencing commitment to stigma-reducing practices and promoting positive social change. Two studies demonstrated that a measure of aspirations for a cooperative community is distinct from social and community identification measures and strongly predicts positive beliefs and behavioral intentions. Findings support the proposal that these aspirations reflect a shared ideology for members of an opinion-based group that support mental health advocacy. The findings provide evidence that the aspirations construct adds to knowledge about collective identities and offers a useful tool for designing stigma reduction and social-change strategies for the benefit of people with mental disorders.

“We Must Be the Change We Want to See in the World”: Integrating Norms and Identities through Social Interaction

“…To the extent that the new identity is founded upon shared injunctive norms (what we come to believe is the right thing to do), then participation in social change action (doing what we agree is right) becomes an expression of that identity (cf. Gee & McGarty, ). People who identify with the emerging movement are likely to work towards shifting the undesirable descriptive norm (the status quo) towards the desired injunctive norm, creating change.…”

“…Research into opinion‐based identities (e.g., Bliuc, McGarty, Reynolds, & Muntele, ) demonstrates that acting upon those ideals is a critical, defining, and normative part of their identity—being and acting are codependent. Being a member of an opinion‐based group is a powerful predictor of intentions to take sociopolitical action on a wide variety of different issues (Bliuc, McGarty, Reynolds, & Muntele, ; Cameron & Nickerson, ; Gee & McGarty, ; Musgrove & McGarty, ; O'Brien & McGarty, ; Smith & Postmes, 2011a; Thomas & McGarty, ; Thomas, Mavor, & McGarty, ).…”

What Drives Systemic Mental Health Advocates? Goals, Strategies, and Values of Australian Consumer and Carer Advocacy Organizations

“…Holding aspirations for such a cooperative community is a predictor of commitment to take action to make such a community real (Gee & McGarty, 2013a), leading Gee and McGarty (2013b) to propose that movement toward a cooperative community provides a basis for innovative bottom-up solution generation through respectful engagement (for an international application, see Lala et al, 2014).…”

A hierarchical (multicomponent) model of in-group identification: adaptation of a measure to the Brazilian context

“…In this regard, Lovakov et al (2015) made a brief survey of studies in which the measure of Leach et al (2008) was applied to evaluate identification with different groups. The authors observed that, among the main groups studied, there are ethnic, national, and racial in-groups (Danel et al, 2012;Giamo, Schmitt, & Outten, 2012;Koval, Laham, Haslam, Bastian, & Whelan, 2012;Leach, Mosquera, Vliek, & Hirt, 2010;Philpot & Hornsey, 2011;Shepherd, Spears, & Manstead, 2013;Stürmer et al, 2013;Wang, Minervino, & Cheryan, 2013), gender in-groups (Correia et al, 2012;Good, Moss-Racusin, & Sanchez, 2012;Kenny & Garcia, 2012), student in-groups (Becker, 2012;Correia et al, 2012;Cruwys et al, 2012;Leach et al, 2010), virtual in-groups (people in an online community that share the same interests) (Howard, 2014;Howard & Magee, 2013), the army (Sani, Herrera, Wakefield, Boroch, & Gulyas, 2012), an experimental in-group (Hartmann & Tanis, 2013;van Veelen, Otten, & Hansen, 2013), mental health in-groups (Gee & McGarty, 2013), and an organizational in-group (Smith, Amiot, Callan, Terry, & Smith, 2012).…”