Double standards in judging collective action

Abstract

Collective action is a powerful force driving social change but often sparks contention about what actions are acceptable means to effect social change. In five studies (total N = 2,979), we investigated double standards in judging collective action—that is, whether observers will judge the same protest actions as more acceptable if the protesters are ingroup members and their cause aligns with the ingroup's interests (identity-based double standards) or if the protesters' cause aligns with the observers' ideological positions (ideology-based double standards). In two studies, we developed an instrument of 25 controversial protest actions, based in item response theory, to measure where people draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable forms of collective action. In three preregistered experiments, we used this instrument to test for double standards in judging collective action for workers' rights in the United Kingdom and for or against defunding the police and for or against restricting abortion in the United States. We found evidence for ideology-based, but not for identity-based, double standards: Participants judged the same protest actions to be more acceptable when the protesters' cause aligned with their own ideological position—but showed no consistent ingroup bias when judging collective action by ingroup and outgroup members. Our findings have theoretical and practical implications for understanding the often divided response to prominent social movements.