Fighting inequalities in times of pandemic: The role of politicized identities and interdependent self‐construal in coping with economic threat

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, institutions encouraged social isolation and non-interaction with other people to prevent contagion. Still, the response to an impending economic crisis must be through the collective organization. In this set of pre-registered studies, we analyse two possible mechanisms of coping with collective economic threats: shared social identity and interdependent self-construction. We conducted three correlational studies during the pandemic in May-October 2020 (Study 1, N = 363; Study 2, N = 250; Study 3, N = 416). Results show that shared identity at two levels of politicization (i.e., working-class and 99% identities) and interdependent self-construal mediated the relationship between collective economic threat, intolerance towards economic inequality and collective actions to reduce it. The results highlight that the collective economic threat can reinforce the sense of community-either through the activation of a politicized collective identity, such as the working class or the 99% or through the activation of an interdependent self-which in turn can trigger greater involvement in the fight against economic inequality. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.

Wage (in)equality matters: the effect of organizational economic inequality on others’ and self-ascriptions

“…Not only competition but other variables that reflect social and psychological distance/cohesion may be considered when studying economic inequality, such as self-construal (Sánchez-Rodríguez et al, 2019). Indeed, recent studies have shown that self-construal explains the effect of economic threat on different psychosocial outcomes (Del Fresno-Díaz et al, 2022). A second limitation of our studies is the lack of the assessment of participants' political orientation.…”

Politización del discurso de alcaldes de Colombia durante la pandemia del COVID-19 en Twitter

“…Desde esta perspectiva, la identidad colectiva se politiza desde el momento en que las personas "interpretan la posición del endogrupo y exogrupos, y las relaciones entre ellos, atendiendo a ese contexto más amplio" (Sabucedo et al, 2010, p. 194). En este sentido, ante la amenaza de la COVID-19 las relaciones de poder según la filiación política y el posicionamiento ideológico dieron lugar a procesos de identidad colectiva politizada (Fresno-Díaz et al, 2020). Esta relación entre el espectro ideológico y las distintas medidas asociadas a la justificación ha sido ampliamente estudiada (Sterling et al, 2020).…”

Editorial: Challenging injustice: Understanding upstanding, civic action, and bystander intervention to promote justice

“…del Fresno-Díaz et al (2023) examine mechanisms that drive collective action around economic threats during the COVID-19 pandemic, when encouraged social isolation may have impeded such action. With samples of Spanish adults, they document that shared identity (working-class and 99% identity), and interdependent self-construal served as mediators between collective economic threat and intolerance to such threats and desires to engage in collective action to address economic threats.…”