Support for Violence Measure-1

What inverted U can do for your country: A curvilinear relationship between confidence in the social system and political engagement.

“…We did not detect a quadratic relationship between system confidence and nonnormative political engagement, such as insurgent activity that violates the legal code of the system (Becker & Tausch, 2015;Tausch et al, 2011). We hypothesised that support for nonnormative collective action would be strongest when levels of disappointment with the system are extremely high.…”

“…We expected that this relationship would play out differently for engagement in non-normative political behaviour that violates the Running head: SYSTEM CONFIDENCE AND POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT 17 laws and norms of the system (Becker & Tausch, 2015;Tausch et al, 2011). Such actions are more likely to be taken by those who have little hope for change but at the same time feel they have nothing to lose (Scheepers, Spears, Doosje, & Manstead, 2006;Tausch et al, 2011).…”

“…and participating in peaceful demonstrations (Becker & Tausch, 2015;Jost et al, 2012;Tausch et al, 2011;Verba et al, 1995;Wright et al, 1990).…”

Why the psychology of collective action requires qualitative transformation as well as quantitative change

“…Appraising one's ingroup's disadvantage as illegitimate thus gives rise to anger (Van Zomeren et al, 2004), while appraising an ingroup's past actions as illegitimate can give rise to collective guilt or shame (Iyer, Schmader, & Lickel, 2007). These group-based emotions in turn influence specific action intentions: for example, anger predicts a desire to engage in collective action (Van Zomeren et al, 2004), shame predicts a desire to withdraw from a conflict (Iyer et al, 2007), and contempt predicts an orientation towards more radical or illegal forms of protest (Tausch et al, 2011). Other emotions shape collective action by inhibiting tendencies towards protest.…”

“…This being the case, and in light of the review of catastrophe theory above, the second suggestion is to develop a psychology of key events or points in a dynamic -what may be termed points of phase transition -as well as of more abstracted perceptions over time. The importance of specific events is clearly acknowledged in many studies of collective action, both as precipitating factors Quantitative change and qualitative transformation 21 that instigate appraisals and emotions (e.g., Iyer et al, 2007), or as intervening factors that affect appraisals and emotions across different time points (Tausch et al, 2011).…”