Failure Leads Protest Movements to Support More Radical Tactics

Most social movements will encounter setbacks in their pursuit of sociopolitical change. However, little is known about how movements are affected after protestors fail to achieve their aims. What are the effects of failure on subsequent engagement in various conventional and radical actions? Does f...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Social psychological & personality science Vol. 13; no. 3; pp. 675 - 687
Main Authors: Louis, Winnifred R., Lizzio-Wilson, Morgana, Cibich, Mikaela, McGarty, Craig, Thomas, Emma F., Amiot, Catherine E., Weber, Nathan, Rhee, Joshua, Davies, Grace, Rach, Timothy, Goh, Syasya, McMaster, Zoe, Muldoon, Orla, Howe, Naoimh, Moghaddam, Fathali
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.04.2022
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
Subjects:
Democracy
Demonstrations & protests
Experiments
Grammatical aspect
Meta-analysis
Protest movements
Radicalism
Responses
Setbacks
Simulation
Social movements
Success
Tactics
collective action failure
collective action participation
radical collective action
protest
collective action outcomes
ISSN:1948-5506, 1948-5514
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Most social movements will encounter setbacks in their pursuit of sociopolitical change. However, little is known about how movements are affected after protestors fail to achieve their aims. What are the effects of failure on subsequent engagement in various conventional and radical actions? Does failure promote divergent reactions among protestors and/or dissatisfaction with democracy? A meta-analysis of nine experiments (N = 1,663) assessed the effects of one-off failure on protestors’ reactions, subsequent tactical choices, and support for democracy; and iterative stochastic simulations modeled the effects of failure over multiple protests over time. Results indicated that initial failure gives rise to divergent, somewhat contradictory responses among protestors and that these responses are further influenced by the repeated failure (vs. success) over time. Further, the simulations identified “tipping points” in these responses that promote radicalization and undermine support for democracy.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 14
ISSN:1948-5506
1948-5514
DOI:10.1177/19485506211037296