Abstract
What motivates people to participate in collective action?Some actions such as symbolic or online actions are oftencritiqued as performative allyship, motivated by personalgain rather than genuine concern for the cause. We aimto adjudicate this argument by examining the quality ofmotivations for acting, drawing on the insights of self-determination theory and the social identity approach.Using latent profile analysis, we examined whether thereare different types of supporters of refugees based on theirunderlying motives. In Study 1, we surveyed supporters ofSyrian refugees from six nations (N = 936) and measuredautonomous and controlled motivation, pro-refugee iden-tification and collective action. In Study 2 (N = 1994), wesurveyed supporters of Ukrainian refugees in Romania,Hungary and the UK. We found 4–5 profiles in each sampleand consistently found that supporters with high autono-mous motivation take more action than disengaged or am-bivalent supporters (low/neutral on all motives). However,contrary to the tenets of self-determination theory, thosehigh in both autonomous and controlled motives were themost engaged. We conclude that the most committed sup-porters are those with multiple motives, but further researchis needed on the role of controlled motivation.
Original language | English |
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Article number | e12786 |
Journal | British Journal of Social Psychology |
Volume | 64 |
Issue number | 1 |
Early online date | 9 Jul 2024 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 31 Jan 2025 |
Data Availability Statement
The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in OSF at https://osf.io/un4a5/?view_only=c0e007d9531043a9817808d0ae9a7fc9.Funding
This research was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Award to the second author (DE120101029). The authors acknowledge Nicola Curtin's contribution to data collection. Open access publishing facilitated by Flinders University, as part of the Wiley \u2010 Flinders University agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians.
Funders | Funder number |
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Australian Research Council | DE120101029 |
Australian Research Council |
Keywords
- collective action
- latent profile analysis
- performative allyship
- refugees
- self-determination theory
- social identity approach
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Social Psychology