Belief in collective efficacy can convert threatened control into personal climate action.
Evidence
Perhaps the automatic group-based responses to threatened personal control will also play their part when the collectives of today and tomorrow need to overcome personal helplessness in the face of unprecedented ecological crises. In fact, salient climate-change threat has been found to increase people’s belief in collective (but not personal) efficacy in fighting climate change (Hornsey et al., 2015). Another study found that students’ personal willingness to take action against climate change was increased when their perception of the younger generation’s efficacy in protecting the climate was increased (Jugert et al., 2016). The effect of collective efficacy was mediated through raising people’s belief that they could personally contribute to climate protection. Obviously, humans’ propensity to perceive control not only on the personal level but also on collective levels of the self has the potential to unfreeze individuals’ paralysis in the face of the great collective challenges of our time. — Immo Fritsche, Agency Through the We, 47
Categorization
- XREF: Directly bears on the reading purpose: whether group identification restores felt control when personal theats dominate. Supports the idea that collective-efficacy beliefs function as a control-restoring mechanism for climate paralysis. — connects to: People restore threatened control by escalating from personal to group-based to compensatory strategies. — Immo Fritsche, Agency Through the We: Group-Based…, 45; Collective efficacy belief can convert group identity into personal pro-environmental action. — Immo Fritsche, Agency Through the We: Group-Based…, 47; Collective association multiplies individual power to achieve radical change (+2 more)
- QUESTION: Does this collective-efficacy mediation overlap with Fritsche’s group-based control theory as the causal engine, or is it a distinct mechanism? Worth chasing the SIMPEA model this connects to.
Broader Connections
- Collective efficacy belief can convert group identity into personal pro-environmental action.
#expands(0.90) — Immo Fritsche, Agency Through the We, 47 - Collective association multiplies individual power to achieve radical change
#corroborates(0.80) - Group identification and exaggerated collective agency are two distinct strategies for restoring control.
#complicates(0.80) — Immo Fritsche, Agency Through the We, 23 - Belief in a controlling God rises when personal control is threatened.
#complicates(0.75) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 891