The ironic impact of activists: Negative stereotypes reduce social change influence

Despite recognizing the need for social change in areas such as social equality and environmental protection, individuals often avoid supporting such change. Researchers have previously attempted to understand this resistance to social change by examining individuals’ perceptions of social issues and social change. We instead examined the possibility that individuals resist social change because they have negative stereotypes of activists, the agents of social change. Participants had negative stereotypes of activists (feminists and environmentalists), regardless of the domain of activism, viewing them as eccentric and militant. Furthermore, these stereotypes reduced participants’ willingness to affiliate with ‘typical’ activists and, ultimately, to adopt the behaviours that these activists promoted. These results indicate that stereotypes and person perception processes more generally play a key role in creating resistance to social change. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. In 1964, the U.S. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act, outlawing racial and gender discrimination (National Archives and Records Administration, 2011). More recently, in 2010, President Obama repealed the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, allowing openly gay Americans to serve in the military (The Library of Congress, 2011). These landmark events occurred only after activists spent many years actively challenging the status quo (House Committee on Armed Services, 1993; National Archives and Records Administration, 2011), illustrating that long periods of slow progress typically precede social change. Such slow progress is at odds with research indicating that many individuals believe that it is important, socially desirable and moral to address social justice concerns (Beattie, 2010; Nelson et al., 2008). If individuals believe that social change is crucial and socially valued, they should generally be supportive of and responsive to the activists who advocate it. Yet although activists enthusiastically strive to address social justice concerns and are at times successful in promoting social change (e.g. Czopp, Monteith, & Mark, 2006), they often encounter substantial resistance from the public (Nelson et al., 2008; Superson & Cudd, 2002). Ironically, it may be this enthusiasm with which activists promote social change that undermines their impact: Rather than admiring their determination to address critical social issues, individuals may associate activists with negative stereotypes, viewing them as militant and eccentric. Accordingly, individuals may avoid affiliating with activists and disregard their pro-change initiatives. We examined this directly. To date, researchers have attempted to understand resistance to social change by examining individuals’ perceptions of social issues, attitudes towards social change and personality traits. *Correspondence to: Nadia Y. Bashir, Department of Psychology, University of E-mail: [email protected] Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Researchers have assessed, for example, whether individuals avoid supporting social change because they deny or fail to perceive that a social issue or injustice exists (Gifford, 2011), perceive the issue to be personally irrelevant (Hodson & Esses, 2002) or believe that the status quo is acceptable (Morton, Postmes, Haslam, & Hornsey, 2009). In addition, researchers have examined whether individuals resist social change because they believe that it threatens positive aspects of the status quo (Kay & Friesen, 2011) or conflicts with their goals and beliefs (Feygina, Jost, & Goldsmith, 2010; Zárate, Shaw, Marquez, & Biagas, 2012). Finally, several studies have examined the personal characteristics that are associated with reduced support for social change, such as political conservatism and authoritarianism (Agronick & Duncan, 1998; van Zomeren, Postmes, & Spears, 2008). Although this past research provides important insight into the theoretical basis for resistance to social change, one key element has been largely ignored: individuals’ perceptions of the people who strive to achieve this change, the activists themselves. Indeed, even when individuals have perceptions of social issues and social change that are conducive to change (e.g. favourable perceptions of feminism), they are often still reluctant to identify with those who advocate this change (e.g. feminists; Aronson, 2003). Furthermore, individuals view activists in a variety of domains negatively: Feminists, for example, are typically viewed unfavourably as aggressive, unconventional and unpleasant people (Berryman-Fink & Verderber, 1985; Twenge & Zucker, 1991). Similarly, portrayals of environmentalists and gay rights activists in government reports and sociological texts suggest that individuals view these activists as eccentric and militant (Brown, 2007; Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI], Toronto, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 3G3, Canada. Received 22 September 2012, Accepted 20 August 2013 The ironic impact of activists 615 2001). Because activists, by definition, strive to effect change by publicly criticizing mainstream practices, they may be seen as hostile, unconventional and unpleasant. This tendency to associate activists with negative stereotypes may ultimately reduce individuals’ willingness to affiliate with activists and adopt the pro-change behaviours that activists espouse. Specifically, because individuals strive to maintain a positive self-concept (Sedikides & Gregg, 2008) and consider their group memberships to be important components of their self-concepts, individuals typically desire membership in only those groups that they view positively (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). If individuals associate activists with negative stereotypes, therefore, they may avoid affiliating with activists who conform to these stereotypes (i.e. ‘typical’ activists), which may in turn reduce the likelihood that individuals will adopt behaviours that are characteristic of ‘typical’ activists. That is, because individuals have a strong need to belong and experience social acceptance (Baumeister & Leary, 1995), they may avoid engaging in behaviours that would characterize them as individuals with whom it may seem unpleasant to affiliate. Given that individuals who are merely associated with stigmatized others can face prejudice and social rejection (Pryor, Reeder, & Monroe, 2012), individuals may fear that they too will be stigmatized and rejected by others if they affiliate with ‘typical’ activists and perform behaviours that are characteristic of such activists. Indeed, consistent with balance theory (Heider, 1958), individuals may in part agree with social change ideologies but nevertheless avoid adopting pro-change behaviours because the ‘typical’ activists who advocate these behaviours seem dislikeable. By rejecting pro-change advocacy, individuals can distance themselves from individuals who are generally viewed negatively by society. In support of this possibility, evidence indicates that individuals are less likely to adopt the opinions of stigmatized (e.g. Black or gay) versus nonstigmatized targets (Clark & Maass, 1988; White & Harkins, 1994). Although these studies do not show that negative stereotypes of stigmatized targets reduce individuals’ receptiveness to these targets, they are consistent with the possibility that individuals avoid adopting opinions espoused by targets whom they view negatively. Thus, individuals may at times resist social change, not necessarily because they have negative attitudes towards social issues or social change as previous research has indicated (e.g. Feygina et al., 2010; Hodson & Esses, 2002; van Zomeren et al., 2008) but rather because they have negative stereotypes of the agents of social change. In five studies, therefore, we examined whether stereotypes of activists enhance resistance to social change by reducing individuals’ willingness to affiliate with activists and, ultimately, to adopt the pro-change behaviours that activists advocate. We first identified the stereotypes of two key activist groups and assessed how these stereotypes affect individuals’ willingness to affiliate with ‘typical’ activists (i.e. those who conform to activist stereotypes) and ‘atypical’ activists (i.e. those who do not conform to activist stereotypes; Studies 1 and 3–5). We then examined the extent to which activist stereotypes influence individuals’motivation to adopt pro-change behaviours advocated by ‘typical’ versus ‘atypical’ activists (Study 2), because it affects their willingness to affiliate with these activists (Studies 3 and 4). We predicted that individuals Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. would be more likely to associate ‘typical’ activists with negative stereotypes, and consequently, they would avoid affiliating with and, ultimately, adopting the behaviours advocated by these activists.