Search

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.2009.01622.x Byline: John Drury (1), Steve Reicher (2) Abstract: The issue of psychological empowerment in crowd events has important implications for both theory and practice. Theoretically, the issue throws light on both intergroup conflict and the nature and functions of social identity. Practically, empowerment in collective events can feed into societal change. The study of empowerment therefore tells us something about how the forces pressing for such change might succeed or fail. The present article first outlines some limitations in the conceptualization of both identity and empowerment in previous research on crowd events, before delineating the elaborated social identity model of crowds and power. We then describe recent empirical contributions to the field. These divide into two areas of research: (1) empowerment variables and (2) the dynamics of such empowerment. We finally suggest how psychological empowerment and social change are connected through crowd action. We conclude with some recommendations for practice following from the research described. Author Affiliation: (1)University of Sussex (2)University of St Andrews Article note: (*) Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to John Drury, School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QH, UK [e-mail: J.Drury@sussex.ac.uk].

Waves of riots are politically and psychologically significant national events. The role of police perceptions and practices in spreading unrest between cities has been neglected in previous research, even though the police are significant actors in these events. We examined the role of police interventions in the spread of rioting to one English city in August 2011 by triangulating multiple data sources and analyzing police accounts and community‐participant interviews. Rioting in other cities had relatively little direct influence in the community, but it led to heightened vigilance in the police. The resultant police mobilization inadvertently created a large gathering in a local community with a history of hostile relations with police. Police attempts to disperse the crowd affected many more people than those originally intending to riot, leading to collective conflict. These findings support a new theoretical account of the role of policing in riot spread. Complementing existing accounts of diffusion, our study helps explain how self‐fulfilling prophecy can operate to spread conflict between cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key requirement of COVID‐19 pandemic behavioural regulations in many countries was for people to 'physically distance' from one another, which meant departing radically from established norms of everyday human sociality. Previous research on new norms has been retrospective or prospective, focusing on reported levels of adherence to regulations or the intention to do so. In this paper, we take an observational approach to study the embodied and spoken interactional practices through which people produce or breach the new norm. The dataset comprises 20 'self‐ethnographic' fieldnotes collected immediately following walks and runs in public spaces between March and September 2020, and these were analysed in the ethnomethodological tradition. We show that and how the new norm emerged through the mutual embodied and spoken conduct of strangers in public spaces. Orientations to the new norm were observed as people torqued their bodies away from each other in situations where there was insufficient space to create physical distance. We also describe how physical distance was produced unilaterally or was aggressively resisted by some people. Finally, we discuss the practical and policy implications of our observations both for deciding what counts as physical distancing and how to support the public to achieve it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crowd flight incidents from (mis)perceived threats are important social, psychological, and political phenomena that have been neglected in previous research. They are potentially deadly, economically disruptive, and individually distressing incidents that may result in armed police responses. Despite the seriousness of these phenomena, we know little about their occurrence in Britain. We carried out a systematic review using PRISMA principles on the Nexis media database to analyse the nature of these false alarm incidents and the relationship between false alarms and other variables, in particular real terror attacks. 'Urgent' crowd flight responses, often called 'stampedes', were found to be rare, and resulted in relatively few serious injuries. Diverse public behaviour was recorded, and competitive behaviour was relatively rare. False alarm incidents were mainly reported in locations known to be soft targets for terrorism, and incidents were associated with the National Threat Level in the second half of the decade, peaking in 2017. They were also associated with psychologically-relevant attacks in Europe, particularly indiscriminate Islamist attacks, rather than right-wing terrorism. Implications for developing a social psychological understanding of these events are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An analysis of Gregory of Nyssa's treatise On the Soul and the Resurrection is made, that results in an argument on the compatibility of the doctrines of the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body. Nyssa's view is explicitly contrasted to contemporary tendencies to set up a false dichotomy between the two doctrines.

A questionnaire survey (n = 90) and an interview study (n = 63) of anti-roads activities suggest links between participation and generalization. First, level of activism predicted whether others were perceived as encouraged to act environmentally. Second, participants' failure to stop construction of the road did not prevent them from developing related feelings of efficacy. Participants' perceptions of out-groups were also examined. Participants were least hostile to those they defined as sharing their interests and capable of subjective change; they were most hostile to those seen as betraying the environmental cause. Practically, these findings suggest the importance of collective participation. Theoretically, the paper argues that efficacy theory be developed to acknowledge that identity can be collective as well as individual.