How social protest leads to less acceptance for the expression of prejudice: the role of intergroup cognitive appraisals

Abstract: Social protests, especially under an authoritarian regime, are often the only way for minorities and underprivileged groups to fight for their rights. And while a lot has been written on which types of collective actions are more effective than the others, reasons for why some actions work better are still understudied. Similarly, the question of how the protests of a minority group influence the perceptions (i.e. stereotypes, intergroup threat) of that group from the majority still remains a puzzle. In this presentation we focus on the latter. We present two studies (N1 = 854, N2 =600), conducted in Poland in the middle of and three months after the protests against the introduction of a strict anti-abortion law. We show that various types of collective action (highly organized vs not organized; violent vs non-violent) have different impact for the perception of threat posed by, as well as stereotypes of feminists and that ultimately those cognitive appraisals lead to various acceptance of prejudice expression against this social group.

Keywords: collective action, stereotypes, threat, protests