Structural Beliefs, Anger, and Collective Action: Conflicting Beliefs and The Willingness To Act

Although we broadly agree on the importance of addressing pressing societal problems, such as climate change, gender bias, and police brutality, we face bitter and debilitating conflict with respect to how to address these challenges. In this work, we investigate structural beliefs, which we define as the belief that an issue is best addressed by changing policies, infrastructure, or institutions, and individual beliefs, which we define as the belief that an issue is best addressed by individuals taking their own actions. We introduce a novel framework for understanding the faultlines of high stakes conflicts and advance our ability to resolve conflict. Across three studies, we describe how structural and individual beliefs influence feelings of anger, motivation to act, and willingness to take collective action.