Pathways to hostile collective action: The roles of general attitudes toward the advantaged group and situational anger

Pathways to hostile collective action: The roles of general attitudes

toward the advantaged group and situational anger

Jie Zhou and Erping Wang

Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences,

Beijing, China

Abstract: Collective action is a group behavior that aims to improve the status, power, or influence of an entire group. The present study

focused on hostile collective action performed for releasing negative emotions, and explored a pathway including the roles of general

attitudes toward the advantaged group and situational group-based anger in predicting the disadvantaged groups’ hostile collective action.

Group-level data were collected via a laboratory experiment. The results obtained using multiple regression analysis suggested that general

attitudes toward the advantaged group formed before the trigger event predicted hostile collective action indirectly through the mediating

effects of situational group-based anger and collective action tendencies, which were both produced after that trigger event. In addition,

situational group-based anger predicted hostile collective action fully through collective action tendencies. These pathways provided a

continuous process of hostile collective action in which general attitudes toward the advantaged group that were formed before the trigger

events would influence situational group-based anger when the trigger events occurred, and then affected hostile collective action for

responding to these events. Thus, hostile collective action could be predicted before the trigger events by monitoring the disadvantaged

groups’ attitudes toward the advantaged group. Moreover, reducing destructive collective action by improving intergroup attitudes through

some effective interventions was discussed in this study.

Keywords: attitudes toward the advantaged group; collective action; collective action tendencies; group-based anger

Correspondence: Professor Erping Wang, Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences,

4A Datun Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China, 100101. Email: [email protected]

Received 29 October 2011. Accepted 8 March 2012.

When faced with a trigger event (e.g., increasing tuition fee,

Tausch et al., 2011; a discrimination event, Stürmer &

Simon, 2004) that is inequitable and will possibly cause

some group behaviors, disadvantaged groups might take col-

lective action, such as protesting, petitioning, striking, dem-

onstrating, and retaliating, which aims to improve the status,

power, or influence of an entire group (Walker & Mann,

1987; Wright, Taylor, & Moghaddam, 1990). According to

the group members’ motivation to participate, collective

action has conceptually been differentiated into hostile

action performed as an outlet for negative emotions and

instrumental action employed in achieving collective goals

(Stürmer & Simon, 2009). Due to the important role of

collective action in creating social change, many studies in

social movement research have focused on understanding its

predictors (Mackie, Devos, & Smith, 2000). The social psy-

chological processes by which these predictors determine

collective action have also become key issues (Klandermans,

1997).

Among the large and heterogeneous body of literature on

these issues, much previous research has highlighted two

pathways of group-based anger (Iyer, Schmader, & Lickel,

2007; Leach, Iyer, & Pedersen, 2007; Levine, 2010; Miller,

2006; Smith, Cronin, & Kessler, 2008) and group efficacy

(Doodje, Spears, & Ellemers, 2002; Hornsey et al., 2006;Van

Zomeren, Leach, & Spears, 2010; Van Zomeren, Postmes, &

Spears, 2008) to collective action. Specifically, the pathway

through group-based anger reflected the emotion-focused

coping style, whereas the pathway through group efficacy

reflected the problem-focused coping style (Lazarus, 2001).

PsyCh Journal •• (2012): ••–••DOI: 10.1002/pchj.3

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© 2012 The Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd

Furthermore, procedural fairness, perceived group support,

and appraisal of legitimacy have been shown to influence

collective action through this dual pathway model (Leonard,

Moons, Mackie, & Smith, 2011; Mackie et al., 2000; Van

Zomeren, Spears, Fischer, & Leach, 2004).

Despite these pathways through various predictors, it is

still difficult to control collective action because most pre-

dictors that have been found from the previous research were

produced in a certain situation (i.e., a trigger event) so that

we cannot monitor and change these predictors before the

trigger event to increase or reduce the possibility of collec-

tive action. Particularly for hostile collective action, it is

indeed difficult to intervene after the trigger event because

this type of collective action seems impulsive and always

breaks out as soon as the trigger event happens. Thus,

apart from the extensively researched situational variables

(e.g., group-based anger, group efficacy), the studies about

the predictors of collective action should also include

some variables formed before the trigger events (e.g., out-

group attitudes, group identification) to facilitate the long-

term forecast of and interventions on collective action (Van

Stekelenburg, Klandermans, & Van Dijk, 2009).

From this perspective, the present study focused on hostile

collective action in which disadvantaged groups retaliated

and punished an advantaged group to release their situational

anger, and tried to explain hostile collective action as arising

from group-based anger (i.e., situational variable) and

general attitudes towards the advantaged group (i.e., vari-

ables formed before the trigger events).

Only the emotion-focused pathway of group-based anger

was examined in this study because Stürmer and Simon

(2009) suggested that the emotion-focused pathway was the

driving force in predicting hostile collective action; never-

theless, the problem-focused pathway of group efficacy

played an important role in the instrumental collective

action. According to the previous studies, group-based anger

is characterized by an agitated emotional experience inte-

grated with group identification, which should energize

group members’ motivation to fight back if treated unfairly

(see Leach, Iyer, & Pedersen, 2006). Moreover, it is distinct

from individual anger because group-based anger shared

socially within a group depends on the person’s level of

group identification and contributes to regulating intragroup

and intergroup behaviors (Smith, Seger, & Mackie, 2007).

Otherwise, general attitudes toward the advantaged group

were selected because many meta-analyses have shown that

general attitudes defined as global evaluative judgments

about a given object (Crites, Fabrigar, & Petty, 1994) were

very important predictors of specific behaviors (Duckitt,

1992; Kim & Hunter, 1993; Kraus, 1995). Regarding collec-

tive action, Kelly and Kelly (1994) found that general atti-

tudes toward the advantaged group were significantly

associated with the disadvantaged groups’ willingness to

participate in collective action. Moreover, Wagner, Christ,

and Pettigrew (2008) suggested that general attitudes toward

the advantaged group should be studied together with the

situational emotions of anger in order to predict collective

action well. In addition, general attitudes toward the advan-

taged group can be effectively improved before the trigger

events (Huskinson & Haddock, 2004; Zanna & Rempel,

1988) so as to influence any collective action that might

occur after these events.

The current study potentially extends previous work in

three main ways. First, whereas earlier research has explored

the situational pathways to collective action (Drury &

Reicher, 2005; Hercus, 1999; Rydell et al., 2008; Stürmer &

Simon, 2004), this study added general attitudes toward the

advantaged group into the situational pathway of group-

based anger to hostile collective action, and provided a novel

investigation of the pathway that general attitudes toward the

advantaged group formed before the trigger events influ-

enced specific hostile collective action through emotions of

anger produced after these events.

Second, the present study investigated the effects on

hostile collective action rather than solely on collective

action tendencies (Struch & Schwartz, 1989; Van Zomeren,

Spears, & Leach, 2008), because although behavioral inten-

tions are the proximal determinants of behaviors (Ajzen &

Fishbein, 1980; Albarracin, Johnson, Fishbein, & Mueller-

leile, 2001), they are after all different from actual behaviors

(Sparks, Conner, James, Shepherd, & Povey, 2001). Using

behavioral intentions as proxies for behaviors might overes-

timate the size of any obtained effects (Van Zomeren,

Postmes, & Spears, 2008). Thereby, this study, in which

behavioral intentions were distinguished from behaviors,

could examine the indirect effects of general attitudes toward

the advantaged group and of situational group-based anger

on hostile collective action, both of which were mediated by

collective action tendencies.

Third, this research collected all data from groups rather

than from individual participants. McCauley (1972) and

Meyers and Lamm (1976) suggested that group attitudes,

emotions, and behaviors, which would be influenced by

in-group interactions (e.g., group discussions) are quite

2 Pathways to hostile collective action


different from those of individuals. Saguy, Dovidio, and

Pratto (2008) also indicated that future research should be

extended to the group level. Moreover, Zhou (2009) found

that the attitudes collected from groups predicted collective

action better than those attained from individuals. Thus, the

present work offered the participant groups an opportunity to

interact with the advantaged group so that they could form

their attitudes, experience the emotions of anger, and dem-

onstrate hostile collective action.

In sum, the primary goal of the current study was to

explore the pathways that could predict disadvantaged

groups’ hostile collective action, including the roles of

general attitudes toward the advantaged group, situational

group-based anger, and hostile collective action tendencies.

This work would contribute to long efforts to predict collec-

tive action more accurately (Fabrigar, Petty, Smith, & Crites,

2006) and could afford vital information for practitioners

concerned with reducing hostile collective action through

the improvements of outgroup attitudes before the negative

trigger events (Huskinson & Haddock, 2004; Zanna &

Rempel, 1988).

To test the pathways to hostile collective action through

general attitudes toward the advantaged group, situational

group-based anger, and hostile collective action tendencies,

we proposed the following three hypotheses (see Figure 1).

First, building on Kelly and Kelly’s (1994) study, which

indicated a negative relationship between general attitudes

toward the advantaged group and collective action, and the

previous research related to planned behavior theory (PBT;

Ajzen, 1991), which suggested attitudes influenced behav-

iors fully through behavioral intentions (Ajzen, 2002; Armit-

age & Conner, 2001; Davis, Ajzen, Saunders, & Williams,

2002; Skogstad, Deane, & Spicer, 2006), we expected that

hostile collective action tendencies should fully mediate the

negative relationship between general attitudes toward the

advantaged group and hostile collective action.

Hypothesis 1: General attitudes toward the advantaged

group will have a negative indirect relationship with

hostile collective action, as fully mediated by collective

action tendencies.

Second, past work has emphasized the central importance of

anger as a positive predictor of collective action tendencies

(Iyer et al., 2007; Leach et al., 2007; Levine, 2010; Smith

et al., 2008) and actual hostile collective action (Yang,

2000). Furthermore, Van Zomeren, Postmes, and Spears

(2011) found that anger affected actual collective action

fully through collective action tendencies, which was in line

with the attitude-behavior link. Thus, we expected that

hostile collective action tendencies should fully mediate the

positive relationship between situational group-based anger

and hostile collective action.

Hypothesis 2: Situational group-based anger will have

a positive indirect relationship with hostile collective

action, as fully mediated by collective action tendencies.

Finally and third, previous research has suggested that many

psychological variables (e.g., procedural fairness and per-

ceived group support, Van Zomeren et al., 2004; appraisal of

legitimacy, Leonard et al., 2011) influenced collective action

fully though situational group-based anger. Moreover, the

studies about the effects of group identification (i.e., another

variable formed before the trigger events; see Tropp &

Wright, 2001) and anger on collective action showed that the

variables formed before the trigger events also influenced

collective action fully through situational group-based anger

(Gordijn, Yzerbyt, Wigboldus, & Dumont, 2006; Mackie

et al., 2000;Yzerbyt, Dumont, Wigboldus, & Gordijn, 2003).

In addition, previous research revealed the significantly

negative relationship between general attitudes and situ-

ational anger (DeSteno, Dasgupta, Bartlett, & Cajdric, 2004;

Lau-Gesk & Meyers-Levy, 2009; Moore & Hoenig, 1989;

Smith et al., 2007). Therefore, we predicted that situational

group-based anger should be another full mediator of the

negative relationship between general attitudes toward the

advantaged group and hostile collective action.

Hypothesis 3: General attitudes toward the advantaged

group formed before the trigger event will have a negative

indirect relationship with hostile collective action, as fully

mediated by situational group-based anger produced after

this trigger event.

Figure 1. Hypotheses of the relationships among general attitudes towardthe advantaged group, situational group-based anger, hostile collectiveaction tendencies, and hostile collective action. H1 = hypothesis 1;H2 = hypothesis 2; H3 = hypothesis 3.

PsyCh Journal 3


Method

ParticipantsThe participants were 152 Chinese undergraduate volunteers

(67 male and 85 female) from a university in the north of

China, whose ages ranged from 18 to 33 years (M = 21.75,

SD = 2.23). Thirty-eight percent of the participants majored

in the liberal arts (e.g., accounting, human resource manage-

ment, English, marketing and sales), and the other 62%

majored in the sciences (e.g. math, computer science,

physics, engineering). In this study, they were randomly

assigned to one of 38 groups, each of which consisted of four

members. The groups were categorized as all male (10%),

mostly male (18%), even sex distribution (23%), mostly

female (31%), or all female (18%). In addition, these groups

included low familiarity groups (all members did not know

one another: 8%), moderate familiarity groups (some

members knew one another: 82%), and high familiarity

groups (every member knew all other members: 10%).

ProcedureOn arrival, the participant groups were presented with the

following written introduction by a female experimenter:

Welcome to this team study. Today all the team tasks

should be fulfilled by the entire group, which needs to

reach unanimous group opinions in a series of discussions

without the use of a ballot.

Your group belongs to a large team consisting of a

supervisory group and two task groups. As one of the task

groups, your group will process a twenty-minute commu-

nity programming task in which you must discuss and

choose unanimously ten essential facilities for a new com-

munity from a total of twenty options (e.g. greenbelt,

shop, food market and drugstore). This community pro-

gramming task will be divided into two stages. At the first

stage, your group should list the selected ten facilities on

an answer sheet after a fifteen-minute discussion. Then at

the second stage, your group will be permitted to check

the answers within five minutes by asking the supervisory

group to confirm one of your uncertain choices, because

the supervisory group has a help manual including the

programming experts’ analyses of all options that can

greatly improve the task performance.

In addition, the reward amount you are given will

depend on the performance of your group, which will be

decided by the number of your choices consistent with the

programming experts’ answers. Moreover, if both task

groups list seven or more facilities consistent with the

experts, these two task groups will share an additional

bonus of 80 yuan which will be allocated by the supervi-

sory group. At the end of this experiment, the supervisory

group will select the better of the two task groups on the

basis of their subjective judgments. Each member of the

better task group will get an additional 5 yuan then.

After reading the above introduction, the participant groups

began the programming task. At the second stage of this task,

they asked the supervisory group about any uncertain

choices and received satisfactory answers. All interactions

between the participant groups and the supervisory group

took place indirectly through the same female experimenter

who was trained to make some standardized responses.

When the programming tasks were completed, the partici-

pant groups were asked to spend 10 min discussing their

general evaluations of the supervisory group and the disad-

vantaged status of their group. Then their general attitudes

toward the supervisory group were measured. After this

measurement, the participant groups were told that both task

groups in their team reached an acceptable performance

level, so that these two task groups, including their own,

would share the additional bonus of 80 yuan. After a 2-min

wait, the participant groups were informed that the supervi-

sory group decided to give 20 yuan to them and 60 yuan to

the other task group. When the participant groups faced this

trigger event (i.e., unfair allocation), they were asked to

discuss and list the emotions they experienced within 5 min.

Obviously, the attitudes toward the supervisory group were

measured prior to the trigger event, whereas the emotions of

anger were measured after the event.

Afterwards, the participant groups’ hostile collective

action tendencies and hostile collective action were mea-

sured. Then, before the reports of the reward amount, each

participant completed a questionnaire that included an item

about the experimental purpose. As a result, no participants

were able to identify the true purpose of the study. Moreover,

the questionnaire also asked the participants to report

whether there were some leaders who determined the unani-

mous group opinions in their discussions. A review of the

participants’ responses revealed that 72% of the participant

groups did not have a leader, whereas 28% had one or more

leaders.

In fact, the supervisory group and another task group did

not exist in this experiment. Following the protocol of Saguy



et al. (2008), all participant groups were manipulated into

disadvantage by being told that the supervisory group would

possess resources (i.e., the help manual) and distribute extra

rewards (i.e., their additional bonus) in the team task. Simi-

larly, the reward amount depending on performance was just

a story. Each participant received 20 yuan regardless of the

group performance.

MeasuresData were collected from 38 groups and there were no indi-

vidual data in this study. Collective action tendencies and

collective action were quantified by obtaining each group’s

consensus after discussions that occurred within a limited

timeframe (McCauley, 1972; Meyers & Lamm, 1976; Wil-

liams & Taormina, 1993). The group attitudes were assessed

by averaging the group members’ reports of the attitudes of

the group as a whole, in an approach similar to that used for

the measurement of team characteristics in the work-team

context (Barsade, 2002; Bliese, 2000). With regard to group-

based anger, Barsade (2002) suggested that, while the anger

measurement was collected from the groups, an expert rating

was the best choice because of the following three reasons.

First, the expert ratings of anger could accurately catch the

intragroup emotional contagion. Second, the expert ratings

of anger could avoid the bias from group members’ self-

reports, as the individuals’ evaluations of the entire group’s

anger would be greatly influenced by their own emotions of

anger. Third, the expert ratings of anger were better able to

predict group behaviors than any other anger measurements

(e.g., self-report) as they could well represent the groups’

expressed emotions in real time. Therefore, group-based

anger in the current study was assessed by the expert ratings

of the participant groups’ listed emotional words.

General attitudes toward the advantaged group

The participant groups’ general attitudes toward the advan-

taged group were measured using the question, “How would

your group evaluate the supervisory group?” with the fol-

lowing bipolar adjective pairs: warm–cold, friendly–hostile,

suspicious–trusting, positive–negative, admiration–disgust,

and respect–contempt (see Wright, Aron, McLaughlin-

Volpe, & Ropp, 1997). Each group member responded to

these items independently after the group discussion about

their evaluations of the supervisory group, and gave the

answers on a 4-point scale without a middle point. The group

attitude was calculated by averaging the four members’

reported attitudes. The internal consistency coefficient (a) of

these six items was 0.91.

Situational group-based anger

After a 5-min discussion, the participant groups were asked

to list the emotions they experienced when they were given

only 20 yuan whereas another task group was given 60 yuan.

Three independent, trained raters outside the participant

groups then evaluated the responses of all 38 groups using a

4-point scale ranging from 1 (very calm) to 4 (very angry).

The three raters’ evaluations were averaged to calculate an

index of group-based anger. Inter-rater reliability (a), com-

puted using the most popular measure of the correlation

between raters (Kasten & Nevo, 2008; Murphy & De Shon,

2000), was 0.90.

Hostile collective action tendencies

The participant groups were presented with the following

instruction: “If the supervisory group’s final bonus is

decided by your group, please discuss how much of a reward

your group thinks the supervisory group in your large team

should get within five minutes. The reward amount must be

between 0 and 60 yuan, and it will be unknown to the super-

visory group.” Because lesser rewards reported by the par-

ticipant groups indicated greater tendencies of retaliation

and punishment on the advantaged group, we then recoded

the given reward amount reversely as scores of hostile col-

lective action tendencies, ranging from 0 to 60.

Hostile collective action

The participant groups were presented with another instruc-

tion: “The supervisory group’s final bonus will be a

weighted average of the rewards given by your group,

another task group and the experimenter interacting with

them. In the next five-minute discussion, please make a final

decision on the reward amount given to the supervisory

group. The reward amount must be between 0 and 60 yuan.

Please note that the supervisory group will know the final

rewards given by your group.”

This measurement of collective retaliation and punish-

ment action did not affect the participant groups’ disadvan-

tage because they were told that their allocation would only

be used as a reference to determine the advantaged group’s

final rewards. Moreover, the final rewards known by the

supervisory group could adversely influence the magnitude

of the participant groups’ rewards, because after this mea-

surement the supervisory group would select the better task

group and decide whether a particular participant group

would receive greater rewards. As a result, the measure of

hostile collective action, which would have a factual impact

PsyCh Journal 5


both on others (i.e., the supervisory group) and on the par-

ticipant group themselves, was much closer to the group’s

actual behavior. Similarly to the measurements of hostile

collective action tendencies, we recoded the final reward

amount reversely as scores of hostile collective action,

ranging from 0 to 60.

Results

The participant groups’ responses to the question of experi-

mental purpose showed that almost all the participants

thought this study focused on team collaboration and team

performance in an unfair situation. Video analysis of the

group process also indicated that all participant groups were

strongly involved in the study, because they looked very

anxious or angry when their group performance was influ-

enced by the situational factors. In addition, all the partici-

pant groups believed there was a supervisory group and

another task group in the team, and considered themselves to

be at a disadvantage; therefore the manipulation of group

status was deemed to be successful. The descriptive statistics

and intercorrelations are reported in Table 1.

The strength of the hostile collective action, M = 25.45,

SD = 16.11, was weaker than that of the collective action

tendencies, M = 31.08, SD = 14.77, t(37) = -3.34, p < .01.

Video analysis of the group discussion in the measurement

of hostile collective action clearly showed that this difference

was produced because the participant groups believed that

hostile collective action would have some actual impacts in

this experiment (e.g., possibly influencing their own rewards,

partly deciding the supervisory group’s final rewards).

The main objective of the present study was to explore the

role of general attitudes toward the advantaged group that

are formed before a trigger event in predicting the disadvan-

taged groups’ hostile collective action through situational

group-based anger that is produced after this trigger event.

Moreover, the current study also needed to examine the

effects of general attitudes toward the advantaged group and

situational group-based anger on the prediction of hostile

collective action through their collective action tendencies.

Thus, we tested the hypothetical pathways using multiple

regression analysis (Baron & Kenny, 1986) with hostile col-

lective action as a dependent variable. Otherwise, the indices

of group characteristics (i.e., gender, familiarity, and the

presence of leaders) were not significantly correlated with

the dependent variable. Therefore, these group characteris-

tics were not included in the following analyses.

Hypothesis 1 predicted that general attitudes toward the

advantaged group would have a negative indirect relation-

ship with hostile collective action fully mediated through

collective action tendencies. This hypothesis was tested

using three steps (Baron & Kenny, 1986). First, general

attitudes toward the advantaged group predicted hostile col-

lective action significantly, b = -0.38, p = .02. Second,

general attitudes toward the advantaged group predicted

hostile collective action tendencies significantly, b = -0.54,

p = .00. Finally and third, hostile collective action tendencies

predicted hostile collective action significantly, b = 0.81,

p = .00, whereas the effects of general attitudes toward the

advantaged group on hostile collective action became non-

significant, b = 0.06, p > .05, when hostile collective action

tendencies were added to the equation. Thus, hostile collec-

tive action tendencies fully mediated the effects of general

attitudes toward the advantaged group on hostile collective

action. Hypothesis 1 was supported.

Hypothesis 2 predicted that situational group-based anger

would have a positive indirect relationship with hostile col-

lective action fully mediated through collective action tenden-

Table 1Descriptive Statistics and Intercorrelations for Variables

Variable M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

1 General attitudes 2.35 0.37 –2 Situational anger 2.60 1.01 -0.50** –3 Collective action tendencies 31.08 14.77 -0.54** 0.59** –4 Collective action 25.45 16.11 -0.38* 0.62** 0.78** –5 Sexa – – -0.22 0.19 0.16 0.14 –6 Familiarityb – – -0.13 -0.13 0.09 0.08 0.03 –7 Leaderc – – 0.19 -0.18 0.05 -0.03 0.06 0.24 –

Note. n = 38.aThe variable is coded such that 1 = male groups; 2 = male dominance groups; 3 = equilibrium sex groups; 4 = female dominance groups; 5 = female groups. bThevariable is coded such that 1 = low familiarity; 2 = moderate familiarity; 3 = high familiarity. cThe variable is coded such that 1 = groups without leaders, 2 = groupswith some leaders.*p < .05. **p < .01.



cies. Similarly, this hypothesis was also tested using three

steps. In the first step, situational group-based anger predicted

hostile collective action significantly, b = 0.62, p = .00. In the

second step, situational group-based anger predicted hostile

collective action tendencies significantly, b = 0.59, p = .00. In

the third step, hostile collective action tendencies predicted

hostile collective action significantly, b = 0.63, p = .00,

whereas situational group-based anger was no longer a pre-

dictor of hostile collective action, b = 0.25, p > .05, when

hostile collective action tendencies were added to the equa-

tion. Thus, hostile collective action tendencies fully mediated

the effect of situational group-based anger on hostile collec-

tive action. Hypothesis 2 was supported.

Hypothesis 3 predicted that general attitudes toward the

advantaged group that are formed before the trigger event

would have a negative indirect relationship with hostile col-

lective action, fully mediated through situational group-

based anger produced after the trigger event. This hypothesis

was also tested using three steps. First, general attitudes

toward the advantaged group predicted hostile collective

action significantly, b = -0.38, p = .02. Then, general atti-

tudes toward the advantaged group predicted situational

group-based anger significantly, b = -0.50, p = .00. Finally,

situational group-based anger predicted hostile collective

action significantly, b = 0.58, p = .00, whereas the effects of

general attitudes toward the advantaged group on hostile

collective action became nonsignificant, b = -0.09, p > .05,

when situational group-based anger was added to the equa-

tion. Thus, situational group-based anger fully mediated the

effects of general attitudes toward the advantaged group on

hostile collective action. Hypothesis 3 was supported.

In conclusion, these pathways explaining hostile collective

action from general attitudes, situational anger, and collective

action tendencies revealed that general attitudes toward the

advantaged group that were formed before the trigger event

predicted hostile collective action indirectly through the

mediating effects of situational group-based anger and hostile

collective action tendencies that were both produced after the

trigger event. In addition, situational group-based anger had

an indirect relationship with hostile collective action as fully

mediated by collective action tendencies.

Discussion

The present study provided evidence for the predictive

effects of both general attitudes toward the advantaged group

formed before the trigger event and situational group-based

anger produced after this trigger event on hostile collective

action at the group level. Specifically, general attitudes

toward the advantaged group had an indirect predictive value

that was fully mediated by hostile collective action tenden-

cies and situational group-based anger, whereas situational

group-based anger predicted hostile collective action fully

mediated through collective action tendencies.

These results about the mediating effects of hostile col-

lective action tendencies on the relationship between

general attitudes toward the advantaged group and hostile

collective action could be explained by planned behavior

theory (Ajzen, 1991), which suggests that attitudes predict

behaviors indirectly through behavioral intentions. Further-

more, the findings extended this theory to the domain of

collective action by indicating how general attitudes toward

the advantaged group would predict hostile collective

action. In addition, when hostile collective action tenden-

cies were taken into consideration, general attitudes toward

the advantaged group seemed to be stronger predictors

of hostile collective action (the path coefficient was

-0.54 ¥ 0.81 = -0.44) than situational group-based anger

(the path coefficient was 0.59 ¥ 0.63 = 0.37). Although the

path coefficient difference still needs to be tested in future

research, it is apparently necessary to include the general

attitudes toward the advantaged group among the predictors

of hostile collective action, because sometimes they may

have stronger predictive effects than situational group-

based anger. Therefore, hostile collective action can be

accurately predicted when adding the pathway of general

attitudes toward the advantaged group to the dual pathway

model (group efficacy and group-based anger) proposed by

Van Zomeren et al. (2004).

Moreover, the results that suggested situational group-

based anger predicted hostile collective action fully medi-

ated through collective action tendencies accorded with

findings from previous research which showed that emotions

of anger were important motivators of collective action ten-

dencies (Iyer et al., 2007; Leach et al., 2007; Levine, 2010;

Smith et al., 2008) and collective action (Yang, 2000). The

role of situational group-based anger in hostile collective

action tendencies and actual collective action occurred

because the majority of participants were mobilized by the

desire for emotional catharsis to find an outlet for anger in

hostile collective action (Hercus, 1999). At the same time,

situational group-based anger could incline the members to

participate in hostile collective action by increasing their risk

taking (Rydell et al., 2008).

PsyCh Journal 7


Furthermore, these results proved the mediating effects of

collective action tendencies on the relationship between situ-

ational group-based anger and collective action in the work

of Van Zomeren et al. (2011). Because their research focused

on an instrumental collective action that aimed to achieve the

goals of affecting the tuition fee policy, whereas the current

study explored a hostile collective action in which the dis-

advantaged groups retaliated and punished the supervisory

group to release their anger, it was possible that situational

group-based anger would always influence collective action

fully mediated through collective action tendencies no

matter what the type of collective action.

Most importantly, the findings from this study present a

pathway from general attitudes toward the advantaged group

formed before the trigger event to hostile collective action

through situational group-based anger produced after the

trigger event. This pathway describes a continuous process

of hostile collective action. That is, hostile collective action

happens not only because of the trigger events, but also due

to the relatively constant attitudes formed before these

trigger events. In other words, through their daily interac-

tions, the disadvantaged groups have formed attitudes

toward the advantaged group that will influence their emo-

tions of anger when a trigger event occurs, and then affect

hostile collective action for responding to this trigger event.

As a result, this pathway extends the two pathways of group

efficacy and group-based anger of Van Zomeren et al. (2004)

by exploring the role of general attitudes toward the advan-

taged group together with situational group-based anger, and

brings relatively constant predictors to the situational

pathway model of collective action.

In addition, the current study provides measurements of

group attitudes, emotions, and behaviors toward an out-

group. By using these measures, future intergroup research

can use group data to validate the conclusions obtained from

individual assessments. Also, this work develops a new para-

digm, including some intergroup interactions, and operation-

alizes hostile collective action as the disadvantaged groups’

retaliation and punishment behaviors toward the advantaged

group. These experimental methods will be very useful for

future research that examines actual collective action in the

lab.

Finally, these findings have several implications for prac-

tice. First of all, the pathways to hostile collective action

found from this study show that social movement can be

satisfactorily predicted when general attitudes toward the

advantaged group, situational group-based anger, and hostile

collective action tendencies are taken into consideration. In

particular, it is quite helpful to explore the effects of general

attitudes toward the advantaged group (i.e., relatively con-

stant factors) on hostile collective action because we can

foresee hostile collective action before a trigger event by

monitoring these predictors in daily life. Therefore, by regu-

larly investigating general attitudes toward the advantaged

group, practitioners in public administration can be warned

when the possibility of hostile collective action increases.

Otherwise, the pathway from general attitudes toward the

advantaged group to hostile collective action as mediated

through situational group-based anger can contribute to

understanding the real process of hostile collective action

occurrence. According to these findings, hostile collective

action breaks out as the trigger events happen because the

disadvantaged groups’attitudes toward the advantaged group

which are formed before the trigger events, influence their

situational anger, and further affect the final collective action

they take. Thus, to control hostile collective action, we should

pay more attention to the daily interactions between the

disadvantaged and advantaged groups rather than only to the

trigger events per se. Moreover, this approved pathway also

suggests that destructive collective action could be reduced by

improving the disadvantaged groups’ attitudes toward the

advantaged group through some effective interventions.

However, there are still a few limitations in the present

study concerning ecological validity. First, the participant

groups had very little basis on which to form general attitudes

toward the advantaged group and the emotions of anger in the

laboratory setting, given the lack of direct interactions with

the supervisory group. Consequently, the attitude strength

and the intensity of anger may not completely reflect what

might occur in the real world. Future research should include

multiple rounds of direct intergroup interactions to provide

the participant groups with enough information for forming

their attitudes and emotions toward the other group.

Second, in this study, the participant groups might allocate

more rewards to the supervisory group in order to receive a

greater bonus of their own, whereas in actual collective

action the participants will punish the advantaged groups for

improving the status of their group. Thus, collective action

measured using the participant groups’ allocated rewards to

the supervisory group in the current study was different from

collective action in real life, which would exert a destructive

impact on the advantaged groups, because the collective

action manipulated in the present experiment did not include

any drastic intergroup conflicts and would not bring serious



troubles and pressures to the advantaged group. Future work

should employ other measurements of collective action (e.g.,

signing a petition) that are much more similar to those used

in real life, and examine the findings from the present study.

Third, the analyses focused on participant groups that

were treated unfairly by the powerful group. Further clarifi-

cation is required to explore the pathways to hostile collec-

tive action using participant groups that are advantaged by

the treatment. Moreover, this study was conducted by only

one female experimenter. Future research should involve

both a male and a female experimenter and randomly assign

the participant groups to these two experimenters.

Finally, the participants were all undergraduate students

with a relatively narrow range of backgrounds. Therefore,

future studies need to investigate public attitudes, emotions,

and collective action using questionnaires designed to test

the generalizability of our findings.

In summary, the present study provides insight into the

pathways, including the role of general attitudes toward the

advantaged group that were formed before a trigger event,

and the role of situational group-based anger produced after

that event in the prediction of hostile collective action

through collective action tendencies at the group level.

Future research can enrich our findings by adding other

relatively constant and situational predictors to the existing

pathways and enhancing our understanding of the interven-

tions through which attitude improvements can successfully

reduce destructive collective action in practice.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a key project of the Natural

Science Foundation of China (Grant 70731004), the Youth

Science Foundation of the Institute of Psychology, CAS

(Grant Y0CX153S01), and the Knowledge Innovation

Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant

KSCX2-YW-R-130 and KSCX2-EW-J-8).

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Pathways to hostile collective action: The roles of general attitudes toward the advantaged group and situational anger