Open to all Social Sciences staff and students.
In many waves of leaderless collective action, events appear to influence each other spontaneously. Think of the Arab Spring in 2011, the Occupy movement of 2011, and the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. In each case, the example of crowds on the street appeared to lead to collective action events in further locations. Psychology, history, sociology and criminology have documented such diffusion, but their explanations for it – in terms of either ‘contagion’ or rational choice -- have fundamental weaknesses. In this presentation, I describe recent research collaborations between social psychologists and historians on two waves of riots in England – in 2011 and 1831. Case studies of collective action events in these two waves suggest that each of common identity, common outgroup, and police perceptions can play a role in diffusion. A common feature, however, seems to be a local social influence process that operates through meta-perceptions – that is, beliefs about the beliefs of relevant local others in response to the rioting elsewhere. I show how this process might apply in the case of the recent (July August 2024) racist rioting across the UK, and how we can use the concept of meta-perceptions as part of interventions to stop the spread of racist rioting.
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About the speaker
Professor John Drury
School of Psychology, University of Sussex
