Browsing by Author "Alvarez, Belen"

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    Inequality and Class Consciousness
    (SPRINGER INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING AG, 2019) Carvacho, Hector; Alvarez, Belen
    Class consciousness occupied a central role in some classic theories in the social sciences, particularly in sociology. However, these concepts have been mostly overlooked by social psychology. The recent development of the psychology of inequality and social class opens new opportunities to revisit the concept of class consciousness. In this chapter, we provide a conceptual overview of class consciousness highlighting its contemporary relevance, and we discuss how inequality and class consciousness are connected. To explore this connection, we show some preliminary evidence at the social level, showing how class consciousness is lower among rich and egalitarian countries, and at the individual level, showing that for members of the working class, higher levels of class consciousness are connected to lower life satisfaction and worse health-related indicators. We propose a research agenda for social psychology that reconsiders the concept of class consciousness as it might be a fruitful avenue to further explain how certain psychological processes impact the formation and maintenance of social hierarchies.
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    When social movements fail or succeed: social psychological consequences of a collective action's outcome
    (SPRINGER INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING AG, 2023) Carvacho, Hector; Gonzalez, Roberto; Cheyre, Manuel; Rocha, Carolina; Cornejo, Marcela; Jimenez-Moya, Gloria; Manzi, Jorge; Alvarez-Dezerega, Catalina; Alvarez, Belen; Castro, Diego; Varela, Micaela; Valdenegro, Daniel; Drury, John; Livingstone, Andrew
    Collective actions occur all around the world and, in the last few years, even more frequently. Previous literature has mainly focused on the antecedents of collective actions, but less attention has been given to the consequences of participating in collective action. Moreover, it is still an open question how the consequences of collective action might differ, depending on whether the actions are perceived to succeed or fail. In two studies we seek to address this gap using innovative experimental studies. In Study 1 (N = 368) we manipulated the perceptions of success and failure of a collective action in the context of a real social movement, the Chilean student movement from last decade. In Study 2 (N = 169), in addition to manipulating the outcome, we manipulated actual participation, using a mock environmental organization aiming to create awareness in authorities, to test the causal effect of both participation and success/failure on empowerment, group efficacy, and intentions of future involvement in normative and non-normative collective actions. Results show that current and past participation predict overall participation in the future, however, in Study 2 the manipulated participation was associated with having less intentions of participating in the future. In both studies, perception of success increases group efficacy. In Study 1, we found that when facing failure, participants increase their willingness to participate more in the future as opposed to non-participants that actually decrease theirs. In Study 2, however, failure increases the perception of efficacy for those with a history of non-normative participation. Altogether these results highlight the moderating role of the outcome of collective action to understand the effect of participation on future participation. We discuss these results in light of the methodological innovation and the real world setting in which our studies were conducted.