Social psychologists have developed influential theoretical models to understand intergroup conflicts, radicalism, and collective action. November 2018 saw the emergence of a new powerful movement in France named the Yellow Vests. Born on social media, the movement has sustained an unprecedented period of intense protests and violent clashes with the police, challenging the French government. As such, this movement offers an ideal context to examine the real-world relevance of current social-psychological theorizing. Using a social identity and self-categorization perspective, two correlational studies (three samples, N = 1,849) tested the role of self-categorization as a group member, or social identity, in accounting for individual participation in normative and nonnormative collective action. Using different operationalizations of identification, both studies confirm a powerful role of identification as a Yellow Vest and provided evidence that the effect of social media use on collective action is fully mediated by self-categorization as a Yellow Vest. An alternative model suggesting that social media use mediated the relation between social identity and collective action was not supported by the data.

中文翻译：

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社会认同在解释集体行动中的作用：黄色背心运动的群体间视角

社会心理学家开发了有影响力的理论模型来理解群体间冲突、激进主义和集体行动。2018 年 11 月，法国出现了一场名为“黄色背心”的新运动。该运动诞生于社交媒体，经历了前所未有的激烈抗议和与警察的暴力冲突，挑战了法国政府。因此，这一运动提供了一个理想的背景来检验当前社会心理理论的现实世界相关性。使用社会认同和自我分类的视角，两项相关研究（三个样本，N = 1,849) 测试了自我分类作为群体成员或社会身份在解释个人参与规范和非规范集体行动方面的作用。使用不同的身份识别操作，这两项研究都证实了身份识别作为黄色背心的强大作用，并提供了证据表明社交媒体使用对集体行动的影响完全通过自我分类为黄色背心来调节。数据不支持另一种模型，该模型表明社交媒体的使用介导了社会认同和集体行动之间的关系。