Beyond contagion: Social identity processes in involuntary social influence

行为是如何以及为什么在人与人之间传播的？特别是，侵略和暴力行为是如何传播的？当2011年伦敦爆发骚乱时，为什么伯明翰、曼彻斯特和利物浦也发生了骚乱？解决这类问题最常见的方法之一是通过“传染”的概念。其核心思想是，特别是在人群中，仅仅接触到他人的行为就会导致观察者以同样的方式行事。“传染”现在被用来解释一切，从微笑和打哈欠等“基本”反应（仅仅是目睹某人打哈欠或微笑的行为就可以引起另一个人的同样反应）到复杂的现象，如金融市场的行为，当然还有骚乱。更重要的是，关于简单反应（如打哈欠）的“传染”的实验室实验，支持了将“传染”解释应用于复杂现象（如骚乱）的合理性。尽管被广泛接受，但“传染”理论在解释行为的传播方面存在重大问题。特别是，这种传播是有界限的。如果男人对一个性别歧视的笑话微笑，女权主义者是否也会对男人的微笑做出回应？如果人们在一个城镇暴动，为什么在一些城镇也有暴动，而在其他城镇没有呢？例如，2011年，骚乱从伦敦蔓延到伯明翰、曼彻斯特和利物浦，但没有蔓延到谢菲尔德、利兹或格拉斯哥。“传染”解释无法回答这些问题，因为它们假设传播是自动的。他们没有考虑到发送者和接收者之间的社会关系。我们提出了一种基于社会心理学中的社会认同方法的行为传递的新解释。这表明，影响过程受到群体边界和群体内容的限制：我们更容易受到群体内成员的影响，而不是群体外成员的影响，我们更容易受到与群体规范一致而不是矛盾的影响。因此，社会认同方法非常适合于解释影响的社会限制，无论是对于“基本”现象还是骚乱。为了促进理论理解和实践干预，我们的研究将在多个层面上对传播过程进行社会认同分析。因此，本研究项目的目的和目标如下：首先，我们将进行一系列关于“基本”行为（打哈欠、瘙痒）的实验研究，以检验暴露于某种行为的影响是否取决于观察者和行为者是否为群体成员。我们还将研究“复杂”行为（攻击和骚乱），看看(1)当行为者是内部成员时，观察者是否更受影响；(2)当其他观察者也是群体成员时，观察者更容易受到其他观察者反应的影响；(3)模仿他人的意愿取决于其行为是否符合观察群体的规范。其次，我们将考察2011年英国骚乱期间城市无序的蔓延。我们获得了《卫报》/伦敦政治经济学院“阅读骚乱”研究的全部数据集的特殊访问权（在事件发生后立即对270名参与者进行了采访）。这与其他二手资料（如详细的犯罪数据）一起，将使我们能够检验这些骚乱的传播在多大程度上与与先前骚乱者的共同身份感有关（也就是说，骚乱者在他们之前的骚乱者身上“看到了自己”，而那些缺乏这种意识的人不太可能发生骚乱）。第三，我们将利用我们的发现来引发关于心理传播的本质和解决它们的实用性的更广泛的辩论。活动将包括研讨会，这些研讨会将汇集地方和国家政府的研究人员、从业人员（例如警察）和决策者，讨论我们如何能够减轻骚乱和暴力的蔓延。

How and why do behaviours spread from person to person? In particular, how does aggression and violent behaviour spread? When, as in 2011, riots began in London, why did they then occur in Birmingham, Manchester, and Liverpool? One of the most common ways of addressing such issues is through the notion of 'contagion'. The core idea is that, particularly in crowds, mere exposure to the behaviour of others leads observers to behave in the same way. 'Contagion' is now used to explain everything from 'basic' responses such as smiling and yawning (where the mere act of witnessing someone yawn or smile can invoke the same response in another) to complex phenomena like the behaviour of financial markets and, of course, rioting. What is more, laboratory experiments on the 'contagion' of simple responses (such as yawning) serve to underpin the plausibility of 'contagion' accounts as applied to complex phenomena (such as rioting).Despite this widespread acceptance, the 'contagion' account has major problems in explaining the spread of behaviours. In particular, there are boundaries to such spread. If men smile at a sexist joke, will feminists also smile in response to the men's smiles? If people riot in one town, why is it that they also riot in some towns but not others? For example, in 2011, disturbances spread from London to Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool but they did not spread to Sheffield, Leeds or Glasgow. 'Contagion' explanations cannot answer such questions because they assume that transmission is automatic. They do not take account of the social relations between the transmitter and receiver. We propose a new account of behavioural transmission based on the social identity approach in social psychology. This suggests that influence processes are limited by group boundaries and group content: we are more influenced by ingroup members than by outgroup members, and we are more influenced by that which is consonant with rather than contradictory to group norms. The social identity approach is therefore ideally suited to explaining the social limits to influence, both for 'basic' phenomena and rioting. In order to advance both theoretical understanding and practical interventions, our research will develop a social identity analysis of transmission processes at multiple levels. Accordingly, the aims and objectives of this research project are as follows: First, we will conduct a series of experimental studies on 'basic' behaviours (yawning, itching) to examine whether the effects of being exposed to a behaviour depend on observers and actors being fellow ingroup members. We will also examine 'complex' behaviours (aggression and rioting) to see if (1) observers are more influenced when the actors are ingroup members; (2) observers are more influenced by the responses of other observers when these are also ingroup members; (3) willingness to copy others depends upon whether their behaviour is consonant with observer group norms. Second, we will examine the spread of urban disorder during the 2011 English riots. We have been granted special access to the full data-set from the Guardian/LSE 'Reading the Riots' study (270 interviews with participants carried out immediately following the events). This, along with other secondary sources (such as detailed crime figures), will allow us to examine the extent to which the spread of these riots was linked to a sense of shared identity with those who had rioted previously (that is, those who rioted 'saw themselves' in those who rioted before them, and those who lacked such a sense were less likely to riot). Third, we will use our findings to generate a wider debate about the nature of psychological transmission and the practicalities of addressing them. Activities will include workshops which will bring together researchers, practitioners (e.g., the police) and policy-makers in local and national government to address how we can mitigate against the spread of riots and violence.