Collective Spirit or False Consciousness? Testing Two Complementary Models of Integrating Group-based Control and Compensatory Control Processes

人们需要对生活中的重要方面有控制感。在缺乏个人控制的情况下（例如，个人或社会危机），他们试图恢复或维持他们的控制感。根据两种相互竞争的理论，人们利用他们的社会环境（即，其他）重新建立主观控制或科普失去控制权的不利后果。补偿控制理论（CCT）提出，人们的目标是减少环境中的不确定性并建立结构，并通过支持强大的外部代理人和社会结构（例如，等级制度），保持混乱的海湾和拒绝社会变革（即，保守偏移）。相比之下，基于群体的控制理论（GBCT）提出，当经历缺乏个人控制时，人们首先试图通过社会自我重新建立控制感，通过认同代理内群体或在自我定义的内群体中争取集体代理（例如，通过集体行动）。在之前的DFG项目中，我们通过实验证明GBCT可以解释早期CCT研究的结果，从而找到了强有力的证据来证明这种基于群体的控制反应的首要性。总的来说，我们发现，被提醒低（高）个人控制的人更欣赏和支持社会等级制度和社会变革，只有当这意味着自我定义的内部群体的集体代理时。在一个为期两年的后续项目中，我们的目标是澄清补偿控制，或其他不确定性减少反应，在应对个人无助感中发挥任何作用（如果是的话，它们的作用是什么）。因此，我们将测试GBCT和CCT的两种可能的集成。首先，当没有潜在的代理内群体时，受到威胁的人可能会转向补偿策略。在三个实验中，我们将测试人们放弃基于群体的补偿控制的特定边界条件（即，当内组缺乏当前和潜在的代理时）。第二，正如我们对层级支持的初步研究结果所表明的那样，人们可能会努力争取群体内的结构和秩序，作为实现基于群体的控制的间接途径。因此，两个实验将测试是否高度（与低）结构化的内团体增加控制的看法，高度认同的群体成员通过增加集体代理的看法，测量和操纵的调解人。在进一步的实验中，我们将调查人们是否更强烈地认同高度（与低度）结构化的内群体作为对个人控制威胁的GBCT反应。研究结果不仅有助于整合社会心理学对威胁控制反应的相互竞争的理论。此外，他们将有助于解释和预测社会不平等和社会危机对被剥夺权利的个人是否以及何时为压制他们的条件和制度辩护或集体挑战的影响。

People need to feel in control over important aspects of their life. Under conditions of lacking personal control (e.g., personal or societal crises) they try to restore or maintain their sense of control. According to two competing theories, people employ their social environment (i.e., others) to re-establish subjective control or to cope with the adverse consequences of control loss. Compensatory control theory (CCT) proposes that people aim at reducing uncertainty and establishing structure in their environment and pursue this by supporting powerful external agents and social structures (e.g., hierarchies) that keep chaos at bay and by rejecting social change (i.e., conservative shift). In contrast, group-based control theory (GBCT) proposes that when experiencing lacking personal control people first try to re-establish a sense of control through their social self by identifying with agentic ingroups or striving for collective agency in self-defining ingroups (e.g., through collective action). In a preceding DFG project we found strong evidence for the primacy of this group-based control response by experimentally demonstrating that GBCT can explain the results of earlier CCT studies. In general, we showed that people who were reminded of low (vs. high) personal control appreciated and supported social hierarchies and social change more when, and only when, this implied collective agency of self-defining ingroups. In a two-years follow-up project we aim to clarify whether compensatory control, or other uncertainty reduction responses, play any role in coping with personal helplessness at all (and if yes, what their role is). Therefore, we will test two possible integrations of GBCT and CCT. First, threatened people may turn to compensatory strategies when no potentially agentic ingroup seems available. In three experiments, we will test the specific boundary conditions under which people abandon group-based for compensatory control (i.e., when the ingroup lacks both current and potential agency). Second, people may strive for structure and order within groups as an indirect route to group-based control, as our initial findings on hierarchy support suggest. Accordingly, two experiments will test whether highly (vs. lowly) structured ingroups increase control perceptions of highly identified group members via increasing perceptions of collective agency, measuring and manipulating the mediator. In a further experiment, we will investigate whether people more strongly identify with highly (vs. lowly) structured ingroups as a GBCT response to personal control threat. The results will not only help to integrate competing theories of socio-psychological responses to threatened control. Also, they will contribute to explaining and predicting effects of social inequality and societal crises on whether and when deprived individuals either justify or collectively challenge the conditions and systems that hold them down.