Publications
Why they (do not) protest:
A critical social psychological perspective on collective action in Palestine
When and how does collective action emerge in Palestine? While current psychological theories emphasize individual-level explanations for collective action, these approaches fall short in the context of Palestine, marked by prolonged conflict, military occupation, systematic restrictions on movement and expression, and limited political opportunities that create a challenging and perilous environment for activism. In this chapter, we identify unique, interrelated features of the Palestinian context that warrant a different perspective on collective action. We present empirical evidence from longitudinal and cross-sectional studies illustrating how these contextual elements influence psychological processes, shaping Palestinians' sense of identity, hope, and the types of collective action they pursue. We discuss the contributions of contemporary Palestinian research to the field of social psychology, emphasizing the need for a multi-level and interdisciplinary approach to studying collective action and highlighting future research directions.
Hasan-Aslih, S., & Penić, S. (2025). Why they (do not) protest: A critical social psychological perspective on collective action in Palestine. In M. van Zomeren (Ed.), The social and political psychology of protest across and within cultures (pp. 179-199). Routledge.
Two paths to violence: Individual versus group emotions during conflict escalation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
Experiencing repression creates intense emotions and raises dilemmas about handling political action to achieve social change. Past studies suggest that mainly group-based emotions are associated with support for violent collective action while the exact influence of individual emotions remains unclear. This research compares the association of individual- versus group-based emotions with violent collective action while examining conflict context as the moderating factor. We propose to distinguish two context aspects—collective versus personal threat—determining the relative impact of individual versus group emotions on support for violence. We conducted two quantitative field studies in the Occupied Palestinian Territories during different types of conflict experience, defined by either prevalent personally experienced threat versus elevated collectively experienced threat (Study 1), or both (Study 2). Results indicate that for mainly collectively experienced threat, group (but not individual) emotions predicted violent collective action, while for personally experienced threat, individual (but not group) emotions predicted violent engagement.
Fink, O., Hasan Aslih, S., & Halperin, E. (2024). Two paths to violence: Individual versus group emotions during conflict escalation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 28(2), 355-376.
Arab & Muslim American Pre-Election Study Report
U.S. elections are often decided by narrow margins, making the political behavior of ethnic and racial minorities increasingly consequential, particularly in key swing states. Despite growing attention to African American, Latino, and Asian American voters, the political and psychological dynamics shaping Arab and Muslim American electoral behavior remain relatively unexplored. This study investigates the voting preferences and political attitudes of Arab and Muslim Americans leading up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Conducted between October 16 and November 4, 2024, our study involved 2,620 participants, including 1,312 Arab and Muslim Americans and 1,308 White Americans. Findings reveal a clear divergence in patterns of political alignment: While White voters exhibited strong ideological alignment with major party candidates, Arab and Muslim voters demonstrated weaker ideological alignment and were more influenced by issue-specific concerns—particularly U.S. foreign policy on Israel/Palestine. Specifically, we find that personal connection to Palestinian suffering and perceived culpability in the war in Gaza were significant predictors of support for third-party candidate Jill Stein. These results suggest that, for Arab and Muslim Americans in 2024, foreign policy grievances played a more decisive role in shaping vote choice than traditional partisan or ideological commitments.
Hasan-Aslih, S., Eadeh, F., Murrar, S., & Sediqe, N. (2024). Arab & Muslim American pre-election study 2024: Preliminary report.​
Disadvantaged Group Members are Prouder of Their Group When Using the Language of the Dominant Group Compared to Their Native Language
In ethnically and linguistically diverse societies, disadvantaged groups often face pressures to acquire and speak the advantaged group’s language to achieve social inclusion and economic mobility. This work investigates how using the advantaged group’s language affects disadvantaged group members’ in-group pride and collective self-esteem, relative to using their native language. Across six experimental studies involving Palestinian citizens of Israel (total N = 1,348), we test two competing hypotheses: Disadvantaged group members may experience greater in-group pride when using a) their native language, due to its emotional significance (the nativity hypothesis), or b) the language of the advantaged group, due to activation of habituated compensatory responses to dominance relations (the identity enhancement hypothesis). We found that respondents reported significantly higher in-group pride when responding to a Hebrew survey when compared to performing the same activity in Arabic (Studies 1a and 1b), regardless of whether the researchers administering the survey were identified as Jewish or Arab (Studies 2a and 2b). Study 3 replicated this effect while employing the “bogus pipeline” technique, suggesting the pride expression was authentic, not merely driven by social desirability. Finally, Study 4 (pre-registered) examined additional measures of positive regard for the in-group, finding that participants described their group more positively in an attribute selection task, and reported greater collective self-esteem, when surveyed in Hebrew, rather than in Arabic. Taken together, these findings suggest that language use influences disadvantaged group members’ perceptions and feelings concerning their group when those languages are associated with relative position in an intergroup hierarchy.
Hasan-Aslih, S., Idan, O., Willer, R., & Halperin, E. (2024). Disadvantaged Group Members are Prouder of Their Group When Using the Language of the Dominant Group Compared to Their Native Language. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(1). preprint​​
The current research examines joint collective action between advantaged and disadvantaged groups, from the perspective of the latter. We hypothesize that joint action poses a dilemma which lies in the tension between perceived instrumentality of joint action (i.e., ability to promote the disadvantaged’s goals) and perceived normalization (i.e., its tendency to blur power relations). We test this idea across three studies in the United States and Israel/Palestine. In Study 1 (n = 361) we manipulated perceptions of joint action from the perspective of a hypothetical character, and in Study 2 (n = 378) we presented participants with an article highlighting the risk and benefit of joint activism. Results showed that perceived instrumentality increases, whereas perceived normalization decreases joint action tendencies. In Study 3 (n = 240), we described a joint action event that taps into some of the themes that induce concerns about normalization. We found that normalization perceptions feed into perceptions of instrumentality, and this occurred mainly among high identifiers, for whom the dilemma is most salient. The implications of these findings for understanding the complexity of joint collective action from the perspective of the disadvantaged are discussed.
Hasan-Aslih, S., Pliskin, R., Shuman, E., van Zomeren, M., Saguy, T., & Halperin, E. (2023). Together we will rise? Perceptions of instrumentality and normalization as motivations for joint collective action among the disadvantaged. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations.
The murder of George Floyd ignited one of the largest mass mobilizations in US history, including both nonviolent and violent BlackLivesMatter (BLM) protests in the summer of 2020. Many have since asked: Did the violence within the largely nonviolent movement help or hurt its goals? To answer this question, we used data [R. Kishi, et al., (Report, Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, 2021)] about the location of all BLM protests during the summer of 2020 to identify US counties that featured no protests, only nonviolent protests, or both nonviolent and violent protests. We then combined these data with survey data (n = 494; study 1), data from the Congressional Cooperative Election Study (n = 43,924; study 2A), and data from Project Implicit (n = 180,480; study 2B), in order to examine how exposure to (i.e., living in a county with) different types of protest affected both support for the key policy goals of the movement and prejudice toward Black Americans. We found that the 2020 BLM protests were not associated with reduced prejudice among either liberals or conservatives. However, when containing a mix of nonviolence and violence, these protests predicted greater support for BLM’s key policy goals among conservatives living in relatively liberal areas. As such, this research suggests that violent, disruptive actions within a broader nonviolent movement may affect those likely to be resistant to the movement. We connect these findings to the notion of disruptive action, which explains why these effects do not materialize in reducing prejudice, but in generating support for important policy goals of the movement.
Shuman, E., Hasan-Aslih, S., Van Zomeren, M., Saguy, T., & Halperin, E. (2022). Protest movements involving limited violence can sometimes be effective: Evidence from the 2020 BlackLivesMatter protests. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Protected by the Emotions of the Group: Perceived Emotional Fit and Disadvantaged Group Members’ Activist Burnout
Psychological processes that hamper activism, such as activist burnout, threaten social change. We suggest that perceived emotional fit (i.e., perceiving to experience similar emotions as other disadvantaged group members) may buffer activist burnout by mitigating the deleterious effects of stressors that are associated with partaking in collective action. We investigated the relation between perceived emotional fit and activist burnout using three-wave longitudinal survey data of Palestinians in the context of the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. We hypothesized that both higher general tendencies to fit emotionally with the ingroup (general perceived emotional fit) and increases over time in perceived emotional fit (change perceived emotional fit) would relate negatively to activist burnout. Supporting our hypotheses, both aspects of emotional fit were associated with lower activist burnout, even when controlling for classical predictors of collective action. This research highlights perceived emotional fit as an additional dimension to the role of emotions for sustainable collective action.
Vandermeulen, D., Hasan-Aslih, S., Shuman, E., & Halperin, E. (2022). Protected by the emotions of the group: Emotional fit and activist burnout. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 49(7), 1086-1096
With or without you: The paradoxical role of identification in predicting joint and ingroup collective action in intergroup conflict
While we have a rich understanding of the motivations of disadvantaged group members to act collectively with their group, especially the important role played by identification, we know less about the disadvantaged's motivations to engage in joint action with the advantaged. This research examines the role of identification in predicting joint and ingroup collective action in intergroup conflicts. Since joint action inherently diffuses the perception of "us versus them", we propose that identification predicts ingroup action, but not joint action. We also examine conflict intensity as a moderator, and examine how changing identification is linked to change in support for joint action. We test these hypotheses in a three-wave longitudinal study in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Results support our hypotheses, demonstrating that identification positively predicts ingroup action but not necessarily joint action, and that when conflict intensifies, changes in identification are negatively related to joint action with outgroup members.
Hasan-Aslih, S., Shuman, E., Pliskin, R., Van Zomeren, M., Saguy, T., Halperin, E. (2020). With or without you: The paradoxical role of identification in predicting joint and ingroup collective action in intergroup Conflict. European Journal of Social Psychology, 50(6), 1334-1343.
The quest for hope: Disadvantaged group members can fulfill their desire to feel hope, but only when they believe in their power
Within contexts of oppression and struggle for social change, in which hope is constantly challenged, do disadvantaged group members still want to feel hope? If so, does this desire translate into actual hope? And does motivation for hope relate to disadvantaged individuals’ collective action tendencies? We suggest that, especially when faced with setbacks in the struggle for social change, disadvantaged group members want to feel hope, but actualizing this motivation depends on their group efficacy beliefs. We address these questions in a two-wave sample of 429 Palestinians living under militarized occupation in the West Bank. Our results indicate that when faced with setbacks, Palestinians want to feel hope for social change, but only those who perceive high group efficacy are able to fulfill their desire. We discuss these findings’ implications for understanding motivated emotional processes and hope in contexts of oppression.
Hasan-Aslih, S., Shuman, E., Goldenberg, A., Pliskin, R., Van Zomeren, M., Halperin, E. (2020). The quest for hope: Disadvantaged group members can fulfill their desire to feel hope, but only when they believe in their power. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 11(7), 879-888.
A Darker Side of Hope: Harmony-Focused Hope Decreases Collective Action Intentions Among the Disadvantaged
Hope is viewed as a positive emotion associated with the motivation to change existing conditions. As such, it is highly relevant for social change, particularly when considering disadvantaged groups. We propose that, in the context of unequal intergroup relations, hope may actually undermine motivation for change among disadvantaged group members. Specifically, we distinguish between hope targeted at harmony with the outgroup and hope targeted at social equality between groups. Drawing on insights regarding the consequences of positive intergroup interactions, we predict that hope for harmony with the outgroup can undermine the constructive tension that motivates the disadvantaged toward equality. Across four studies, involving different intergroup contexts, hope for harmony was negatively associated with disadvantaged group members’ motivation for collective action. We further found that high identifiers from the disadvantaged group were immune to this effect. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for the role of hope in social change.
Hasan-Aslih, S., Pliskin, R., Van Zomeren, M., Halperin, E., Saguy, T. (2019). A darker Side of hope: harmony-based hope Ironically decreases collective action intentions among the disadvantaged. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 45(2) 209–223.
When we want them to fear us: The motivation to influence outgroup emotions in collective action
Hasan-Aslih, S., Netzer, L., Tamir, M., Saguy, T., Van Zomeren, M., Halperin, E. (2019). When we want them to fear us: the motivation to influence outgroup emotions in collective action. Group Processes & Intergroup relations, 22(5), 724–745.
Saguy, T., Sobol-Sarag, D., Halabi, S., Stroebe, K., Bruneau, E., & Hasan-Aslih, S. (2019). When a sense of “We” is lost: Investigating the consequences of a lost common identity among Druze in Israel. Social Psychology and Personality Science.
Saguy, T., Schori-Eyal, N., Hasan-Aslih, S., Sobol, D., Dovidio, J. F. (2016). The irony of harmony: Past and new development. In Vezzali, L., Stathi, S. (Eds.), Intergroup contact theory: Recent developments and future directions. (pp. 53-71). Abingdon, UK: Routledge.