Being moved by global crisis: The benefits and downsides of threat salience for collective engagement

Global crisis require collective engagement but confront people with the threat of negative consequences, which can make them anxious and defensive. At the same time, making people aware of the power of collective engagement in times of crisis has been shown to motivate collective action participation through affective pathways of anger and being moved. In six studies (Ntotal = 1137), we tested the prediction that a global crisis threat promotes collective engagement through increased feelings of being moved. We show evidence that different kinds of threats (i.e., intergroup, existential, and global crisis threat) all elicited feelings of being moved (S1) that were accompanied by heightened feelings of anxiety as compared to mere collective action salience (S2). Experimentally confronting participants with gender inequality (S3) or a climate change threat (S4) supported the predicted indirect effect of threat induced feelings of being moved on collective action support and solidarity. Evidence from correlational data in the context of the Ukrainian war, further supported the notion that feelings of being moved in particular accounted for benevolent collective behavior, while negative affective states primarily explained derogatory and conspirational thoughts (S5). Finally, we show that providing participants with a positive future vision helped to channel the positive effects of being moved for collective engagement and to avoid the downsides of threat salience (S4, S6).