Which emotions might move people who benefit from inequality to support social change?

Details

This article is a literature review and conceptual framework exploring connections between recent developments in the social identity of helping and prosocial emotions among advantaged groups. The authors review research on the potential of guilt, sympathy, and outrage to transform these groups’ apathy into positive action.

Their new framework examines how these emotions shape group processes, producing action strategies that emphasize either social cohesion or social change. They argue that these prosocial emotions have a critical but underrecognized role in creating contexts of in-group inclusion or exclusion, shaping the content and meaning of group norms, and informing group interests. These distinctions also offer a useful way to differentiate commonly discussed emotions.

The authors conclude that the most “effective” emotion depends on the context of the inequality. However, outrage seems particularly likely to shape group processes and social change outcomes productively.