Leave or remain? How outraged reactions to intra-group threat affect group's membership preference

Whether we think about large-scale social groups (e.g. associations, clubs, and nations) or small-scale interpersonal group (e.g. close relationships, colleagues, and group of friends), the life cycle of any social group develops along a continuum that goes from its formation to its dissolution. The different phases of group life are characterized by opposing forces that somehow determine the continuity of the group, such as conformism and cohesion, or its discontinuity, such as deviance, intragroup conflict and schism. Social psychology has concentrated almost exclusively on the processes that allow groups achieving oneness and uniformity, such as social identity and categorization process, and has given little attention to the phenomenon of group dissolution, the schism. Although the complexity of this process may have limited the research, schism is not a so rare phenomenon and the recent international events of Grexit, Brexit, and the separatism of Cataluña, have shown that it critically affects the society as a whole. In general, schism refers to a split or separation of a group into subgroups, and the final secession of at least one subgroup from the original group. Differently from the individual exit, the schism involves that individuals act as a (sub-) group, and as such it implies that an intra-group situation (the original group) become an intergroup situation (subgroups) where conflicts over essential aspects of the group identity stimulate a division between “us” and “them”. Although the social psychological model of schism in groups proposed by Sani (2005) has highlighted some necessary conditions of a schism, among which there are the perception of identity subversion, the lack of group entitativity and the existence of conflicting majority and minority factions, the link between the cause and the decision to leave a group is unclear as one cause may facilitate leaving for one member and not for another. In this endeavour, the current research was aimed to address this gap, by investigating the role of affective and cognitive reactions to a perceived identity threat, and pointed to moral outrage (a specific emotion) and to psychological disengagement (a cognitive process) as two decisive reactions that may motivate minority group members to secede from a superordinate group. Identity threats are of critical importance for individuals and groups, because when people identify with a social group, they start thinking and behaving in terms of “we” instead of “I”; that is, in terms of a social identity. Since this identity strongly affect the self-esteem (Stets & Burke, 2000), individuals are motivated to self-categorise and to evaluate themselves and their group more favourably that other groups. When a perceived threat to the group integrity occurs (as happen when individual’s positions within a group changes from majority to minority) , members of both minority and majority group engage in defensive strategies such as social comparison and self-verification, that produces pressures for intergroup differentiation with the objective of enhancing selfesteem. Individuals who find their opinions supported by others (thus belongs to the majority) tend to assimilate with and positively value the in-group category (e.g. Crocker & Luhtanen, 1990; Schmitt, Branscombe, Silvia, Garcia, & Spears; Tajfel, Billig, Bundy & Flament,1971). On the other hand, individuals that find their position supported by a minority group of people, tend to stress the existing discrepancy between the self (the minority) and the group (the majority), and to engage in defensive mechanism aimed at reshaping the self-concept in a way that reduce the salience of the group identity (the majority) for the self. That is, they decrease their psychological identification (Prislin & Christensen, 2005) and increase the psychological disengagement with the majority position, and this may be crucial in generating the intention to leave the group, as a means of intergroup differentiation. However, psychological disengagement does not always lead to the break up with a group, as some people may accept the situation, whereas others may resent it (Dube´ & Guimond, 1983; 1986). Moreover, leaving a group is costly and it may be experienced as a form of betrayal, and may be sanctioned as a deviant behaviour (Millward & Brewerton, 2000). According to Harris (2015), the emotional experience associated with a membership may be critical in generating exit intention, via psychological disengagement. Those individuals experiencing identity threat and thus identity subversion, come to feel a mix of dejection and agitation-related emotions (Higgins, Shah & Friedman, 1997) as a group and these motivate them to make changes to group-relevant standards and/or behaviour. The extent to which these group-based emotions are intense may be decisive to activate and prepare the ground for taking a decision on whether to collectively exit from majority. Scholars have mapped several influential emotions on behavioural tendencies in intergroup conflict, and have found moral outrage being a particular emotion that provide the motivational force to act with respect of social norms and social order (Kroll & Egan, 2004). More specifically, moral outrage is a form of emotional distress, provoked by the perception that a moral standard has been violated, which determines an intense experience of morally based anger (e.g. Montada & Schneider, 1989). This emotion involves the judgment and the condemnation of others and has been found to play a key role in collective actions (Van Zomeren, Postmes & Spears, 2008), as a means of changing the status quo and defending one’s social identity under threat (Rotschild, Landau, Molina, Branscombe & Sullivan, 2013; Tauber & Van Zomeren, 2013). Outrage has been also linked to avoidance tendencies (Smith, Seger & Mackie, 2007) and to an unwillingness to engage in contact with the out-group (e.g. Esses & Dovidio, 2002) and thus it may be linked to the perception of “identity subversion” that trigger schismatic intentions (Sani & Reicher, 1998). Starting from these premises, it was hypothesized that minority group members’ experience of outrage, caused by the perception that the majority is threatening their minority moral standing, may play a pivotal role in increasing their psychological disengagement, and consequently their willingness to collectively exit the majority group. Three studies examined the effect of (a) moral outrage and of (b) psychological disengagement on schismatic intention, and identified the conditions under which these reactions lead minority group members to give up with their membership in a majority group. In the first two studies, a moderated mediational model of moral outrage was tested in the relationship between moral threat and intention to leave. In the third study, a mediational model of disengagement in the relationship between moral outrage and leaving intention was tested. Study 1 analysed the real-life event of Brexit (it was run few days before the referendum), and found moral outrage about maintain the membership in the EU, mediating the relationship between a moral threat (caused by PM, Cameron, defending EU position) and the intention to leave the EU. Study 2 (run nine months after the referendum) accounted for the change in leadership prototypicality after the Brexit results (Cameron resigned, and May become the new Prime Minister of UK) and confirmed the mediating role of outrage about staying in EU, and the decision to leave the EU. These two studies provided an initial evidence for the motivating role of moral outrage in pushing forward the defence of the minority identity (UK), at the expense of the membership in a super-ordinate identity (EU). Study 3, lend further support to the causal role of moral outrage on exit processes, by pointing to psychological disengagement as a mediator of such relationship. By manipulating two discrete components of moral outrage (anger and contempt were considered, because of their different social functions; see e.g. Roseman & Fisher, 2007), disengagement was found to differently predict the collective actions of voice and exit. In particular, results showed that the contempt component of outrage, rather than the anger component, triggered individuals intention to give up with their membership in the majority group, and this relationship was fully mediated by psychologically disengagement. Directions for future research and implementations of the findings of the current research are discusses according to schism theory and intergroup conflict processes.