The Alliance-Cause-Order Model

This project develops a model to explain why people differ in how they judge public events such as rallies, marches, and other gatherings. It proposes that three processes jointly determine whether someone supports or condemns a public event. How someone judges the event depends on how they relate to its participants, whether its aims align with their values and beliefs, and whether it conflicts with their preferences for order and stability.

This model helps explain the often-divided response to public events and helps predict when public events change public opinion.

Building on social psychological theories, this project tests whether alliance-, cause-, and order-related mechanisms explain how observers respond to collective action. A series of studies tests the theoretical foundations and practical implications of this model. In carefully designed experiments, this research tests whether the three mechanisms make distinct causal contributions to explaining how observers judge public events.

Combining geocoded archival and survey data, this work tests whether the three mechanisms accurately predict responses to real-world events, investigating why a public event sometimes intensifies support for, or opposition to, causes associated with that event. This research equips citizens with a better understanding of how others respond to public events and, in this way, can help foster a more informed and productive discourse around public events.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.