Courage is Contagious: The Psychology of Collective Efficacy
Welcome back to PsyberSpace. I'm your host, Leslie Poston. This is the final episode in our three part series on American authoritarianism. We've examined the psychology of expanding violence, and the mechanics of gaslighting at scale. Today, we're looking at what happens when people stop accepting the obvious lies and start taking action.
Leslie Poston:I've done an episode on the bystander effect before, so I'm not going to repeat the basics. If you haven't heard that episode, the short version is this: the classic bystander research overstated how passive people are. When researchers analyzed thousands of real world incidents on CCTV footage, they found that in ninety percent of cases, at least one person intervened. This tells us the Bystander Effect exists, but it's not our destiny. What I want to examine today is something a little different Not whether people intervene in a single incident, but what makes communities capable of sustained resistance over time.
Leslie Poston:Because what's happening in Minneapolis isn't a one time intervention, it's ongoing. People are showing up for their community day after day, facing real risk, and maintaining collective action to help their neighbors in the face of state violence. That's a different psychological phenomenon than someone stepping in to help a stranger on the street. The research on this is more sparse, because sustained resistance under repression in the real world is harder to study than anything we can mimic in laboratory experiments. What we do know is instructive.
Leslie Poston:Most bystander research focuses on acute situations. An elderly person collapses, a woman is being harassed, there's a mugging or a car accident, things like that. The question is whether people will help in that moment. The variables that matter are diffusion of responsibility, pluralistic ignorance, or whether the situation is clearly seen as an emergency by observers. Sustained resistance operates differently.
Leslie Poston:It's not about a single decision point, but instead requires showing up again tomorrow, and the day after that, knowing the costs and accepting them anyway. The psychological demands are different, and so are the resources people draw on. Ayanian and Tosh studied activists during a post coup uprising, in a high risk context where participation could mean arrest, injury, or worse. What they found was that perceived risk didn't straightforwardly suppress action. When activists felt angry about repression, and believed their participation could make a difference, risk perception sometimes increased their commitment, rather than diminishing it.
Leslie Poston:The relationship between danger and action wasn't linear. It depends on how people interpret what the danger means, and whether they believe their response matters. This helps explain something that can otherwise seem irrational Why do people in Minneapolis keep showing up when they've seen what ICE does to protesters? Research suggests it's not despite the danger, but partly because of it. When state violence becomes visible and personal, it can transform your fear into anger, and anger into action.
Leslie Poston:The risk itself becomes evidence of what you're fighting against. Something important that gets missed in discussions of resistance is that the communities that respond effectively to crisis usually didn't build their capacity in that moment. They built it before, and they can rely on it, like a muscle memory. Collective efficacy is a combination of social cohesion and shared willingness to intervene for the common good. In studies about this, neighborhoods high in collective efficacy had significantly lower rates of violence.
Leslie Poston:The effect isn't about surveillance or policing, but about whether neighbors trust each other enough to act together. Minnesota as a state has long been known as a state with strong foundations of neighbors helping neighbor, ideally suited to meet this moment. What researchers on social cohesion reveal is that collective efficacy isn't automatic. It develops through repeated, small interactions people watching each other's houses, exchanging favors, intervening when neighborhood kids are getting into trouble. These micro actions build the trust that makes larger collective action possible.
Leslie Poston:When a crisis comes, communities with high collective efficacy can mobilize quickly. Communities without it often can't, even if individuals are willing. This has implications for what we're seeing now. Minneapolis as a city has a history of community organizing, tenant unions, immigrant rights networks, mutual aid structures that predate this crisis. So this resistance isn't all spontaneous it's drawing on relationships and trust that have been built over years.
Leslie Poston:Similarly, the woman in the polka dot dress who confronted the ICE agents in New York City didn't come from nowhere either. She also was part of a community that had been doing the work. We're seeing more and more examples like this everywhere. Vaclav Havel, writing about resistance under communist Czechoslovakia, described what he called living in truth. His famous example was the greengrocer who stops putting the party slogan in his window.
Leslie Poston:That greengrocer isn't launching a revolution. He was simply refusing to participate in the obvious state lie anymore. But that refusal, Hubbell argued, was destabilizing to the system in ways that go beyond its immediate political impact. Post totalitarian systems depend on participation. They need people to repeat the slogans, display the signs, and act as if the official version of reality is real.
Leslie Poston:When someone stops participating and simply lives as if the truth matters, they're creating a parallel polis, or a zone where the lie doesn't operate. And that zone can and will grow. This is psychologically distinct from heroic resistance. Havel wasn't describing people who make dramatic sacrifices, but instead people who simply stop pretending. The Greengrocer doesn't storm the castle, he just takes down a sign.
Leslie Poston:But in a system that is built on performed compliance, even taking down a sign can be radical and start a movement. And I think this is relevant to the current moment. When the administration tells you Alex Pretty was a terrorist and you refused to repeat that lie, even silently or just by nodding along at dinner with your MAGA relatives, you are beginning to create a small zone where that lie doesn't operate. You are maintaining your grip on reality and what you saw, and that matters psychologically. It preserves your capacity for larger action later, and it matters socially, because every person who refuses to pretend makes it easier for others to refuse to pretend as well.
Leslie Poston:Research on activism under repression identifies several factors that help people maintain engagement over time. The first factor: emotional solidarity. Jasper's work on social movements distinguishes between transient emotions like fear or anger and more stable affective bonds like loyalty and solidarity. Transient emotions can spark action, but affective bonds sustain it. When activists feel themselves part of a moral community that shares their values and has their back, they can weather setbacks that would otherwise be demoralizing.
Leslie Poston:The Montgomery bus boycott, Jasper noted, was sustained for a year not just by anger at segregation, but by the sense of being together as a community under threat and having an existing plan. Second factor is alternative information sources. Research on collective action under repression consistently finds that movements benefit from creating their own narratives and documentation sources that record reality and counter official propaganda, maintaining a shared sense of what's actually happening. And this is why documentation matters beyond just an accountability framing. The videos of Goode's and Preti's deaths aren't just evidence for future courts they're epistemic infrastructure.
Leslie Poston:They help people know what they know, which is necessary for sustained collective action. The third factor is tactical flexibility. Studies of Iranian Green Movement activists found that when certain forms of protest became too dangerous, participants shifted to other tactics rather than withdrawing entirely. We've seen this in protests in China as well, where they counsel people in a protest situation to move like water. Hanari's research documents how movement supporters found new arenas of resistance when traditional ones became closed off.
Leslie Poston:The people who keep showing up aren't necessarily doing the same thing every day they're adapting, finding the best form of action that's possible in their current conditions. And the fourth factor, and one I think is perhaps the most important, is the sense that others share your perception of reality. One of the most consistent predictors of sustained activism is the belief that you're not alone, and that others see what you see, they understand what's real, and they're willing to act with you. And this is why pluralistic ignorance is so dangerous. If everyone dissents but publicly complies, each person feels isolated, and resistance can collapse.
Leslie Poston:Breaking that silence and making dissent visible changes the calculation for everyone. Political scientist Erica Chenoweth's research on civil resistance found that nonviolent movements have been twice as successful as violent ones in achieving their goals, and that every campaign that mobilized at least 3.5% of the population succeeded. That 3.5% threshold has become something of a rallying cry for activists, but Chenoweth herself has cautioned about over interpreting this finding. The research examined maximalist campaigns, so movements trying to overthrow governments or achieve territorial independence, in contexts that do not map neatly onto the current American situation. More recent research by Chenoweth suggests instead that nonviolent movements in the 2010s showed lower success rates than earlier decades, possibly because authoritarian regimes have gotten better at countering them.
Leslie Poston:What I think the research does support is this. Mass participation matters, and nonviolent resistance tends to enable broader participation because the barriers to involvement are lower. Violence limits who can participate, and nonviolence expands it. The goal isn't to reach some magic number or to choose between violence and nonviolence. It's to create conditions where more people can join and where your coalition keeps growing, where the regime faces resistance in more and more spheres of life.
Leslie Poston:Minneapolis is interesting in this regard because the resistance isn't monolithic. There are people in the streets, people documenting, people providing legal support, people offering their homes as a sanctuary, people organizing labor strikes, people in local government refusing to cooperate with federal enforcement of bad rules and laws. This diversity of tactics is not a weakness. It's what research suggests is necessary, both psychologically and organizationally, for sustained pressure. I want to close out the episode with something practical.
Leslie Poston:The psychology of sustained resistance is not about being fearless, or about having some special capacity for heroism that other people lack. It's about being afraid, and doing it anyway. Research tells us that what sustains people is connection, emotional bonds with others who share their values, information sources that maintain their grip on reality, tactical options that let people stay engaged even when some forms of action become costly. And if you're trying to figure out what to do in this moment, that research points you towards a few things. Build relationships with your community now.
Leslie Poston:Collective efficacy isn't built in a crisis. It's built through small ongoing work of being in community with people, building trust, and practicing mutual aid. The capacity to act together comes from having acted together before. If you don't know what that means, look to organizations that already exist and people that are already helping in your community, and find out how you can help them. Maintain your perception.
Leslie Poston:The gaslighting we examined in part two works by making you doubt what you see. Staying connected to documentation, to people who share your perception, and to sources that confirm observable reality is protective. It's not about being in an echo chamber, it's about not letting the obvious lies erode your epistemic ground. Find your role. Not everyone can or should be in the street.
Leslie Poston:Research on successful movements shows us that they need many forms of participation. Maybe you're a documentarian, a legal supporter, a financial resource, a communicator, or you can do care work. The question isn't whether you're willing to take the biggest risk. It's just whether you're willing to take a risk that's appropriate to your situation and skills. And know that visibility matters.
Leslie Poston:Every person who refuses to pretend and who speaks what they see and who makes their descent visible rather than private changes the calculation for others. Pluralistic ignorance collapses when enough people break that silence. You don't have to be the first, but someone does, so it might as well be you. This is the final episode in our three part series on American authoritarianism. We've covered the psychology of expanding violence, the mechanics of collective gaslighting, and now the research on sustained resistance.
Leslie Poston:I don't know what happens next. Nobody does. But research tells us that the outcome is not predetermined. Your collective action matters and courage really is contagious. Thanks for listening to PsyberSpace.
Leslie Poston:I'm your host, Leslie Poston, signing off. As always, until next time, stay curious and tune in next week. We're going to be talking about what happens to us psychologically when we lose our heroes because they've done immoral or harmful things. And don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss it.
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