Mechanisms of Moral Derogation Towards Social Movement Supporters

Social movements aim to mobilise support from the society to achieve their goals, but in reality, they often face opponents who object to their propositions. This research focuses on a particular group of opponents-those who profess to accept a movement goal, such as protection of animal rights raised by vegan movement, but disagree with its claim, such as adopting a vegan lifestyle. The purpose of the research is to identify ways in which these opponents morally derogate supporters of a movement claim, either as a result of their opposition to the claim, or in order to further buttress their stance against the claim.Based on personal observation of dialogues surrounding social movements and related theories such as the theory of do-gooder derogation (Monin, 2007), I developed a number of derogation mechanisms that could be employed to disparage social movement supporters. Study 1 conducted a thematic analysis of participants' responses to supporters of movements (i.e., feminist and vegan movements, identified by a pilot study), and the results were incorporated into the revision of the list of derogation mechanisms. Study 2 examined the factor structure of the revised derogation mechanisms, and investigated the relationship between participants' endorsements of the revised moral mechanisms and their agreements with the movement goals and claims.This research revealed an overall negative association between endorsements of the mechanisms and support for movement claims, and also showed that different orientation of a movement claim (liberty vs. justice) tended to elicit different types of derogation mechanisms (character-focused vs. consequence-focused). Its implications for both social movement studies and research on do-gooder derogation were discussed.