Exposure to Political Violence and Political Behavior: Psychological Mechanisms for Transformation

This chapter reviews major theories and empirical findings that highlight the dynamic nature of self-representation with a focus on research that shows that when people perceive themselves as part of a group or coalition, the self-concept shifts from an individual to a collective level. In recent years, researchers have made major strides toward understanding the dynamic, multifaceted nature of self-representation. One major implication of a dynamic-self approach is that social identities are likely to shape group members perception and evaluation of the social world and perhaps even physical reality. These processes are not necessarily deliberative or conscious, and one suggests that dynamic aspects of self-representation can shape rapid and ostensibly automatic reactions. One possibility is that group-level self-representations are modeled by a separate set of cognitive processes that then modulate evaluative and decisional processes in a top-down fashion.