Psychological research has shown that activism or allyship is more effective when it is consistent, concrete, and meaningful action that often involves some sacrifices or costs. Words without action, empty actions, and extractive actions (e.g., earning personal rewards from activism), on the other hand, are detrimental on marginalized communities and the movement.

For example, my work indicates that women of color prefer a White woman to concretely pass the mic to a woman of color to address women of color's experiences (as opposed to keeping her mic to speak for women of color). Zooming out, research also shows that marginalized people prefer allies who engage in costly and/or actions and sacrifices, and indeed, the history of activism has shown that costly and/or high-risk actions such as direct action or civil disobedience play a central role in pushing social movements forward.

Questions to Consider:

• If you are a researcher, are you strategically preaching concepts of liberation and decolonization in your papers and grants without leveraging institutional backing to support grassroots movements in concrete, material ways?

• If you are a cultural worker, are you extracting from the grassroots movement (intentionally or not) and/or earning recognition for doing the same work that people from marginalized communities have done (and were criminalized and beaten up for)?

• If you are a protester, are you doing so consistently and doing your part to make sure others show out consistently? Are you protesting to assuage your own guilt or are you actually willing to make the needed sacrifices when the time comes?

• If you are an educator, are you making space for those who are directly impacted by a social issue to speak for themselves to your students on such topics, or are you speaking on their behalf?

Select References:

• Wilton, L. S., Bell, A. N., Vahradyan, M., & Kaiser, C. R. (2020). Show don’t tell: Diversity dishonesty harms racial/ethnic minorities at work. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 46(8), 1171-1185. 

• Thai, M., & Nylund, J. L. (2024). What are they in it for? Marginalised group members' perceptions of allies differ depending on the costs and rewards associated with their allyship. British Journal of Social Psychology, 63(1), 131–152. 

• Mathew, A. C., Risdon, S. N., Ash, A., Cha, J., & Jun, A. (2023). The complexity of working with white racial allies: Challenges for diversity educators of color in higher education. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 16(1), 88–96. 

• Scheuerman, William E. (2021). The Cambridge Companion to Civil Disobedience. Cambridge University Press.

• Pham, M. D., & Chaney, K. E (in press). Passing down the mic signals trustworthy intersectional allyship and promotes organizational identity-safety. Social Psychological and Personality Science.

• Pietri, E. S., Moser, C. E., Derricks, V., & Johnson, I. R. (2024). A framework for understanding effective allyship. Nature Reviews Psychology, 3(10), 686–700.

History witnessed social change thrusted into reality by people from the most impacted communities (think about the contributions of trans women of color like Marsha Johnson and Sylvia Rivera for queer liberation). Their contributions and even existence are, however, often violently erased, while these communities continue to be subject to the intersecting systems of oppression, including not but limited to racism, cisheterosexism, classism, and ableism.

Recognizing this commonality across social movements, critical race, intersectionality, and decolonial theories unanimously argue that to critically address social issues, the communities who are most oppressed, invisibilized, or criminalized must be intentionally centered. In the words of Frantz Fanon: "The proof of success lies in a whole social structure being changed from the bottom up." My pilot data has indeed supported this idea: when White women endorse the belief of freeing marginalized people from the ground up, intersectional disparities are smaller (e.g., the income gap between White women and women of color are bridged).

Questions to Consider:

• If you are an organizer, are you responsibly honoring the principles, red lines, or calls of the movement and the people it serves?

• If you are a researcher, are you consulting with community members from the most impacted communities while in developing and testing your research questions?

• If you are a writer, are you ignoring centuries of literature written by the community directly impacted or the knowledge produced by local and grassroots movement that is often criminalized?

• If you are a protester, are you in any way co-opting or diluting the movement?

• If you work in law and policy, are you attending to and addressing the (often invisibilized) needs of those who are lowest in the social hiearchies?

Select References:

• Layland, E. K., Carter, J. A., Perry, N. S., Cienfuegos-Szalay, J., Nelson, K. M., Bonner, C. P., & Rendina, H. J. (2020). A systematic review of stigma in sexual and gender minority health interventions. Translational Behavioral Medicine, 10(5), 1200–1210.

• Crenshaw, K. W. (1995). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics and violence against women of color. In K. Crenshaw, N. Gotanda, G. Peller, & K. Thomas (Eds.), Critical race theory: The key writings that formed the movement (pp. 357–383). New York: New Press.

• Fanon, F. (2001). The wretched of the earth (C. Farrington, Trans.). Penguin Classics. 

• Purdie-Vaughns, V., & Eibach, R. P. (2008). Intersectional invisibility: The distinctive advantages and disadvantages of multiple subordinate-group identities. Sex Roles, 59(5-6), 377-391

• Kaba, M. (2021). We do this ’til we free us : abolitionist organizing and transforming justice (T. K. Nopper, Ed.). Haymarket Books.

Psychological science, for example on model minority myth, respectability politics and the deficit-based tradition, has revealed harmful consequences of numerous rigid "boxes" oppressed people are forced into: perfect, respectful, law-abiding while existing in everyday life and fighting against oppression. Activists are usually discussed in terms of good versus bad, civilized versus uncivilized, peaceful versus violent, perpetuating the dominant framework that there is only one right way for oppressed people to resist.

These boxes, despite their varied labels, are the oppressor's tactics to divide oppressed people into "desirable" versus "undesirable," pitting the oppressed against each other. This horizontal policing shifts the focus away from the systems of oppression and those control them. As a result, they are distractive at best and actively create more harm at worst. It is thus important to resist this bait and collectively uplift even the "undesirable" activists to combat the oppressive systems.

Questions to Consider:

• If you are a scholar, are your research questions implying that some marginalized people are worth fighting for than others? Are you actively granting oppressed people their agency instead of reducing them to mere victims of discrimination?

• If you are a journalist, are you only reporting the stories of "perfect victims"? Are you refusing to condemn the police killing of a Black man just because he broke the law and jumped the turnstile?

• If you are a protester, are you policing your comrades to act in certain desirable ways (to appeal to those in power)? Are you showing up for those who were arrested by law enforcement because they were "bad" protesters?

• If you are an educator, are you teaching your marginalized students to resist against the labels imposed on them so that they can bring in their full, authentic selves?

Select References:

• Harris, P.J. (2003). Gatekeeping and Remaking: The Politics of Respectability in African American Women's History and Black Feminism. Journal of Women's History 15(1), 212-220.

• Silverman, D. M., Rosario, R. J., Hernandez, I. A., & Destin, M. (2023). The Ongoing Development of Strength-Based Approaches to People Who Hold Systemically Marginalized Identities. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 27(3), 255–271.

• El-Kurd M. (2025). Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal. Haymarket Books.

• Wang, S. C., & Santos, B. M. C. (2023). At the intersection of the model minority myth and antiblackness: From Asian American triangulation to recommendations for solidarity. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 70(4), 352–366.

• Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (2001). Critical race theory: An introduction. New York: New York University Press.

• Shuman, E., Hasan-Aslih, S., van Zomeren, M., Saguy, T., & Halperin, E. (2022). Protest movements involving limited violence can sometimes be effective: Evidence from the 2020 BlackLivesMatter protests. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 119(14), e2118990119.

Objectivity, often upholded as the gold standard in (psychological) science, is a symptom of White supremacy that perpetuates the status quo. The dominant narratives of objectivity and neutrality stigmatize marginalized folx who advocate for their themselves and their communities, in the academy and beyond. For instance, Black (vs. White) journalists are perceived as less objective when reporting on racial issues, which limits the hiring opportunities for Black journalists.

Rejecting logics of objectivity and neutrality is an important principle for critical activism. On the ground, the neutrality logic manifests in a culture of both-sideism (sometimes in the name of complexity and nuance), such that addressing the oppressor and its apparatus is perceived as less important than supporting oppressed people, while in reality both goals are equally crucial to the movement success. For example, marginalized scholars often criticize diversity initiatives for being shy of confronting White supremacy and coddling White people's perspectives and emotions.

Questions to Consider:

• If you are a researcher, are you actively standards of objectivity in your field and engaging in practices to elevate the weight of subjective lived experiences of your colleagues, students, participants, and communities?

• If you are a cultural worker, are you intentionally making space to amplify the voices of those who are oppressed over those who are in power?

• If you are an educator, are you raising your students' awareness of the sociopolitical, historical, and institutional contexts that favor objectivity (over subjectivity)?

• If you are an organizer, are your tactics trying to appeal the sensibilities of those in power at the expense of marginalized communities' needs?

• Are you nudging people in your circle to take a stand and stand up for the oppressed and against the oppressor?

Select References:

• Okun T. (1999). White supremacy culture. https://www.whitesupremacyculture.info.

• Harris, C. I. (1993). Whiteness as Property. Harvard Law Review, 106(8), 1707–1791.

• Torrez, B., Dupree, C. H., & Kraus, M. W. (2024). How race influences perceptions of objectivity and hiring preferences. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 110, 1–14.

• Kraus, M. W., Torrez, B., & Hollie, L. (2022). How narratives of racial progress create barriers to diversity, equity, and inclusion in organizations. Current Opinion in Psychology, 43, 108–113.

• Engram, D. V., & Mayer, K. (2023). Ya'll Don't Hate White Supremacy Enough for Me: How Performative DEI Prevents Anti-Racism and Accountability in Higher Education. The Vermont Connection, 44(1).

• Awad, R. (2021). BDS as the baseline of solidarity: toward a model of co-struggling with Palestinians in their movement for justice and liberation. Human Geography, 14(3), 362-373.

• Pham, M. D., & Chaney, K. E. “Are you ready to smash white things?”: Perceptions of anti-racism organizations focusing on power versus discrimination. Manuscript Under Review.

Psychological science on social change has at times been complicit in taking an individual-level analysis, for example by focusing on emotion regulation and positive intergroup contact as strategies to achieve social justice. In doing so, these work fail to interrogate and uproot the power structures, limiting the ability to produce structural changes.

Critical work has revealed how strategies relying on such individual-level analyses have sedative rather than mobilizing effects on people (privileged and oppressed). Indeed, at the core of the abolitionist movement is the idea that critical activism must aim to mobilize people, especially those most directly impacted, into the ongoing struggle. Empirical evidence has demonstrated the effect of mobilizing, such that a radical faction of a social movement increases support for a moderate faction within the same movement.

Questions to Consider:

• If you are a writer, are you giving your readers the language to ask critical, structural-level questions that potentially lead them to mobilize themselves and others?

• If you are a scholar, are your analyses centering systemic forces or are you merely shedding light on what's going on in people's heads?

• If you are an artist, is your creative work pushing people to get into collective action rather than assuaging them into passivity?

• If you are an educator, are you bringing the mobilizing efforts on the ground into your classroom and empowering your students to turn the classroom into a collective site of struggle and liberation?

Select References:

• Simpson, B., Willer, R., & Feinberg, M. (2022). Radical flanks of social movements can increase support for moderate factions. PNAS Nexus, 1(3), pgac110.

• Vollhardt, J. R., & Sinayobye Twali, M. (2016). Emotion-based reconciliation requires attention to power differences, critical consciousness, and structural change. Psychological Inquiry, 27(2), 136–143. https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2016.1160762

• Albzour, M., Bady, Z., Elcheroth, G., Penic, S., Reimer, N., & Green, E. G. T. (2023). Talking to a (segregation) wall: Intergroup contact and attitudes toward normalization among Palestinians from the occupied territories. Political Psychology, 44, 43–59.

• Spade, D. (2020). "Solidarity Not Charity," Social Text, 38(1), 131–151.

• Shuman, E., Saguy, T., van Zomeren, M., & Halperin, E. (2021). Disrupting the system constructively: Testing the effectiveness of nonnormative nonviolent collective action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 121(4), 819–841.

While individualism is a Western value that upholds and is upheld by White supremacy, collectivism brings people together and is an important catalyst into forming coalitions across different marginalized groups and movements. Research shows that, in a collectivistic culture, people are empowered to recognize their common struggles and oppressors to ally toward equity.

Supporting this idea, abolitionist theory and movement, exemplified by the work of the Black Panther Party, rejects the state-orchestrated violence against the people, often marginalized, and advocates for the transfer of power and resources to the community. In other words, critical activism must build toward various forms of collective life-making and elevate community resources and self-governance.

Questions to Consider:

• If you are an organizer, are your strategies bringing people together and empowering them to take back the power to invest in resources such as education, housing, and health?

• If you are a protester on the ground, how are you watching out for the comrades marching alongside you? (hint "stay together, move like waters")

• If you are a filmmaker, are you romanticizing or legitimizing any systems of oppression and destruction (e.g., state-sanctioned violence)?

• If you are a researcher, are you collaborating with students and community members on the ground to develop, design, evaluate, and disseminate your research?

Select Reference:

• Okun T. (1999). White supremacy culture. https://www.whitesupremacyculture.info.

• Pham, M. D., Chaney, K. E., & Lin, M (in press). “Our wars are the same”: (Horizontal) collectivism is associated with lay theory of generalized prejudice. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

• Oswald, F., Pham, M. D., & Chaney, K. E (2024). Development and validation of the Abolitionist Ideology Scale with abolitionist-identifying and nationally representative samples. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 1-13.

• Gumbs, A. P. (2020). Undrowned: Black feminist lessons from marine mammals. AK Press.

• Uluğ, Ö. M., Zoodsma, M., Sandbakken, E. M., Figueiredo, A., Rocha, C., Sagherian-Dickey, T., Acar, Y. G., Moss, S. M., Saab, R., & Woo, Y. T. (2023). How can social psychologists become more participatory in their research? A reflection on working ‘with’ communities and participants rather than ‘on’ them. Social Psychological Review, 25(1), 9-14.

• Gilmore, R. W.. (2022). Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation. Verso Books.

Research consistently finds that people overestimate social justice progress. For example, Americans overestimate progress in bridging Black-White wealth disparities and overall material progress toward racial equity. At the same time, social change research are guilty of not centering the demands of oppressed people on the ground (i.e., right of return for Palestinian people in research on Israel-Palestine "conflict”).

Indeed, the critical race Whiteness as property tenet puts forward the idea that racial identity and property are intricately linked in the establishment of the U.S. Deriving from the systems of domination that historically dispossessed, enslaved, and murdered Black and Indigenous people, Whiteness evolved into a form of property and rights that are legitimized and protected by the American law. While speaking directly about the question of race in the U.S., this tenet highlights the need to move beyond abstraction to center and create material changes on the ground for all oppressed communities.

Questions to Consider:

• If you are a scholar, do you have a class analysis in your work? Are you using your voice and expertise to elevate the material struggles in present tense rather than intellectualizing and theorizing about them in past tense?

• If you are a cultural worker, are you paying attention to the material and monetary conditions of those whose voices you amplify? (thank you to Mohammad El-Kurd for framing this question!)

• If you are an artist, are you resisting the temptation of abstraction, symbolism, and romanticism to creatively highlight the material reality and mobilize others to take action to change it?

• If you are an organizer, are your strategies effectively uplifting and responding to the material calls, needs, and demands of people who struggle the most?

Select References:

• Torrez, B., Hollie, L., Richeson, J. A., & Kraus, M. W. (2024). The misperception of organizational racial progress toward diversity, equity, and inclusion. American Psychologist, 79(4), 581–592.

• Harris, C. I. (1993). Whiteness as Property. Harvard Law Review, 106(8), 1707–1791. https://doi.org/10.2307/1341787

• Hakim, N., Abi‐Ghannam, G., Saab, R., Albzour, M., Zebian, Y., & Adams, G. (2023). Turning the lens in the study of precarity: On experimental social psychology's acquiescence to the settler‐colonial status quo in historic Palestine. British Journal of Social Psychology, 62(Suppl 1), 21–38.

• Onyeador, I. N., Daumeyer, N. M., Rucker, J. M., Duker, A., Kraus, M. W., & Richeson, J. A. (2021). Disrupting beliefs in racial progress: Reminders of persistent racism alter perceptions of past, but not current, racial economic equality. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 47(5), 753–765.

• Hajir, B., & Qato, M. (2025). Academia in a time of genocide: scholasticidal tendencies and continuities. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 1–9.

Civil disobedience and direct action sit the core of the history of activism that pushes the demands of oppressed people to be met. Indeed, psychological research on activism has revealed the unique benefits of non-normative and/or disruptive collective actions such as direct action.

Disruptive protests, for example, can motivate support for policy change among resistant people. For example, a recent longitudinal study found that the 2019 London Extinction Rebellion, the first attempt by environmental protesters to create prolonged large-scale disruption in a Western capital city in the UK, led to significant increases in environmental concerns, speaking to power of disrupting the business as usual.

Wherever/whoever you are, whatever you do, what are you doing to disrupt the business as usual status quo in your neighborhoods, your workplace, your field, your circle, to bring the struggles closer to people's hearts and minds?

Select References:

• Shuman, E., Saguy, T., van Zomeren, M., & Halperin, E. (2021). Disrupting the system constructively: Testing the effectiveness of nonnormative nonviolent collective action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 121(4), 819–841.

• Kenward, B., & Brick, C. (in press). Large-scale disruptive activism strengthened environmental attitudes in the United Kingdom. Global Environmental Psychology. https://doi.org/10.23668/psycharchives.13225

• Scheuerman, William E. (2021). The Cambridge Companion to Civil Disobedience. Cambridge University Press.

• Khalidi, R. (2020). The hundred years' war on Palestine: a history of settler colonialism and resistance, 1917-2017 (First edition.). Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company.

• Shuman, E., Goldenberg, A., Saguy, T., Halperin, E., & van Zomeren, M. (2024). When Are Social Protests Effective?. Trends in cognitive sciences, 28(3), 252–263.