Oral Presentation by Edina Dóci¹
¹ Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium
TIME: Wednesday, 15 July, 10:30 – 12:00
Location: Room 2
Session: 10
Abstract
Contemporary crises – climate breakdown, right wing authoritarianism, increasing (global) political instability & social tensions, the erosion of civil liberties, and widening inequalities –demand immense psychological resources to confront. Yet dominant responses remain strikingly individualistic, emphasizing self-care, therapy or mindfulness. Such approaches neglect the relational, collective, and political conditions that shape psychological resilience, particularly at a time when many traditional community structures that once enabled collective meaning-making and shared purpose have eroded. This conceptual paper examines collectives and social movements as key sites for generating collective psychological resources. Drawing on and extending research on psychological capital –hope, self-efficacy, resilience, and optimism– the paper challenges its predominantly individualistic and organizational framing. While PsyCap has been extensively studied in corporate contexts, little research has explored how psychological resources emerge, circulate, and are sustained within collective settings. Building on literature from community psychology, social movement studies, critical psychology and liberation psychology, the paper develops a framework for understanding psychological resources as fundamentally relational and political. The analysis identifies five collective sources of psychological capital within collectives and movements: (1)collective identity and belonging, which externalize hardship and provide emotional grounding; (2)collective meaning-making and ideological commitment, transforming adversity into shared purpose; (3)critical consciousness, enabling systemic interpretations of suffering and fostering solidarity; (4)collective action and agency, countering helplessness through visible demonstrations of power; and (5)cultural practices and community rituals that reinforce resilience over time. At the same time, the paper examines the shadow side of movements as “greedy institutions” that can paradoxically deplete psychological resources through pressures toward ideological purity, guilt, overcommitment, and cycles of political erasure or repression. The paper concludes that psychological resilience cannot be separated from collective relationships and political conditions, highlighting the ambiguous yet crucial role of social movements in sustaining–and sometimes undermining–the psychological capacities required for transformative social change.