G.M. (Gonneke) Ton

PhD Project:

Within modern Western democracies, social change is often negotiated through contentious societal debate (e.g., “Zwarte Piet”). We develop and test two novel social-psychological hypotheses that speak to (1) why the silent majority in such debates is often ambivalent and remains silent, and (2) what it might take for them to speak up. Employing qualitative and quantitative methods, we designed three lines of research to discover whether and how the silent majority copes with ambivalence by prioritizing moral identity content. We make use of national and international contexts to provide a novel, integrative answer to this scientifically and societally relevant question.