How groups cope with collective responsibility for ecological problems: Symbolic coping and collective emotions

This study explores the way groups cope with collective responsibility for ecological problems. The social representations approach was adopted, and the collective symbolic coping model was used as a frame of analysis, integrating collective emotions to enhance the understanding of coping processes. The original feature of this study is that the analysis is at group level. Seven focus groups were conducted with French students. An original use of focus groups was proposed: Discussions were structured to induce feelings of collective responsibility and enable observation of how groups cope with such feelings at various levels (social knowledge; social identities; group dynamics). Two analyses were conducted: Qualitative analysis of participants' use of various kinds of knowledge, social categories and the group dynamics, and lexicometric analysis to reveal how emotions varied during the different discussion phases. Results showed that groups' emotional states moved from negative to positive: They used specific social categories and resorted to shared stereotypes to cope with collective responsibility and maintain the integrity of their worldview. Only then did debate become possible again; it was anchored in the nature-culture dichotomy such that groups switched from group-based to system-based emotions.