Journal article
Shared suffering predicts prosocial commitment among Turkish earthquake survivors
- Abstract:
- Previous research suggests that the perception of shared emotion associated with personally transformative events can foster a strong form of social bonding known as ‘identity fusion’, which motivates pro-group action. Here we test predictions from this model among Turkish citizens and Syrian refugees following the catastrophic earthquakes in Turkey on February 6th, 2023. The lead researcher administered surveys in person to 120 Turkish earthquake survivors in the most heavily affected areas. In line with our predictions, mean levels of identity fusion significantly increased with perceived shared suffering for both Turkish and Syrian groups. Further, identity fusion predicted prosocial commitment, measured by the expressed willingness of earthquake survivors to volunteer assistance to disaster victims. Remarkably, participants were as likely to pledge help to other Turkish earthquake survivors as they were to their own families. This study contributes to a growing understanding of how shared suffering facilitates group bonding and cooperation, both within and across social groups.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 1.4MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41598-025-90921-4
Authors
+ Templeton Religion Trust
More from this funder
- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/02q53mk25
- Grant:
- TRT-2021-10490
- Programme:
- The Persistence of “Wild” Religious Traditions
- Publisher:
- Nature Research
- Journal:
- Scientific Reports More from this journal
- Volume:
- 15
- Issue:
- 1
- Article number:
- 8543
- Publication date:
- 2025-03-24
- Acceptance date:
- 2025-02-17
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2045-2322
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
-
2092509
- Local pid:
-
pubs:2092509
- Deposit date:
-
2025-02-27
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Demiroglu et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2025
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2025. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
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