Solidarity with those who hit the streets: Public opinion and support for protesters’ self-defence actions when the right to protest is restricted

Previous social-psychological research has neglected the impact of public opinion’s legitimisation of protests on non-participants’ support for protesters’ self-defence actions. In two experiments, involving English adults as participants, we combined vignettes describing various extents of public opinion legitimisation of protests with footage of police repression during a student protest in England (Study 1; N = 151), and against pro-independence demonstrators in Catalonia (Study 2; N = 150). Results demonstrated that solidarity with protesters mediates the relationship between public opinion’s legitimisation of protests and non-participants’ support for protesters’ self-defence actions against the police. However, we found distinctive patterns for each scenario. Whereas people showed solidarity with protesters when English public opinion delegitimised the student protest, the same happened regarding the protest in Catalonia only when English public opinion gave legitimacy to the pro-independence movement. Also, we found that own opinions about the right to protest play an essential role in feeling solidarity with victims of police repression and support for protesters’ self-defence actions