Leading Change By Protecting Group Identity In The 2019 Canadian General Election

Often leaders who attempt to enact large-scale changes face resistance from group members who perceive the change as a drastic alteration of the core identity features of their group. Core changes to a group's identity can create a sense of collective identity discontinuity, indicating the group's sense of "who we are" is fundamentally altered. Leaders can circumvent this by emphasizing how the proposed change is consistent with the group's identity, although this may be influenced by whether group members are uncertain and perceive the leader as group prototypical. Two preregistered studies measured the degree to which participants felt self-uncertain and perceived their in-group political party leaders (Study 1) and newly reelected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Study 2) as group prototypical and as promoting collective identity continuity before (N = 408) and after (N = 209) the 2019 Canadian General Election. Study 1 results supported the preregistered hypotheses, and Study 2 extended these findings by exploring the hypothesized interaction from Study 1 in the postelection context. We discuss these results in the social identity framework, implicating the importance of a leader's promotion of collective identity continuity in promoting change during uncertain times.