Speaking Progress, Feeling Threat: A Biopsychosocial Approach to Systemic Progressive Social Change

This project examines whether progressive systemic change elicits physiological threat responses, even among individuals who explicitly support such change. Drawing on the biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat, we use a within-subjects laboratory design in which Western European university students discuss an institutional status quo and a proposed academic boycott. Cardiovascular indicators of challenge and threat are assessed to investigate whether embodied responses may help explain ambivalence toward concrete progressive action beyond self-reported attitudes.