Some protest actions that people identify as very immoral may make a person less likely to join a movement, and in rare circumstances may reduce a person’s support for the cause.
That’s not as eye-catching but it is more in-line with both what this research says and what past studies have shown about real social upheavals. It’s hard to compare one cause to another but scientists can look back at particular trends, and one trend they see again and again is that the general public fucking hates activism -- or at least they tell surveyors like these scientists that they hate it and that it makes them less supportive of the causes, even if they end up coming over to the activists’ side anyway. We have loads and loads of data on this from the civil rights movement -- back in 1961, 57% of Americans said that sit-ins hurt the cause of those fighting against segregation. By 1963 that number had risen to 60%. By 1964, after Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, it was 74%. Three quarters of Americans thought Martin Luther King’s “extreme” tactics were hurting the Civil Rights fight. He was one of the most hated men in America. And yet, the Civil Rights movement succeeded.