Alliances for social change: Linking majority-group cultural adoption to collective action intentions

Social inequalities persist in multicultural societies and addressing them requires the active engagement of advantaged group members as allies. Here, we investigated how the Spaniards’ perceptions of Moroccans’ morality and intergroup contact relate to their willingness to engage in collective action to support Moroccans’ rights, examining in a novel way the role of majority-group cultural adoption. Spanish participants ( n = 643) reported perceived morality, contact quantity and quality, willingness to adopt Moroccan cultural patterns, and intention to engage in collective action. Results showed that perceiving Moroccans as moral was linked to greater cultural adoption, more so than contact. In turn, cultural adoption was positively associated with collective action, revealing an indirect relation of perceived morality with collective action intentions via cultural adoption. These findings highlight the importance of perceived morality in the process of majority-group cultural adoption and the promotion of allyship for social change.