Psychological Sense of Community as a Pathway to Hope, Empowerment, and Liberation

Sara Buckingham, Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Alaska Anchorage​

We are living in a period marked by increasing social fragmentation and political polarization. Across many societies, diversity is increasingly framed as a threat to social order, national identity, and security. Declining trust in institutions and in one another, growing social isolation, and widening ideological divides raise fundamental questions about how diverse communities develop belonging, share responsibility, and build the capacity to act together. At the 2026 SPSSI Conference, I drew on a series of qualitative studies with newcomers and long-standing community members to consider how psychological sense of community (PSOC) develops in changing communities and how it may support collective action and social change. Data included individual interviews and focus groups with immigrants and receiving community members in communities across the United States and Italy. Although the original studies each focused on different questions and communities, PSOC emerged repeatedly in participants’ accounts of belonging, exclusion, participation, and social change.

Participants described community as something people continuously build together. Many described co-constructing PSOC across differences. Rather than defining community solely through geography, ancestry, citizenship, or other fixed individual characteristics, participants often developed community around shared experiences, goals, and values. In other words, more malleable points of connection that could cross demographic differences. For some, valuing diversity itself became part of how they defined their community. Participants frequently described PSOC readily developing within smaller, relational communities, such as schools, workplaces, faith communities, neighborhoods, and organizations. The small settings provided opportunities for people to develop relationships, participate, and contribute in meaningful ways. Their relationships did not develop in a vacuum, however. Policies, institutional practices, equitable access to resources, opportunities for participation, and legal precarity all shaped whether people could build trust, participate meaningfully, and experience belonging in communities.

Across studies, community membership and shared connections were often accompanied by a growing sense of shared responsibility, as well as collective efficacy and social action. When participants considered themselves members, they reported feeling responsible for their communities. Participants named voting, protesting, advocating, organizing, and other forms of collective action as ways of fulfilling that community responsibility. Many also expressed confidence that community members could work together to create change. While these qualitative studies cannot establish causal pathways, they suggest that PSOC may serve as an important relational foundation for communities working toward social change.

Taken together, these findings suggest that fostering PSOC means cultivating relational and structural conditions through which diverse communities can recognize a shared future, negotiate an expanding sense of “we,” develop shared responsibility, and work together toward more just and inclusive communities. They also invite us to reconsider what collective action tells us about community. What may be characterized as “unrest” may instead reflect shared responsibility and a belief that change is possible. When our differences become part of a shared community rather than a boundary between us, PSOC may provide the relational infrastructure needed for hope, empowerment, and, ultimately, liberation.

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