Leprosy is endemic in Nepal and disproportionately affects the most marginalized. Leprosy related stigma can be characterized as a social curse, because those affected are excluded from group life and social participation which has severe implications for psychological health. The Nepal Leprosy Trust run a community‐based self‐help group intervention that aims to develop a new empowered identity to re‐establish access to multiple group memberships' through social participation. In this applied cross‐sectional study, informed by the Social Identity Model of Identity Change, we assess this intervention. Participants (N = 98) were members of self‐help groups in 10 rural villages in Nepal, and completed measures of self‐help group identification, access to multiple groups, internalized stigma and well‐being. Mediation models indicated that self‐help group identification was indirectly linked to reduced stigma and increased well‐being through access to multiple groups. Supporting the Social Identity Model of Identity Change, we present novel evidence that group‐based interventions can offer new valued identities that link to social cure resources, even in the most adverse circumstances. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement.

There is increasing appreciation that group memberships can have both beneficial and damaging impacts on health. In collaboration with Nepal Leprosy Trust (NLT), this longitudinal study explores a group‐based approach to stigma reduction among people affected by leprosy in rural Nepal (N = 71)—a hard to reach and underrepresented non‐WEIRD population. Informed by the ‘social cure’ literature, and the progressive model of self‐stigma, we use a longitudinal design. We found that a sense of belonging to a self‐help group can facilitate education in terms of health literacy, and over time these two factors also have impacts on participants stigma. Specifically, self‐help group belonging predicted improvements in health literacy, leading to reduced endorsement of negative stereotypes and thus less stigma‐related harm among people affected by leprosy. The study offers promising evidence that group‐based interventions, which support health education, can reduce the harmful impact of stigma in very challenging contexts.

Authoritarianism emerges in times of societal threat, in part driven by desires for group-based security. As such, we propose that the threat caused by the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with increased authoritarian tendencies and that this can be partially explained by increased national identification. We tested this hypothesis by collecting cross-sectional data from three different countries in April 2020. In Study 1, data from Ireland (N = 1276) showed that pandemic threat predicted increased national identification, which in turn predicted authoritarianism. In Study 2, we replicated this indirect effect in a representative UK sample (N = 506). In Study 3, we used an alternative measure of authoritarianism and conceptually replicated this effect among USA citizens (N = 429). In this US sample, the association between threat and authoritarian tendencies was stronger among progressives compared to conservatives. Findings are discussed and linked to group-based models of authoritarianism.