Suchergebnisse

This book provides an overview of current social psychological scholarship on collective victimhood. Drawing on different contexts of collective victimization-such as those due to genocide, war, ethnic or religious conflict, racism, colonization, Islamophobia, the caste system, and other forms of direct and structural collective violence - this edited volume presents theoretical ideas and empirical findings concerning the psychological experience of being targeted by collective violence in the past or present.

While researchers and policy makers often focus their attention on the detrimental consequences of collective victimhood, it has been posited that these negative outcomes are linked to particular construals of the ingroup's victimization: namely those that focus on the uniqueness of these experiences (exclusive victim consciousness). In contrast, perceived similarities across victim groups (inclusive victim consciousness) may be associated with more positive outcomes, including victim groups assisting and advocating for each other or engaging in joint collective action. Drawing on social psychological research and real‐world cases, this review provides examples of inclusive victim consciousness in several policy‐relevant domains. A distinction is made between conflict‐specific and general inclusive victim consciousness. Additionally, motivations for expressing inclusive victim consciousness are discussed that vary in their degree of ingroup‐ versus outgroup‐concern. Factors are suggested that may promote or decrease inclusive victim consciousness, including steps that can be taken by policy makers and practitioners. Finally, potential challenges and risks involved in attempts to promote inclusive victim consciousness are discussed.

This article examines the consequences of different representations of the Holocaust for intergroup relations, focusing on the role of acknowledgment of different groups' fate that is inherent in these construals. Holocaust representations have become increasingly universal. Research on recategorization suggests prosocial outcomes of such superordinate representations. However, among minority groups, acknowledging both superordinate and subgroup identities may be crucial in order to prevent backlash. An experimental study among Jewish and non‐Jewish participants (N = 163) was conducted to test these ideas. As hypothesized, prosocial responses to outgroup victims of collective violence and acknowledgment of their suffering increased among Jewish participants when both a superordinate categorization of the Holocaust and subgroup (Jewish) fate were presented, compared to when only one of these categorizations were used. Conversely, different categorizations did not affect outcomes among the control group. Practical implications for intergroup relations and memorialization in the aftermath of genocide are discussed.

Although our experiences are shaped by multiple social identities such as race, class, and gender, most research has focused on single‐identity groups (e.g., race). This includes research on collective victimization, which assumes that violence impacts group members uniformly. Conversely, work on intersectional consciousness examines awareness of how multiple social identities intersect and create within‐group differences. Integrating and expanding the research on intersectional consciousness and on collective victimhood, this article investigates perceived intragroup differences in experiences of victimization stemming from intersecting identities of gender and class among two disadvantaged groups in the understudied context of India. We conducted individual interviews (N = 33) and focus groups (K = 12; N = 66) among Muslims and Dalits (lower‐caste Hindus). Thematic analysis revealed that—even though ingroup cohesion (i.e., intragroup similarity) is often enhanced by external threat— people expressed awareness of intragroup differences in experiences of victimization in three distinct ways: highlighting relative privilege, engaging in competitive victimhood, or describing qualitative differences. We discuss the implications for conflict and solidarity within minority groups in the context of political developments in India, where there have been attempts to polarize intragroup divisions.

Groups in conflict develop strikingly different construals of the same violent events. These clashing perceptions of past violence can have detrimental consequences for intergroup relations and might provoke new hostilities. In this article, we integrate and juxtapose what we know about construals of collective violence by delineating the different dimensions along which these construals differ between victim and perpetrator groups: regarding the question of who is the victim, who is responsible for the harm doing, what the perpetrator's intent was, how severe the violence was, and when it took place. Then, we discuss the individual‐ and group‐level factors (e.g., collective narratives, social identities) that shape these construals, as well as their implications for attitudes regarding the conflict and support for relevant policies. We distinguish two different core motives that drive construals and their outcomes among victim and perpetrator groups: Perpetrator groups try to cope with moral identity threats and preserve a positive image of the ingroup, while victim groups try to protect their ingroup from future harm doing and desire acknowledgment of their group's experiences. Lastly, we discuss implications for strategies and interventions to address victim and perpetrator groups' divergent perspectives of collective violence.

The present research examined the differential relationship between distinct construals of collective victimhood—specifically, inclusive and exclusive victim consciousness—and intergroup attitudes in the context and aftermath of mass violence. Three surveys in Rwanda (N = 842), Burundi (N = 1,074), and Eastern DRC (N = 1,609) provided empirical support for the hypothesis that while exclusive victim consciousness predicts negative intergroup attitudes, inclusive victim consciousness is associated with positive, prosocial intergroup attitudes. These findings were significant when controlling for age, gender, urban/rural residence, education, personal victimization, and ingroup superiority. Additionally, exclusive victim consciousness mediated the effects of ingroup superiority on negative intergroup attitudes. These findings have important theoretical implications for research on collective victimhood as well as practical implications for intergroup relations in regions emerging from violent conflict.

Rwanda's postgenocide government has implemented policies that resemble social psychological models of single recategorization, banning references to ethnic groups and replacing these with a superordinate, Rwandan identity. While social psychological research suggests problems with this approach, little is known about how people make sense of recategorization in the aftermath of ethnic conflict and genocide. The present interview study investigates the responses of 56 Rwandans to these single recategorization policies. Despite strong societal pressures, a variety of positions were apparent—showing how people actively construe categories, and the complexity of single recategorization in real‐world settings. The findings suggest several novel insights and policy implications, including the need for context‐specific approaches, utilitarian reasons for single recategorization, the role of malleability of identities in promoting social recategorization, and the potential use of recategorization models as transitional measures in postconflict societies.

In many cases of mass violence and genocide there is ambiguity and uncertainty as to whether and how external bystanders (i.e., third parties) should respond. How does the way we construe genocide influence our evaluations of particular cases of mass violence and our willingness to intervene? In five studies, using content analyses and experiments, prototype theory is applied to this important social issue. Studies 1 and 2 examine the prototype structure of genocide; finding among a student and a community sample that some features are perceived as more central to genocide than others. Studies 3 and 4 show the effects of this prototype on the cognitive processing of the category. Study 5 investigates how this prototype structure affects evaluations of mass violence and support for political and military intervention. Taken together, these studies suggest that socially shared prototypes of genocide matter: The more a case of mass violence is represented in accordance with this prototype, the more people remember and respond to it, for example, by supporting policies aimed at preventing and halting mass violence. These findings have important policy implications for how cases of mass violence are framed and discussed in the public and political sphere.

AbstractMany national or racial majority groups increasingly perceive discrimination against their group, despite objective indicators of advantage. The present studies simultaneously test three individual‐level explanations of perceived discrimination among White Americans: system legitimizing beliefs, economic precarity, and group interest, in addition to corresponding predictors at the context (state) level. Using multilevel analysis, we analyzed nationally‐representative data from the 2016 American National Election Survey (N = 2631)—an election period marked by discourse about majority group grievances. Results showed that, at the individual level, system‐legitimizing beliefs (symbolic racism, conservatism, realistic, and symbolic threat) predicted perceived discrimination among Whites, as did objective (income) and subjective (perceived financial insecurity) economic precarity. Conversely, group interest (indicated by White racial identification) was not a significant predictor. At the state level, support for the Republican candidate also predicted perceived discrimination. These findings replicated with data from the 2012 American National Election Survey (N = 3261). We discuss the implications of White Americans' discrimination claims in the current socio‐political climate.