The role of comparative victim beliefs in predicting support for hostile versus prosocial intergroup outcomes

Abstract

Collective memories of historical ingroup victimization can be linked to prosocial or hostile intergroup outcomes. We hypothesize that such discrepant responses are predicted by different construals of the ingroup's victimization in relation to other groups (i.e., comparative victim beliefs). Using improved measures of inclusive and exclusive victim beliefs, with a global or regional reference group, multigroup structural equation modeling showed across four different groups (Armenian Americans [N = 265], Jewish Americans [N = 297], Hungarians [N = 301], Poles [N = 468]) that inclusive victim beliefs predict prosocial, conciliatory attitudes, while exclusive victim beliefs predict hostile attitudes towards historical perpetrator groups and (in the Polish and Hungarian samples) religious and ethnic outgroups targeted in the present. Moreover, comparative victim beliefs mediated effects of more general psychological orientations (ingroup superiority, universal orientation, perspective-taking) on intergroup outcomes. These findings suggest the importance of considering distinct collective victim beliefs, and different contexts in research on collective victimhood.

Affected more than infected: The relationship between national narcissism and Zika conspiracy beliefs is mediated by exclusive victimhood about the Zika outbreak

“…This relationship is somewhat unsurprising given that a core feature of narcissistic identifiers is their tendency to seek external recognition (Cichocka, 2016). Future research might further investigate how other comparative victim beliefs, such as inclusive victimhood (Vollhardt et al, 2021), might be related to each kind of ingroup identification. Indeed, inclusive victimhood can be universal-with a virtuous intergroup outcome-or selective and linked to competitive victimhood designed to strengthen one's ingroup position (Cohrs et al, 2015).…”

“…At the collective level, a similar process has been theorized and captured through exclusive victimhood (comprising competitive victimhood, as proposed by Vollhardt et al, 2021). Exclusive victimhood is a form of comparative collective victimhood that has been mostly investigated in the context of human conflicts, classically taking the form of each conflicting group claiming superior victim status (for a review, see Young & Sullivan, 2016).…”

“…Exclusive victimhood about the Zika outbreak. Like Vollhardt et al (2021), we measured two kinds of closely related exclusive victimhood: competitive and exclusive victimhood. While competitive victimhood taps into how severe one's ingroup victimhood is compared with that of outgroups (quantitative comparison), exclusive victimhood taps into how distinct one's ingroup victimhood is compared with that of outgroups (qualitative victimhood).…”

“…This relationship has been interpreted following an intergroup approach, according to which national narcissists manage identity threats posed by the pandemic by attributing threatening factors (e.g., poor crisis management, absence of medication) to the action of plotting outgroups (Sternisko et al, 2020b). We further draw on conspiracy beliefs as identity management strategies by arguing that along with national narcissists' tendency to seek special recognition of their ingroup (Golec de , these defensive beliefs stem from a sense of exclusive victimhood resulting from the crisis (i.e., the "perceived uniqueness and distinctiveness of the ingroup's victimization compared to other groups' suffering," Vollhardt et al, 2021). We propose that framing a diffuse and contingent pathogen threat as a concrete and intentional intergroup threat (i.e., conspiracy beliefs) is the consequence of an ethnocentric perception of the crisis to which one's ingroup's suffering is central.…”

General inclusive victimhood predicts willingness to engage in intergroup contact: Findings from Bosnia‐Herzegovina and the Basque Country

“…These perceptions, which are referred to as collective victimhood or collective victim beliefs (Bar‐Tal et al., 2009; Noor et al., 2017), have been identified as potential barriers to peace‐making and reconciliation (Halperin & Bar‐Tal, 2011; Vollhardt, 2012). Instead, when collective victimhood is construed in a way that emphasizes similarities between the ingroup’s suffering and the suffering of other groups worldwide (i.e., general inclusive victimhood , Vollhardt, 2012, 2015), it may predict positive intergroup relations (Cohrs et al., 2015; Vollhardt et al., 2016, 2021). However, research on general inclusive victimhood is limited, and its potential effects on intergroup contact in post‐conflict societies have not been examined to date.…”