Competitive victimhood in response to accusations of ingroup harmdoing

Abstract

Individuals are motivated to maintain a positive moral evaluation of social groups to which they belong. Accusations of unjust harmdoing on the part of the ingroup threaten the group's moral identity. One strategy for restoring ingroup moral identity after such a threat is competitive victimhood: claiming the ingroup has suffered as much or more than the harmed outgroup and other relevant groups. Two studies tested this process. In Study 1, male participants were more likely to claim that men are discriminated against compared to women after their group was accused of harming women. In Study 2, undergraduates were more likely to claim that their group is discriminated against compared to other campus groups after undergraduates were accused of harming university staff. Competitive victimhood did not occur when outgroup victimization was framed as the fault of the outgroup itself (Study 1) or a group other than the ingroup (Study 2).iv Acknowledgments

Impediments to forgiveness: Victim and transgressor attributions of intent and guilt.

“…Our evidence that perpetrators want to be forgiven aligns with Shnabel and Nadler's argument that perpetrators desire reacceptance, but we extend this research by further documenting that victims do not appreciate this desire. Indeed, offering forgiveness may even be experienced as a loss of power and/or status for victims as they give up their victimhood and their right to claim further reparations (Exline & Baumeister, 2000;Sullivan, Landau, Branscombe, & Rothschild, 2012).…”

#MeToo, #MenToo: how men's progressive and reactionary actions are shaped by defensiveness

“…Extending work on the relationship between moral image concerns and advantaged group members' support for the disadvantaged groups' action (see Kende et al, 2020;Teixeira et al, 2020), we propose that men's need to defend their group's morality may not only undermine their intentions to support the movement to end gender-based violence-but, that it may also motivate their engagement in reactionary actions designed to promote the rights of their own group. In doing so, our approach brings together work on defensive reactions to reminders of ingroup harmdoing (Doosje et al, 1998;Leidner et al, 2010;Bilali et al, 2012;Sullivan et al, 2012;Leach et al, 2013;Rotella and Richeson, 2013;Bilali and Vollhardt, 2019) with the collective action literature (see , for an overview) to understand how advantaged group members respond to movements advocating for justice and equality for disadvantaged groups.…”

“…Members of historically advantaged groups are particularly sensitive to information that suggests that their group has acted immorally (Doosje et al, 1998;Sullivan et al, 2012;Knowles et al, 2014;Bilali and Vollhardt, 2019;Kahalon et al, 2019). According to the needs-based model of reconciliation (Shnabel and Nadler, 2008;Aydin et al, 2019), disadvantaged group members-who are often the victims of discrimination-can experience a threat to their need for power and agency.…”

“…morality needs might also mobilize advantaged group members to advocate for the rights of their own (privileged) group. This is despite the fact that, in recent years, counter-movements on behalf of advantaged group members (#NotAllMen, #MenToo, #AllLivesMatter) have often been characterized by attempts to defend against threats to their group's morality (e.g., by denying the advantaged group's role in perpetrating harm; Bilali, 2013); by minimizing the severity of the wrongdoing (Leidner et al, 2010;Bilali et al, 2012); and/or by arguing that the advantaged group has suffered more than the disadvantaged group (competitive victimhood; Noor et al, 2012;Sullivan et al, 2012;Young and Sullivan, 2016).…”

“…In the context of women's disclosures of sexual harassment, men's backlash often includes defensive strategies designed to downplay or outright deny the issue of violence against women (Sullivan et al, 2012;Flood, 2019;Flood et al, 2021;Okuyan and Vollhardt, 2022). "Not all men" is a common argument used to claim that sexual violence is only perpetrated by a few "bad apples", thereby allowing men to deny the structural nature of gendered violence by positioning it as a problem attributable to a "deviant" few (Flood, 2019).…”