Feeling for and as a group member: Understanding LGBT victimization via group‐based empathy and intergroup emotions

Abstract

In two experimental studies (N = 120; N = 102), we apply intergroup emotions theory (IET) to examine the effects of hate crime on other community members. With participants from an oft-targeted group - Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Trans people, we are the first to show empirically that hate crimes elicit more pronounced emotional and behavioural responses in other members of the victims' community than comparable non-hate crimes. The findings also reveal the psychological processes behind these effects. Consistent with IET, hate crimes were seen to pose more of a group-based threat and so led to heightened emotional reactions (anger and anxiety) and, subsequently, to behavioural intentions (avoidance and pro-action). Importantly, we also show that hate crime victims, due to increased perceptions of similarity, received more empathy than non-hate crime victims. Such empathy, although neglected in previous research, was shown to be a potential mediator in understanding the indirect effects of hate crime. Results are discussed in terms of their contribution to psychological theory and their potential to support the argument for the utility and appropriateness of hate crime legislation.

Group identity, empathy and shared suffering: Understanding the ‘community’ impacts of anti-LGBT and Islamophobic hate crimes

“…There is not one single country they don’t come from. (Abdul/Muslim)This expression of shared global identity was often mediated, for both groups, through the empathic connections that LGBT and Muslim people felt towards other group members (concurring with our quantitative findings, Paterson et al, 2019). This was articulated by one LGBT participant who remarked:I mean…you grow up as gay, struggling with your…you know the same expectations of you perhaps won’t be fulfilled, or you know that you are [different] in some ways from other people that you’re at school with…So you kind of know that anyone that goes through that anywhere in the world will have some sort of struggle in terms of their day-to-day existence or just their life; so you can kind of…you have some sort of empathy with people who are in more difficult situations than you, which are those ones that you read about in the papers.…”

“…However, other researchers have pointed out that feelings of anger may give rise to further acts of hate-motivated violence as individuals who feel threatened by outgroup members seek to retaliate against them (McDevitt et al, 2002). More recently, Paterson et al (2019) found that feelings of shame caused by indirect experiences of hate crime may give rise to a desire to retaliate amongst some community members.…”

“…The question of whether hate crimes have indirect impacts on other group members formed the focus of a 5-year research project (Paterson et al, 2018b). Quantitative data reported elsewhere, based on cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys and experiments with over 3000 LGBT and Muslim people, have provided evidence that simply knowing someone in the local community who had been a victim of a hate crime had significant impacts on group members’ emotions (especially anger and anxiety) (Paterson et al, 2019; 2018a). In turn, those emotions were linked to proactive behavioural intentions (e.g.…”

“…joining rights-based groups, community-focused charities, and being more active on social media) and avoidance (e.g. avoiding certain locations and changing one’s appearance) (Paterson et al, 2019). Moreover, longitudinal and experimental studies also found that media exposure to hate crimes had lasting demobilizing impacts on actual behaviours (Paterson et al, 2018a).…”

“…Perry and Alvi (2012: 70) point out thatIf we are to continue to insist that one of the primary reasons for differentiating bias-motivated crime from its non-bias-motivated counterpart is the effect on the broader community, we need to firmly establish this dynamic.It is on this dynamic that this article focuses. Connecting previously analysed quantitative data (Paterson et al, 2018a; 2018b; 2019; Walters et al, 2017) with 34 in-depth qualitative interviews, we examine how indirect experiences of hate crimes can impact upon two commonly targeted groups: LGBT people and Muslim people. Our combined analyses reveal a more nuanced understanding of how hate incidents affect entire identity groups, while additionally building upon contemporary conceptions as to the ways that ‘community’ is defined and experienced by LGBT and Muslim people in the context of targeted violence.…”