The Role of Personal Centrality of Ingroup Victimhood in Intergroup Relations and Political Agenda in Northern Ireland

Abstract

Even though the violent conflicts during the Troubles officially ended decades ago, the memories of violence and division between Catholics and Protestants linger in Northern Ireland. We argue that the personal centrality of collective victimhood, which is formed by the memory and perception of past and ongoing victimization, may play an important role in people's attitudes in postconflict societies. The current study investigated both the antecedents and outcomes of the personal centrality of ingroup victimhood in Northern Ireland and examined the vital role it plays in the aftermath of a violent intergroup conflict among Catholics and Protestants. The results demonstrated that ongoing experiences of victimization such as personal and group‐level discrimination and memories of personal and close others' suffering are strongly related to people's personal centrality of ingroup victimhood. The centrality of ingroup victimhood, in turn, predicted various strategies for intergroup interaction and policy preferences such as collective action, support for nonviolence, and attitudes toward reunification of Ireland, which were moderated by group membership. The findings provide empirical evidence for the role of the centrality of ingroup victimhood as a link between experiences of victimization and intergroup interactions as well as policy preferences.

Collective victim beliefs in the aftermath of historical trauma and their effects on psychological well‐being: Initial findings among the Polish diaspora in the United States

“…While social psychological research on collective victimhood has mostly focused on comparative victim beliefs (Szabó, 2020), our study adds to the very scarce research on centrality of collective victimisation and suggests that it deserves more attention as a predictor in its own right rather than as a mere control variable (Jeong et al, 2023;Szabó et al, 2020;Vollhardt, Cohrs, et al, 2021). Our expanded measure of perceived centrality of collective victimisation, including decentring collective victimisation, builds on previous qualitative findings and contributes to the literature that has tended to assume the relevance and importance of collective victimisation to group members without testing this assumption (see also Leach, 2020).…”

“…Although comparative victim beliefs are most commonly studied in social psychology, other understudied collective victim beliefs also seem highly relevant for understanding effects of historical trauma on psychological well‐being. In particular, we focus on the perceived centrality of the ingroup's victimisation to the self and to one's group, which to our knowledge has only been examined so far as a control variable (Szabó, Vollhardt, & Mészáros, 2020; Vollhardt et al, 2016; Vollhardt, Cohrs, et al, 2021) and in one study investigating effects on intergroup attitudes and policies (Jeong et al, 2023). Perceived centrality of collective victimisation is conceptually related to the notion of historical loss, which captures the self‐reported frequency of thinking about the ingroup's collective victimisation and associated losses—also sometimes referred to as ‘availability’ of these thoughts (e.g., Armenta et al, 2016; Skrodzka et al, 2021; Tucker, Wingate, & O'Keefe, 2016; Whitbeck et al, 2004).…”

Collective victimhood and conflict-related attitudes: A meta-analysis

“…The centrality of victimhood beliefs for an individual is a potentially distinct dimension of collective victimhood. Here, individuals vary not only in the degree to which they subscribe to (a particular version of) collective victimhood, but also the extent to which that subscription matters to them Jeong, Ulug, and Baysu 2023). Centrality of victimhood is often measured in terms of how much one supports learning about or discussing past in-group victimization (e.g., "I am very interested in what members of my in-group have experienced in the past") or the frequency with which individuals think about collective victimhood (e.g., "I often think of the grievances caused to my people in the past").…”

“…Both competitive and exclusive victimhood are associated with greater support for aggressive policies and less desire for compromise Adelman et al 2016) as well as less willingness to forgive and acknowledge past wrongdoing ( Čehajić and Brown 2010;). Beliefs about lasting, recurring, and the centrality of victimhood are also tend to shift individual attitudes in this direction because they remind individuals of the threat of victimization at the hands of others who seek to harm the in-group, attributing blame for that victimization unto an out-group (Schori-Eyal et al 2017;Jeong, Ulug, and Baysu 2023).…”

How does ingroup identification predict forgiveness in post‐conflict societies? The role of conflict narratives

“…While there has been significant progress towards equality between Catholics and Protestants since the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, the hostility between these two groups still manifests in different forms such as discrimination and segregation (Duggan, 2015; see Jeong et al, 2022 for a discussion). Even though direct violence was brought under control through the peace process, this violence's structural and cultural roots still persist even today (Ferguson et al, 2014).…”