Competitive victimhood as a response to accusations of ingroup harm doing.
Accusations of unjust harm doing by 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 compared with the harmed outgroup. Men accused of harming women were more likely to claim that men are discriminated against compared with women (Study 1), and women showed the same effect when accused of discriminating against men (Study 3). Undergraduates engaged in competitive victimhood with university staff after their group was accused of harming staff (Study 2). Study 4 showed that the effect of accusations on competitive victimhood among high-status group members is mediated by perceived stigma reversal: the expectation that one should feel guilty for being in a high-status group. Exposure to a competitive victimhood claim on behalf of one's ingroup reduced stigma reversal and collective guilt after an accusation of ingroup harm doing (Study 5).
Department of Psychology, University of Kansas, 1415 Jayhawk Boulevard, Room 426, Lawrence, KS 66045-7556, USA. dsully@ku.edu
Daniel
D
Sullivan
Mark J
MJ
Landau
Nyla R
NR
Branscombe
Zachary K
ZK
Rothschild
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003163:Competitive Behavior; D019548:Crime Victims / Q000191:economics / Q000523:psychology*; D005006:Ethnicity / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006126:Group Processes; D006167:Guilt; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D011287:Prejudice; D012929:Psychological Distance; D011581:Psychological Tests; D012737:Sex Factors; D012933:Social Identification; D012938:Social Perception; D057545:Social Stigma; D055815:Young Adult