title: America and the age of genocide: labeling a third-party conflict "genocide" decreases support for intervention among ingroup-glorifying Americans because they down-regulate guilt and perceived responsibility to intervene.
abstract: Drawing on research on the collapse of compassion and group processes and interrelations, four experiments investigated how labeling a conflict "genocide" affects distant bystanders' support for intervention. The genocide label (compared with no label or the label "not a genocide") weakened Americans' support for intervention in a crisis analogous to Darfur. Ingroup glorification moderated this effect such that the genocide label decreased support at high levels of glorification (Studies 1-3). Ingroup attachment, if anything, moderated such that the genocide label increased support at high levels of attachment (Studies 1 and 3). Importantly, the effects occurred even when controlling for conservatism (Studies 1 and 3), gender, religion, military affiliation, and level of education (Study 2). Decreases in anticipated guilt over possible nonintervention (Studies 1 and 3) among high glorifiers, and a subsequent decrease in perceived obligation to intervene (Study 3), mediated the effect of the genocide label on support for intervention.
authors.affiliation: University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA bleidner@psych.umass.edu.
authors.forename: Bernhard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Leidner
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004644:Emotions; D004645:Empathy; D005260:Female; D063365:Genocide; D006126:Group Processes; D006167:Guilt; D006379:Helping Behavior; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D011057:Politics; D012933:Social Identification; D014481:United States
keywords: bystanders; collapse of compassion; genocide; intergroup conflict; language