Collective guilt items need only a salient group referent, not specific wording

Evidence

Because in the instructions for our scale, participants were told that we were interested in their feelings about either their racial, linguistic, or gender group, depending on the focal group membership of the study, we believe that categorization at the group level occurred in each instance when participants were responding to the scale items. Nonetheless, the ancestor wording of the items in these initial studies might suggest some potential ambiguity in participants’ interpretation of what social identity or referent was being assessed with the collective guilt items. However, subsequent research that has contextualized the items more specifically in terms of the particular identity that was made salient in that context, (e.g., “I feel guilty about the negative things inductive thinkers have done to deductive thinkers” (Doosje et al., 1998); “I feel guilty about the negative things White Americans have done to Black Americans” (Powell et al., 2003); and “I feel guilty about the negative things that men have done to women” (Schmitt et al., this volume, Chapter 5), has found similar relationships between collective guilt and willingness to make reparations as we observed here when a general ancestor wording was employed (e.g., “I feel guilty about the negative things my ancestors did to other groups”). — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt, 184

Categorization

• XREF: This methodological equivalence finding relates to how Roccas and colleagues operationalize ingroup identification in the glorification/attachment work that is the reader’s target. — connects to: Guilt requires self-categorizing as a group member — Torsten Masson and Markus Barth, The identification-guilt paradox…, 20; Guilt can be felt for one’s group’s moral violations without personal responsibility — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt: International…, 146

Broader Connections

• Guilt can be felt for one’s group’s moral violations without personal responsibility #expands (0.74) — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt, 146
• Guilt requires self-categorizing as a group member #qualifies (0.72) — Torsten Masson and Markus Barth, The identification-guilt paradox…, 20