Collective guilt reporting is not driven by social desirability or self-esteem bias

Evidence

Two additional personal constructs were measured to ensure that they were not redundant with the collective guilt subscales. First, the thirtythree-item Social Desirability Scale (Crowne & Marlowe, 1964) was collected in order to ensure that collective guilt was not simply a reflection of social approval motivation (e.g., “I have never deliberately said something that hurt someone’s feelings”). Second, the ten-item Personal Self-Esteem measure (Rosenberg, 1979) was completed to ensure that collective guilt could be discriminated from the level of personal self-esteem (e.g., “At times, I think I am no good at all”). As can be seen in Table 2, none of the collective guilt subscales were significantly correlated with either social desirability or personal self-esteem. Therefore, reporting feelings of collective guilt is not simply a function of the perceivers’ general concerns about projecting a socially desirable self or their private feelings of self-worth. — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt, 196

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Collective guilt causally links attitudes to political behavior rather than being epiphenomenal — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt: International…, 822; Collective victimization typically suppresses acceptance of collective guilt — Sandra Penic, Guy Elcheroth, and Dario Spini, When Is Collective Exposure to War…, 8; Perceived justification of ingroup harm blocks collective guilt regardless of harm severity — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt: International…, 156

Broader Connections

• Perceived justification of ingroup harm blocks collective guilt regardless of harm severity #qualifies (0.82) — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt, 156
• Collective victimization typically suppresses acceptance of collective guilt #qualifies (0.80) — Sandra Penic, Guy Elcheroth, and Dario Spini, When Is Collective Exposure to War…, 8