Framing attachment around ideals rather than current traits raises group-based guilt.

Evidence

It is noteworthy that the “ideal group” manipulation affected group-based guilt without any explicit appeal to criticize the group’s current actions. Both critical and conventional attachment participants listed positive attributes of their national group. However, mere contemplation of the ideal (rather than actual) group as the target of attachment raised group-based moral responsibility. — Sonia Roccas and Yechiel Klar and Ido Liviatan, The Paradox of Group-Based Guilt, 128

Categorization

• QUESTION: This suggests reversibility of the attachment-to-glorification pathway: if mere ideal-framing raises moral responsibility, could reconciliation contact also move glorification back toward attachment through ideal-prompts? The reader’s tipping-point/ratchet question points here.
• SEED: Narrative or essay angle: the counterintuitive finding that never criticizing the group directly can still produce self-criticism, just by shifting the object of attachment.
• XREF: connects to: Affective group attachment, not mere membership perception, drives non-linear responses to collective guilt — Torsten Masson and Markus Barth, The identification-guilt paradox…, 26; High identification with a group suppresses collective guilt, not only enables it. — Torsten Masson and Markus Barth, The identification-guilt paradox…, 63; Group identification can both enable and block feelings of group-based guilt — Sonia Roccas and Yechiel Klar and Ido Liviatan, The Paradox of Group-Based Guilt: Modes…, 16 (+15 more)

Related

• Group identification can simultaneously raise and lower group-based guilt. (similarity 0.93)
• Group identification can both enable and block feelings of group-based guilt (similarity 0.91)
• Attachment makes individuals vulnerable to guilt over in-group misdeeds. (similarity 0.91)
• Affective group attachment, not mere membership perception, drives non-linear responses to collective guilt (similarity 0.91)
• Attachment can be experimentally induced toward an ideal rather than actual group (similarity 0.91)
• Attachment to the in-group predicts guilt while glorification predicts defensiveness (similarity 0.90)
• Critical attachment primes stronger group-based guilt than conventional attachment. (similarity 0.90)
• Controlling for glorification reveals attachment’s true link to group guilt. (similarity 0.90)
• Critical attachment produces guilt through refusing to exonerate the group (similarity 0.90)
• Glorification predicts exonerating cognitions that blunt group-based guilt. (similarity 0.89)
• Attachment to the in-group and glorification predict opposite reactions to one’s group’s moral violations. (similarity 0.89)
• Studies conflict on whether high identification predicts more or less guilt (similarity 0.89)
• High identification with a group suppresses collective guilt, not only enables it. (similarity 0.88)
• Glorification’s correlation to attachment suppresses attachment’s observable effects. (similarity 0.88)
• Glorification predicts defensive denial of the in-group’s moral violations. (similarity 0.87)

Broader Connections

• Strongest ingroup identifiers are least likely to feel collective guilt #contradicts (0.80) — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt, 1170
• Highly identified group members minimize collective guilt by morally reinterpreting ingroup wrongs #contradicts (0.75) — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2278
• Highly identified group members resist feeling collective guilt by reinterpreting events #contradicts (0.75) — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2278
• In-group glorification drives justification of wrongdoings while attachment drives guilt #complicates (0.70) — Emanuele Castano, On the Perils of Glorifying the In-group, 49