Men feel most collective guilt when reparations are moderately difficult.

Evidence

As predicted, a cubic contrast revealed that guilt was reliably higher in the control and moderate difficulty conditions than in the low and high difficulty conditions. As shown in Figure 1, guilt waslowerinthelowdifficultyconditioncomparedtothecontrolcondition; guilt was higher in the moderate difficulty condition compared to both the low difficulty and high difficulty conditions. Importantly, collective guilt was not a simple reflection of perceptions of personal responsibility for gender inequality, which did not differ by condition, was quite low overall (M = 1.63, on a 1–7 scale), and was not correlated with collective guilt. — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt, 575

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The inverted-U finding that men’s guilt about gender privilege peaks at moderate reparation difficulty—and that it is unmoorced from personal responsibility (M=1.63, uncorrelated)—is a dense, counterintuitive result worth sitting with.
• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
• XREF: connects to: Motivational intensity rises and falls nonlinearly with task difficulty. — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt: International…, 558; Reparation difficulty has an inverted-U effect on collective guilt — Torsten Masson and Markus Barth, The identification-guilt paradox…, 70; The ingroup’s own suffering suppresses guilt even when it sees itself as responsible — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt: International…, 2145 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Reparation difficulty has an inverted-U effect on collective guilt #corroborates (0.95) — Torsten Masson and Markus Barth, The identification-guilt paradox…, 70
• The ingroup’s own suffering suppresses guilt even when it sees itself as responsible #qualifies (0.70) — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt, 2145