Perpetrator and victim groups favor accepting versus assigning guilt

Evidence

When the ingroup’s harmful actions toward another group are the focus, acceptance should be more likely, and when the outgroup’s harmful actions toward the ingroup are the focus, assignment should be more likely. We expected that the tendency to accept or assign collective guilt would depend greatly on the historical status of the groups – whether the group focused on was the perpetrator or victim of the moral violation. Members of victim groups should be more inclined to assign collective guilt to the perpetrator group, whereas members of perpetrator groups should be more willing to accept collective guilt when the injustice of the historical relationship is salient. — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt, 152

Collective guilt is fundamentally about being associated with a group that has perpetrated injustice against another group. Collective guilt was distinguishable from both trait and state guilt at the personal level. Collective guilt was also reliably correlated with group level individual difference variables as expected. We found that groups who have exploited or harmed another group are more likely to accept collective guilt when that history is salient compared to members of groups who were victimized. In contrast, groups with a history of victimization were more likely to assign collective guilt than were members of perpetrator groups. — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt, 228

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt: International…, 152; Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt: International…, 228
• XREF: connects to: The source of disapproval reverses who feels most collective guilt — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt: International…, 721; Perpetrator-group members can benefit from crimes without committing them — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt: International…, 2066; Different theories parse victim and perpetrator needs into distinct subtypes — Nurit Shnabel and Johannes Ullrich, Identity Needs in Intergroup Relations:…, 66 (+12 more)