Reminders of past victimization suppress a group’s collective guilt for its own current harmdoing.

Evidence

However, intergroup dynamics are often more complex and multilayered and can involve different power dynamics and roles at different times. For example, often groups have a dual role as both victims and perpetrators within the same conflict, which affects psychological processes involved in reconciliation (SimanTov-Nachlieli & Shnabel, 2014). In addition, there are many cases where a historical victim group becomes a perpetrator group in a different context. This can affect group members’ willingness to accept responsibility and experience guilt. Wohl and Branscombe (2008) demonstrated that reminding people of their group’s historical victimization (Jews of the Holocaust; U.S. Americans of Pearl Harbor) reduced their ability to experience collective guilt for present-day harm perpetrated by their ingroup (in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and Iraq war, respectively). — Johanna Ray Vollhardt and Michelle Sinayobye Twali, Emotion-Based Reconciliation Requires…, 44

Categorization

• XREF: Directly supports the reader’s question about structural asymmetry: victim-status identity buffers groups against guilt-based reconciliation mechanisms. — connects to: Anger at ingroup advantage can motivate redress better than guilt. — Johanna Ray Vollhardt and Michelle Sinayobye Twali, Emotion-Based Reconciliation Requires…, 61; Reminders of a group’s own victimization history increase guilt assigned to others — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt: International…, 2145; 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 (+3 more)
• SEED: Could seed an essay on how victimhood functions as moral armor immunizing perpetrator groups against accountability.

Related

• Reminders of a group’s own victimization history increase guilt assigned to others (similarity 0.91)
• Asymmetric violence suppresses guilt while symmetric victimization of both groups raises it. (similarity 0.88)
• Reminding a victimized group of old harms raises guilt assigned to a new enemy. (similarity 0.88)
• The ingroup’s own suffering suppresses guilt even when it sees itself as responsible (similarity 0.88)
• At group level, victims may benefit from not letting go of the past (similarity 0.87)
• Guilt rejection is not an unavoidable reaction to collective victimization. (similarity 0.87)
• Collective victimization typically suppresses acceptance of collective guilt (similarity 0.85)
• Collective guilt is constructive only when experienced by the perpetrator, not the victim, group. (similarity 0.84)
• Victimization-history reminders shift perceivers toward more exclusive categorization (similarity 0.84)
• Those who read unfavorable group history become less willing to apologize (similarity 0.84)
• Ongoing historical harms trigger defensive denial where ended ones allow acknowledgment (similarity 0.84)
• Group members feel collective guilt for historical ingroup harm they did not cause. (similarity 0.83)
• Escalating conflict reduces in-group acknowledgment of past wrongdoings (similarity 0.83)
• Conflict escalation alters even retrospective moral judgments of past in-group harms. (similarity 0.83)
• Never forget the past psychologically means never forget we differ from other groups (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• The ingroup’s own suffering suppresses guilt even when it sees itself as responsible #qualifies (0.85) — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt, 2145
• Reminding a victimized group of old harms raises guilt assigned to a new enemy. #expands (0.80) — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt, 1976
• Reminders of a group’s own victimization history increase guilt assigned to others #corroborates (0.75) — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt, 2145
• Guilt rejection is not an unavoidable reaction to collective victimization. #qualifies (0.75) — Sandra Penic, Guy Elcheroth, and Dario Spini, When Is Collective Exposure to War…, 151
• Asymmetric violence suppresses guilt while symmetric victimization of both groups raises it. #qualifies (0.72) — Sandra Penic, Guy Elcheroth, and Dario Spini, When Is Collective Exposure to War…, 111