Threatened group members either reinterpret history or revise their group’s image

Evidence

Baumeister and Hastings (1997) argue that a negative ingroup history may be dealt with by either revising the meaning of the historical events or by revising the image of the ingroup. Whereas the latter strategy is likely to be employed by lower identified group members, the former can be viewed as a defensive strategy and would be more typical for higher identifiers. Baumeister and Hastings (1997) argue that revising the meaning of historical events may be accomplished by a number of strategies, such as blaming circumstances for what has happened or by accentuating a particular context in which the ingroup’s harmful actions become less negative (e.g., the Dutch traded relatively few slaves compared to other countries). In a sense, these strategies can be argued to deceive oneself with respect to the objective negative facts about the ingroup and allow one to maintain a positive image of it. — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt, 1054

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to ch9 chapter material earlier in this volume on the four strategies advantaged groups deploy; also to Tajfel & Turner’s social identity theory threaded through the whole book. — connects to: Group members’ responses to threats to group image depend on how strongly they identify — Nyla R. Branscombe and Bertjan Doosje (eds.), Collective Guilt: International…, 1052; Groups become consumable images that erase their own violent histories — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 746; Group members reshaped an incident’s meaning only to police outsiders’ impressions — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 232

Broader Connections

• Groups become consumable images that erase their own violent histories #expands (0.82) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 746