Michael J. A. Wohl

Collective guilt: Emotional reactions when one's group has done wrong or been wronged

We examine the conditions that facilitate feelings of collective guilt, and consider the prevalent historial and contemporary conditions that inhibit such guilt. Specifically, we outline the important role that self-categorisation as a member of a group that is responsible for illegitimately harming another group plays in inducing collective guilt. We also consider strategies that legitimise the harm done, along with how the costs of creating a more just relationship with the harmed group can affect the extent to which collective guilt is experienced. The ease of undermining the necessary antecedents for feeling collective guilt suggests that it may be a relatively rare emotional experience, particularly during ongoing intergroup hostilities. We present studies illustrating the important role that categorisation plays in both collective guilt acceptance and its assignment to members of other social groups who have harmed the ingroup. We illustrate the consequences for social change processes when the necessary conditions for collective guilt to be experienced are met.

Remembering Historical Victimization : Collective Guilt for Current Ingroup Transgressions

The authors examined the consequences of remembering historical victimization for emotional reactions to a current adversary. In Experiment 1, Jewish Canadians who were reminded of the Holocaust accepted less collective guilt for their groups harmful actions toward the Palestinians than those not reminded of their ingroups past victimization. The extent to which the conflict was perceived to be due to Palestinian terrorism mediated this effect. Experiment 2 illustrated that reminding Jewish people, but not non-Jewish people, of the Holocaust decreased collective guilt for current harm doing compared with when the reminder concerned genocide committed against another group (i.e., Cambodians). In Experiments 3 and 4, Americans experienced less collective guilt for their groups harm doing in Iraq following reminders of either the attacks on September 11th, 2001 or the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor compared with a historical victimization reminder that was irrelevant to the ingroup. The authors discuss why remembering the ingroups past affects responses to outgroups in the present.

The Deployment of Personal Luck: Sympathetic Magic and Illusory Control in Games of Pure Chance

In three studies, the authors expand on Langer’s (1975) illusion of control model to include perceptions of personal luck as a potential source of misperceived skillful influence over non-controllable events. In an initial study, it was predicted and found that having choice in a game of chance heightened both perceived personal luck and perceived chance of winning. In additional studies, hypotheses were tested based on the proposition that luck perceived as a personal quality follows the laws of sympathetic magic. The results showed that participants acted as though luck could be transmitted from themselves to a wheel of fortune and thereby positively affect their perceived chance of winning. Results are discussed both in terms of the previously unexamined connection between illusory control and beliefs in sympathetic magic and as an extension of the illusory control model.

Perceiving Your Group’s Future to Be in Jeopardy: Extinction Threat Induces Collective Angst and the Desire to Strengthen the Ingroup

Collective angst reflects concern about the ingroup’s future vitality. In four studies, the authors examined the impact of ingroup extinction threat on the experience of collective angst. In Study 1, collective angst was elicited in response to a physical or symbolic ingroup extinction threat compared to a no-threat control group. In Study 2, the extent to which French Canadians expressed collective angst because of the perceived extinction threat posed by English Canada predicted desire to engage in ingroup strengthening behaviors. In Studies 3 and 4, the impact of a historical extinction threat was assessed. The extent to which Jewish people expressed thinking about (Study 3) or were reminded of the Holocaust (Study 4) resulted in an increased desire to engage in ingroup strengthening behaviors. Collective angst acted as a mediator of these effects. Implications of extinction threat for both intragroup and intergroup behavior are discussed.

Social capital, health and life satisfaction in 50 countries.

We explored links between social capital and self-rated health and life satisfaction in a diverse sample of rich and developing countries. A four-factor measure of social capital was developed using data on 69,725 adults in 50 countries that were collected in the World Values Survey. Multilevel analyses showed links between country social capital and health and life satisfaction. However, cross-level interactions indicated that the benefits of social capital were greater in women than men, in older adults and in more trusting, affiliated individuals. Social inequalities in the contributions of social capital to population health are worthy of further study.

Taking Up Offenses: Secondhand Forgiveness and Group Identification

When a person or group is mistreated, those not directly harmed by the transgression might still experience antipathy toward offenders, leading to secondhand forgiveness dynamics similar to those experienced by firsthand victims. Three studies examine the role of social identification in secondhand forgiveness. Study 1 shows that the effects of apologies on secondhand victims are moderated by level of identification with the wronged group. Study 2 shows that identification with the United States was associated with less forgiveness and greater blame and desire for retribution directed at the 9/11 terrorists, and these associations were primarily mediated by anger. Finally, Study 3 shows that participants whose assimilation needs were primed were less forgiving toward the perpetrators of an assault on ingroup members than participants whose differentiation needs were primed, an effect that was mediated by empathy for the victims.

Counterfactual Thinking, Blame Assignment, and Well-Being in Rape Victims

Blame assignment and well-being among women who had been raped (N = 85) were investigated as a function of counterfactual thinking. The more upward counterfactuals (i.e., ways the rape might have been avoided) victims concurred with where some aspect of the self was mutated, the poorer their well-being. The effect of such upward counterfactual thinking on well-being was mediated by increases in self-blame. The amount of blame assigned to both the rapist and society did not mediate the effect of counterfactual thinking on well-being. These observed effects of counterfactual thinking on blame assignment are consistent with those obtained with uninvolved observers and with victims of other types of trauma. Models testing other possible relationship orderings were not supported. Implications for intervention strategies with rape victims are considered.

Why group apologies succeed and fail: intergroup forgiveness and the role of primary and secondary emotions.

It is widely assumed that official apologies for historical transgressions can lay the groundwork for intergroup forgiveness, but evidence for a causal relationship between intergroup apologies and forgiveness is limited. Drawing on the infrahumanization literature, we argue that a possible reason for the muted effectiveness of apologies is that people diminish the extent to which they see outgroup members as able to experience complex, uniquely human emotions (e.g., remorse). In Study 1, Canadians forgave Afghanis for a friendly-fire incident to the extent that they perceived Afghanis as capable of experiencing uniquely human emotions (i.e., secondary emotions such as anguish) but not nonuniquely human emotions (i.e., primary emotions such as fear). Intergroup forgiveness was reduced when transgressor groups expressed secondary emotions rather than primary emotions in their apology (Studies 2a and 2b), an effect that was mediated by trust in the genuineness of the apology (Study 2b). Indeed, an apology expressing secondary emotions aroused no more forgiveness than a no-apology control (Study 3) and less forgiveness than an apology with no emotion (Study 4). Consistent with an infrahumanization perspective, effects of primary versus secondary emotional expression did not emerge when the apology was offered for an ingroup transgression (Study 3) or when an outgroup apology was delivered through an ingroup proxy (Study 4). Also consistent with predictions, these effects were demonstrated only by those who tended to deny uniquely human qualities to the outgroup (Study 5). Implications for intergroup apologies and movement toward reconciliation are discussed.

The Perception of Time Heals All Wounds: Temporal Distance Affects Willingness to Forgive Following an Interpersonal Transgression

Prior research has assessed the temporal unfolding of forgiveness and found that forgiveness becomes more likely as time distances the victim from the transgression. These findings lend credence to the axiom “time heals all wounds.” This research examines the effect of time perception on forgiveness of others by experimentally manipulating temporal distance. In Experiment 1, respondents reported greater willingness to forgive the transgressor when more time had elapsed since the transgression. Experiments 2 and 3 determined the influence of subjective temporal distance on willingness to forgive. Participants who perceived a hypothetical (Experiment 2) or real (Experimental 3) transgression to be farther away in time were more willing to forgive the target than were participants who perceived the event to be temporally closer. Results suggest that temporal appraisals of an event are central to the forgiveness process.

Profiles of Posttraumatic Growth Following an Unjust Loss

The dominant model of posttraumatic growth (PTG) suggests that growth is precipitated by significant challenges to ones identity or to core assumptions that give ones life meaning, and develops as one goes through meaning-making or schema reconstruction processes. Other perspectives suggest, however, that such growth occurs by other means. We use a numerically aided phenomenological approach to elucidate common profiles of growth in a sample of 52 adults who lost a loved one in a traumatic mine explosion 8 years earlier. Of the three clusters extracted, 1 captured the essence of the PTG model, including threat to sense of self, meaning-making, and personal growth; 1 featured an inability to find meaning and an absence of growth; and 1 featured minimal meaning threat with modest growth. Those most likely to report PTG interpreted the experience as threat to self, with growth coming from development of new self-understanding. The data suggest that a better understanding of the processes of PTG may be realized by taking a more refined approach to the assessment of loss and growth, and by drawing distinctions between personal growth and benefits.