Premium
Thou Shall Not Kill…Your Brother: Victim−Perpetrator Cultural Closeness and Moral Disapproval of Polish Atrocities against Jews after the Holocaust
Author(s) -
Kofta Miroslaw,
Slawuta Patrycja
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
journal of social issues
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.618
H-Index - 122
eISSN - 1540-4560
pISSN - 0022-4537
DOI - 10.1111/josi.12003
Subject(s) - closeness , ingroups and outgroups , social psychology , the holocaust , psychology , feeling , group conflict , dehumanization , in group favoritism , social group , social identity theory , law , political science , mathematical analysis , mathematics
This paper addresses the role of collective memory of post‐Holocaust crimes in contemporary Polish − Jewish relations. We examined how reminding Polish participants of ingroup atrocities affects constructive as well as destructive attitudes and behavioral intentions toward the Jewish victim group. We address the question of how experimentally induced feelings of cultural closeness between the outgroup and the ingroup modify the effects of these reminders on intergroup relations. Our two experiments suggest that perceived sharing of culture is a crucial factor in dealing constructively with the “problematic past” in intergroup relations. In the baseline condition (where cultural closeness of Jews and Poles was not made salient), reminders of ingroup atrocities activated group‐defensive strategies, resulting in more negative intergroup attitudes and dehumanization of Jews. In stark contrast, in the “culturally close” condition (where feelings of shared culture were induced), reminders of ingroup atrocities actually resulted in more positive intergroup attitudes and humanization of Jews .