Seeking revenge or seeking reconciliation? Adopting perpetrator or victim focus helps explain responses in reciprocal intergroup conflict

In reciprocal conflicts individuals belong to an in-group that has been both perpetrator and victim. Thus, in a field experiment in Liberia, Africa (N = 146) we led participants to focus on their in-group as either perpetrator or victim to investigate its effect on orientation toward inter-group reconciliation and revenge. Compared to a perpetrator focus, a victim focus led to slightly more revenge orientation and moderately less reconciliation orientation. The effect of the focus manipulation on revenge orientation was fully mediated, and reconciliation orientation partly mediated, by viewing the in-group’s social-image as at risk. Independent of perpetrator or victim focus, shame (but not guilt) was a distinct explanation of moderately more reconciliation orientation. This is consistent with a growing body of work demonstrating the pro-social potential of shame. Taken together, results suggest how groups in reciprocal conflict might be encouraged toward reconciliation and away from revenge by feeling shame for their wrongdoing and viewing their social-image as less at risk.