Group martyrdom: Psychological functions of beliefs about national victimhood

The present research examines relations between sense of in-group's collective victimhood and attitudes towards out-groups, entitlement attitudes and willingness to repair the in-group's historical misdeeds towards an out-group. We propose that focusing on the in-group perpetual victimhood increases collective self-esteem. It also motivates individuals with low self-esteem (Baumeister, 1994, 2009) to accept collective victimhood beliefs. In two studies we tested hypothesis that in-group victimhood orientation: (1) compensates individual deficiencies of social capital; (2) justifies in-group's entitlement attitudes and negative attitudes towards other groups; (3) delegitimizes out-group claims for compensation of historical harms. We also proposed that collective victimhood justifies in-group's violence and decreases collective guilt for the in-group's wrongdoings. More specifically we proposed that collective victimhood mediates the relation between social capital, entitlement attitudes and negative attitudes towards out-groups. Both studies used the Perpetual In-group Victimhood Orientation scale (PIVO) developed by Klar et. al (Klar, Roccas, Schori, Kahn, 2009) in order to measure the in-group collective victimhood acceptance. SEM models that were formulated supported our hypothesis. peerReviewed publishedVersion