EJSP RESEARCH ARTICLE Seeking revenge or seeking reconciliation? How concern for socialimage and felt shame helps explain responses in reciprocal intergroup conflict Nicolay Gausel*, Colin Wayne Leach†, Agostino Mazziotta‡ & Friederike Feuchte§ * † ‡ § Department of Psychosocial Health, Faculty of Health and Sport Sciences, University of Agder, Grimstad, Norway Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, USA University of Hagen, Germany Monrovia, Liberia Correspondence Nicolay Gausel, University of Agder, Postboks 422, 4604 Kristiansand, Norway E-mail: nicolay.gausel@uia.no Received: 16 February 2015 Accepted: January 2017 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2295 Keywords: shame, guilt, social-image, revenge, reconciliation, victim, perpetrator Friederike Feuchte, Independent Researcher The raw data for this study is stored with the GESIS Data Archive for the Social Sciences with the doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.7802/1331 Abstract In conflicts with reciprocal violence, individuals belong to a group that has been both perpetrator and victim In a field experiment in Liberia, West Africa, we led participants (N = 146) to focus on their group as either perpetrator or victim in order to investigate its effect on orientation towards inter-group reconciliation or 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 towards reconciliation and away from revenge by feeling shame for their wrongdoing and viewing their social-image as less at risk As victims and perpetrators are widely thought to have different orientations to inter-group reconciliation and revenge, we suggest that work on reciprocal conflicts should account for the fact that people can belong to a group that has been both perpetrator and victim Many analyses of intergroup conflict distinguish between perpetrators and victims It is often assumed to be obvious which is which However, in the real world, it is not always so clear For instance, in reciprocal conflicts—in places like Syria, Egypt, the Balkans, Northern Ireland, and Rwanda—each group has perpetrated acts of violence against the other group and suffered as victims of such acts (e.g., Brym & Araj, 2006; Staub, 2006; Stevenson, Condor, & Abell, 2007) As such, members of the involved groups in or after a reciprocal conflict can focus on their group as a perpetrator or as a victim (Mazziotta, Feuchte, Gausel, & Nadler, 2014; SimanTov-Nachlieli & Shnabel, 2014) To examine how focusing on one’s group as a perpetrator or as a victim effect the orientation towards reconciliation and revenge, we led individuals to focus on their group as either perpetrator or victim in a field experiment in Liberia—where civil wars engulfed the society in devastating reciprocal conflicts between 1989 and 2003 (Cain, 1999) As much research on reconciliation assume that perpetrators can be motivated to reconcile because it O62 can re-establish their moral standing (for reviews, see Nadler, 2012; Nadler & Shnabel, 2015), we examined whether a perpetrator focus led those in this reciprocal conflict to be more oriented to reconciliation As an angry, hostile desire for revenge is common in reciprocal conflict, we also examined orientation to revenge Because of the reciprocal violence, victims have little reason to expect the adversary to identify as a perpetrator obliged to reconcile or make reparation (Brym & Araj, 2006; Carlsmith, Darley, & Robinson, 2002; Mikula, 1993; SimanTov-Nachlieli & Shnabel, 2014); thus, revenge should seem especially likely for those who focus on their group as a victim To explain these contrasting effects of perpetrator versus victim focus on orientation to revenge and reconciliation, we examined Gausel and Leach’s (2011) notion of perceived risk to group social-image as a mediator A social-image at risk stokes fears of exclusion and isolation—the most serious of social threats (Gausel, Leach, Vignoles, & Brown, 2012; Gausel, Vignoles, & Leach, 2016) Thus, greater perceived risk to socialimage should help explain orientation to revenge (more prevalent in victim-focus) and lesser perceived risk European Journal of Social Psychology 48 (2018) O62–O72 Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd N Gausel et al should help explain orientation to reconciliation (more prevalent in perpetrator-focus) As important as perpetrator and victim focus are to group member’s inter-group orientation, group-based emotions such as shame about wrongdoing should serve as additional explanations of reconciliation orientation Consistent with a growing body of work on the pro-social orientation of group-based shame (for reviews, see Gausel & Leach, 2011) in contexts where improvement is possible (Leach & Cidam, 2015), we expect shame to help explain orientation to reconciliation in this reciprocal conflict As each group is both perpetrator and victim, feeling ashamed about the serious and substantial immorality committed by one’s group should predict believing that repair of the relationship is possible (Leach & Cidam, 2015) as well as empathy, compassion, and the otherwise pro-social orientation to the out-group necessary to a reconciliation orientation (Gausel et al., 2012, 2016) Victim-Focus versus Perpetrator-Focus: Revenge or Reconciliation? A good deal of previous work on inter-group reconciliation has been grounded in the needs-based model (Nadler, 2012; Nadler & Shnabel, 2008) Although the basic tenets of the needs-based model are well supported by prior research (for reviews, see Lund, 2003; Machakanja, 2010; Nadler, 2012; Nadler & Shnabel, 2015), the model assumes a clear-cut distinction between perpetrator and victim Such a distinction is unlikely in reciprocal conflict because the opposing parties have been both perpetrator and victim (Brym & Araj, 2006; Kanyangara, Rimé, Paez, & Yzerbyt, 2014; Stevenson et al., 2007) Because of the more fluid perpetrator and victim positions in reciprocal conflict, examinations of reconciliation in such contexts seem to require additional explanations of the role of perpetrator and victim positions (Mazziotta et al., 2014; SimanTov-Nachlieli & Shnabel, 2014) This seems especially important as a focus on the group as a victim in reciprocal conflicts can encourage a hostile and sometimes violent orientation towards revenge and thereby perpetuate a vicious circle of violence (Brym & Araj, 2006; Kanyangara et al., 2014; Nadler & Shnabel, 2015) Victim-Focus and Revenge At its heart, viewing oneself as a victim means that one views another party’s actions as causing lasting damage to oneself (Baumeister, Stillwell, & Wotman, 1990; Chaikin & Darley, 1973; Mikula, 1993) Although some victims manage to forgive perpetrators (e.g., Bandura, 1999; Macaskill, Maltby, & Day, 2002) and to move towards reconciliation, in many instances, victims are angry, hostile, and oriented towards revenge (Brym & Araj, 2006; Carlsmith et al., 2002; Mikula, 1993; Nadler & Shnabel, 2015) Victims seems especially likely to Seeking revenge or seeking reconciliation? eschew reconciliation for revenge when they have little reason to expect their antagonists to view themselves as perpetrators who should apologize and thereby empower victims (see Bandura, 1999; Baumeister et al., 1990; Scheff, 1994) This seems likely in cases of reciprocal conflict where perpetrators can legitimately also view themselves as victims (Mazziotta et al., 2014; Nadler & Shnabel, 2015; SimanTov-Nachlieli & Shnabel, 2014) When there is little chance of apology from those reluctant to identify as perpetrator, victims can experience the inter-group relation as a ‘stalemate’ that can be best resolved through taking revenge (see Brym & Araj, 2006; Gausel, 2013; Nadler & Shnabel, 2015; Retzinger, 1991; Scheff, 1994) Thus, in the sort of reciprocal conflict that we examine here, we expect individuals led to focus on their group as a victim, rather than a perpetrator, to be more oriented towards revenge We think that this is likely explained by victims viewing their social-image as someone to respect being put at risk of serious, perhaps irreparable, damage (Leach & Cidam, 2015) As Gausel and Leach (2011) discussed in their recent review, a social-image put at risk is the psychological experience where an individual is concerned about how others view them in terms of morality/immorality Hence, it is the situation in which the individual fear that their all-important need to belong, to be respected, and to be accepted by others may go unfulfilled if these others find out about their immorality or the immorality in which they are associated (i.e., through their groupaffiliation) For a victim, one example of this process can be that others think that the victim is responsible for their own suffering; that is, that the suffering is just and seen as a natural consequence of their self-caused situation (Gausel, 2013) Hence, a concern for socialimage is the concern that others will condemn one, and thus find one to be unworthy of their respect and inclusion (Gausel & Leach, 2011) A social-image put at risk for victims has long been known to orient people towards retaliatory hostility (e.g., Brym & Araj, 2006; Lewis, 1971; for a review, see Leary, Twenge, & Quinlivan, 2006), and sometimes even bloody revenge (Scheff, 1994) Although this is the first time to present an explanation of why people who focus on themselves as victims are oriented towards revenge, some initial support can be found in two experiments reported by Gausel et al (2016) Even though they did not examine the orientation to revenge that we examine here, they showed in their experiments on social-image concerns that putting individuals in situations where others might learn of their serious wrongdoing led them to worry about being isolated, losing respect, and being rejected by others In these studies, and in parallel studies of group socialimage (Gausel et al., 2012), perceived risk to socialimage (i.e., the fear of losing others respect, and be isolated and rejected by them) was consistently linked to anti-social, self-defensive motivation, such as covering up the wrong or wanting to avoid others Hence, in the case of reciprocal conflict that we examine European Journal of Social Psychology 48 (2018) O62–O72 Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd O63 Seeking revenge or seeking reconciliation? N Gausel et al here, perceived risk to social-image should link with the anti-sociality of being oriented to revenge against perceived perpetrators Perpetrator-Focus and Reconciliation According to Mazziotta et al (2014), if people belong to a group that has been both perpetrator and victim in a reciprocal conflict, they prefer to construe themselves as victims rather than as perpetrators (see also Nadler & Shnabel, 2015; SimanTov-Nachlieli & Shnabel, 2014) This means that it may be difficult in reciprocal conflicts to get the antagonists to focus on themselves as perpetrators as we know that people tend to avoid being labelled as perpetrators (for reviews, see Leach, Zeineddine, & Čehajić-Clancy, 2013; Mikula, 1993; Noor, Shnabel, Halabi, & Nadler, 2012), as perpetrators are, by definition, immoral (Chaikin & Darley, 1973) If, however, individuals in a reciprocal conflict can be led to focus on their group as a perpetrator, then they will implicitly also admit to immorality Admitting to perpetration will likely increase orientation to reconcile with the perceived victim (Mazziotta et al., 2014; SimanTov-Nachlieli & Shnabel, 2014) because it will serve to re-establish their morality and their standing as moral actors who can be trusted to operate within the community (Nadler & Shnabel, 2015) Put in terms of Gausel and Leach’s (2011) thinking, a perpetrator focus (i.e., an admittance of immorality) should lead to a greater orientation to reconcile with victims because a chance to restore their standing as moral actors will be increased the more they feel empathy with the victims and the more they want to repair the relationship that has been damaged by their immorality This means that the perpetrators perceived risk to their group’s social-image is diminished by their increased willingness to restore their morality through moral reconciliatory orientations Hence, when perpetrators believe that their socialimage in the eyes of others is less at risk (and thus that they are likely to be socially included and valued) effort at reconciliation can in fact re-establish their moral standing and cement their social belonging as suggested by Gausel and Leach (2011) and Nadler (2012) In other words, a relatively safe social-image enables those focused on themselves as perpetrators to pursue reconciliation in the belief that it is possible to improve their relations with the victims (see Leach & Cidam, 2015) Shame: A Distinct Explanation of Reconciliatory Orientation As important as perpetrator and victim focus and perceived risk to social-image are to group member’s orientation to inter-group reconciliation, there are also other explanations As the groups in a reciprocal conflict like the civil war in Liberia all took part in serious and sustained immorality, members of the groups can all feel the intense moral self-reproach of shame regardless of their focus on their group’s role in the conflict (for O64 reviews, see Gausel & Leach, 2011; Tangney & Dearing, 2002) Thus, in a reciprocal conflict, group members can feel shame about their group even if they are not focused on the group as a perpetrator per se Given this, shame about the immorality done by one’s group in the reciprocal conflict should be a consistent basis of reconciliation orientation, independent of whether one is focused on one’s group as a perpetrator or a victim In contrast to the view that shame is maladaptive and defensive (e.g., Nadler, 2012; Tangney & Dearing, 2002), many recent investigations of shame have found that shame for immorality motivates efforts to repair harm done (Berndsen & McGarty, 2012; Brown & Čehajić, 2008; Brown, Gonzalez, Zagefka, Manzi, & Čehajić, 2008; Gausel et al., 2016; Imhoff, Bilewicz, & Erb, 2012; Leach, Iyer, & Pedersen, 2006) and to object to ongoing immorality (Berndsen & Gausel, 2015) Already in 2006, Gausel found that felt shame for ingroup perpetration against minorities significantly predicted a desire to repair the damage done to them Building on this, Gausel et al (2012) found that shame felt by ethnic Norwegians for their country’s mistreatment of Norwegian Gypsies (‘Tatere’) predicted wanting to repair this relationship by communicating contrition to the victims and offering restitution And a recent meta-analysis of studies of individual and group-based shame by Leach and Cidam (2015) established that shame has a moderate-sized link to pro-sociality and self-improvement in those circumstances where the failure appears more reparable Thus, we expect that individual’s shame about their group’s immorality in the reciprocal conflict of the Liberian civil war will serve as a distinct explanation of reconciliatory orientation, whether or not they focus on their group as perpetrator or victim As each group is both perpetrator and victim, feeling shame about the harm caused by one’s group should be associated with believing that repair of the relationship is possible (Leach & Cidam, 2015) as well as empathy, compassion, and the otherwise pro-social orientation necessary to a reconciliation orientation towards the out-group (Gausel et al., 2012, 2016) The Current Study In order to test our expectations, we returned to a field experiment conducted in Liberia, Africa The republic of Liberia has been plagued by 14 years of civil wars Of the approximately 2.5 million people who lived in Liberia before the wars began in 1989, 85% were killed, internally displaced or became refugees (Cain, 1999) Thus, it is clear that most of the population has been profoundly affected by an extreme, long-standing, and reciprocal inter-group conflict Parts of this large-scale study were reported in a manuscript by Mazziotta et al (2014), which focused on how survivors (i.e., a person that has lived through the war) construe their group’s role and how this influences their willingness to reconcile with the other parties of the conflict As this is a difficult to collect European Journal of Social Psychology 48 (2018) O62–O72 Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd N Gausel et al Seeking revenge or seeking reconciliation? sample of survivors of civil war, we found it legitimate to include several different sets of measures in the study to examine different research questions For the sake of clarity, we illustrate how the measures are used across the two manuscripts in Table As outlined above, we expected participants who were led to focus on their in-group as victim to be more oriented to revenge than perpetrators In contrast, we expected participants who were led to focus on their in-group as perpetrator to be more oriented to reconciliation than victims We also expected that victims would be more concerned for the risk to the group’s socialimage than perpetrators, and that the concern for the risk to the group’s social-image should increase the orientation towards revenge and decrease the orientation towards reconciliation In addition, we expected that shame about the harm done in the civil war should serve as a distinct explanation of a reconciliatory orientation However, as there is some debate that the feeling of guilt can also motivate reconciliatory repair (e.g., Brown et al., 2008; Imhoff et al., 2012; Leach et al., 2006), we investigated both felt guilt and shame As felt shame often outweighs the less profound and less identity-relevant guilt (Berndsen & Gausel, 2015; Gausel & Leach, 2011; Lewis, 1971), we expected felt shame to be more related to reconciliatory orientation than guilt Method Participants and Procedure The study was conducted in the outskirts of Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, in collaboration with a local NGO One hundred and forty-six Liberians (73 women, participants did not indicate their gender; Mean age: 27.8, range: 16–51 years, 34 participants did not indicate age) participated in exchange for a small monetary compensation.1 Participants were approached at community centres and at their homes by three trained Liberian research assistants, and asked if they would like to take part in a study in which questions about the war and reconciliation would be addressed Participants were informed that participation in the study was entirely voluntary, that it was anonymous and that they could stop filling out the questionnaire at any time without disclosing their reasons and without any disadvantage In the first part of the questionnaire participants indicated their age, then they were randomly assigned to either a victim-focus or a perpetrator-focus condition In the victim-focus (N = 69) condition, participants were asked to: ‘Please take some time and think about We did not decide on a fixed sample size in advance as we did not know how many participants we could reach in Liberia However, as we would deploy Structural Equation Modelling to analyse the data, it was important for us to at least reach a suitable sample-size for our somewhat complex structural regression model (i.e., at least five participants per parameter; see Bentler & Chou, 1987) Table Illustration of the measures used Variables Willingness to engage in cross-group contact Need for empowerment Need for acceptance Intergroup empathy Estimation of harm Anger Revenge Relationship repair Felt shame Felt guilt Risk to social-image MS 1(published in EJSP) MS 2(current) x x x x x x x x x x x x an episode during the war where people from your ‘tribe’ (a colloquial term for ethnic group) have been harmed… ,’ and then write down an episode of harm in which their own ethnic group was the victim In the perpetrator-focus (N = 77) condition, participants were asked to: ‘Please take some time and think about an episode during the war where people from your ‘tribe’ have caused harm… ,’ and then write down an episode of harm in which their own ethnic group was the perpetrator After this, participants answered a series of questions presented with response scales that ranged from = ‘not at all’ to = ‘very much’ At the end of the study, all participants were thanked and thoroughly debriefed.2 Measures Revenge orientation As much research and theorizing on revenge orientation focuses on both hostile anger and the desire for revenge (e.g., Brym & Araj, 2006; Gausel, 2013; Mikula, 1993; Retzinger, 1991), we measured both We measured Revenge (α = 60) with two items: ‘Sometimes I wish for bad things to happen to that ‘tribe’ ’ and ‘That ‘tribe’ should pay for what they did.’ We measured Anger (α = 67) with three items adopted from Gausel et al (2012) only now directed towards an outgroup: ‘I feel angry with members of that ‘tribe’ ’, ‘I feel irritated with members As reported by Mazziotta et al (2014), participants did not differ in estimation of collective victimization and collective perpetration before being assigned to the two conditions In support of the focusmanipulation, a content analysis conducted by Mazziotta et al (2014) yielded that the victim-focus participants wrote down significantly more episodes of victimization than did the perpetrator-focus condition participants, and the perpetrator-focus participants wrote down significantly more episodes of perpetration than did the perpetrator-focus condition participants This provided support to the manipulation of focus For the interested reader, it may be worth noting that in the perpetrator-focus condition, participants tended to report fewer details about the episodes, and mentioned fewer episodes where themselves were involved as well as listing more reasons that led to the episodes (see Mazziotta et al., 2014) Even though it did not affect the manipulation, it can be interpreted as attempts to distance from the perpetrator label (Leach et al., 2013; Mazziotta et al., 2014; Mikula, 1993; Noor et al., 2012) European Journal of Social Psychology 48 (2018) O62–O72 Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd O65 Seeking revenge or seeking reconciliation? N Gausel et al of that ‘tribe’ ’ and ‘I am annoyed with members of that ‘tribe’.’ a fear of exclusion and the loss of social bonds (Gausel & Leach, 2011) Reconciliation orientation As an orientation towards reconciliation can be interpreted as hypocritical without a sincere empathic orientation towards the ‘other’ (e.g., Batson et al., 2003), we measured Empathy (α = 76) with three items3: ‘I can understand the point of view of people from other ‘tribes’ ’, ‘I feel sorry for people from other ‘tribes’ when they are having problems’ and ‘When I see someone from other ‘tribes’ treated unfairly, I feel pity for them.’ Relationship repair (α = 74) was measured with four items: ‘One can repair the social bond between my ‘tribe’ and that ‘tribe’ ’, ‘The social connection between us can be fixed’, ‘The relationship between the ‘tribes’ has suffered: but the wounds can be healed’ and ‘It is possible to fix the damaged social connection we have.’ Results Shame and guilt Our measure of Shame (α = 71) included three items from prior research (Gausel et al., 2012, 2016; for a review, see Tangney & Dearing, 2002): ‘When I think about what my ‘tribe’ has done, I feel disgraced’, ‘When I think about what my ‘tribe’ has done, I feel ashamed’, and ‘When I think about what my ‘tribe’ has done, I feel humiliated.’ The measure of Guilt (α = 64) consisted of two items based in prior research (Gausel et al., 2012, 2016; Leach et al., 2006): ‘I feel guilty when I think about what my ‘tribe’ has done’ and ‘I feel guilty because of what my ‘tribe’ did.’ Risk to social-image The measure Risk to socialimage (α = 64) was based on the measure of Gausel et al (2012, 2016) and included the items, ‘Other ‘tribes’ might not have the same respect for my tribe because of this’ and ‘I think my ‘tribe’ could be isolated from the moral community because of this’ Gausel et al (2012, 2016) found perceived risk to social-image to be indicative of a concern for condemnation by others and feelings of rejection and isolation by others Thus, it is conceptually similar to The Mazziotta et al (2014) paper used a 2-item measure that investigated a strict affective-empathy: ‘I feel sorry for people from other ‘tribes’ when they are having problems’ and ‘When I see someone from other ‘tribes’ treated unfairly, I feel pity for them.’ The current paper, however, wanted to investigate a more perspective-oriented type of empathy with a third item that would go well with a reconciliatory orientation: ‘I can understand the point of view of people from other ‘tribes’.’ For the sake of clarity: The results (including the pattern of regressions) and the conclusions did not vary depending on the operationalization of empathy in neither paper when we re-ran all the main analyses for this current paper and the Mazziotta et al (2014) paper In fact, introducing this third perspective item made our model fit slightly worse on all the fit indices Fit using the current measure of empathy (as re2 ported in the ms) that includes the third cognitive item: χ (9) = 17.53, p = 041, χ /df = 1.95, IFI = 960, CFI = 954, RMSEA = 081 Fit using a 2-item measure of empathy (identical to Mazziotta et al., 2 2014): χ (9) = 15.37, p = 081, χ /df = 1.71, IFI = 970, CFI = 966, RMSEA = 07 O66 Confirmatory Factor Analysis—The Measurement Model We used AMOS 22 to test our hypothesized measurement model of shame, guilt and risk to social-image in a Confirmatory Factor Analysis Adopting a conservative approach, we did not allow any items to crossload on the factors and we did not allow the error terms to be correlated, except from the three latent factors that were allowed to correlate As expected, our measurement model fit the data very well (see Kline, 2005): χ (11) = 7.22, p = 78, χ 2/df = 0.66, IFI > 1, CFI = 1, RMSEA = 000, AIC = 55.22) As can be seen in Figure 1, our seven items loaded uniquely and strongly onto their expected factors (standardized λ’s ≥ 59; all p’s < 001) indicating that each factor was well defined by its items Despite the fact that latent variables normally carry with them higher correlations due to lack of unreliability, the three correlations between the latent factors ranged from 13, p = 28 to 34, p = 012 and 61, p < 001, confirming that our measurement model specified three different constructs Other possible models Our measurement model proved to be superior to four other possible models First, our measurement model fit better than a model that collapsed shame and guilt into one factor where risk to social-image made up the other factor, χ (2) = 56.18, p < 001 Second, it fit better than a model that collapsed shame and risk to social-image into one factor and guilt as a separate, second factor, χ (2) = 51.1, p < 001 Third, it fit better than a model that collapsed guilt and risk to social-image into one factor and had shame as a separate factor, χ (2) = 13.61, p = 001 Finally, it fit better than a single-factor model where all items loaded onto one big ‘unpleasant feeling’ factor, χ (3) = 87.24, p < 001 In conclusion, we could rest assured that our measurement model was superior to these other possible models that did not distinguish among our three hypothesized constructs Possible cross-loading of items Even though one should be very cautious about interpreting the meaning of a single-item (Gausel & Salthe, 2014)— especially when it is removed from a uni-dimensional (and multi item) scale (Carmines & Zeller, 1979)— some readers might wonder whether the word ‘humiliation’ belongs more to the risk of social-image, rather than to the shame, scale Thus, we allowed the item ‘humiliated’ to cross-load onto the risk to socialimage factor in an alternative model This did not improve model fit, χ (1) = 0.09, p = 76, and it demonstrated that the ‘humiliated’ item loaded extremely weakly (standardized λ = À.03, p = 76) on the risk to social-image factor In addition, some European Journal of Social Psychology 48 (2018) O62–O72 Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd N Gausel et al Seeking revenge or seeking reconciliation? Fig 1: Confirmatory Factor Analysis, measurement mode Solid lines indicate significant relationships, p < 05 Table Scale inter-correlations and descriptive statistics Mean SD Variable Victims/perpetrators (+/À) Risk to social-image Guilt Shame Anger Revenge Empathy Relationship repair 08 À.09 11 08 24 À.43 À.33 43 07 29 34 À.13 À.20 3.14 1.41 21 02 01 À.04 À.03 3.66 1.71 14 À.07 17 13 4.21 1.65 32 11 05 3.83 1.52 À.21 À.27 3.48 1.68 60 4.44 1.73 4.56 1.43 Note: N = 146 Higher Mean scores indicate higher levels of agreement (range = 1–7) might argue that shame is about loss of respect and that the single-item ‘loss of respect’ might cross-load onto the shame factor Hence, we allowed the item ‘loss of respect’ to cross-load onto the shame factor in an alternative model This did not improve fit, χ (1) = 0.54, p = 46, but it demonstrated that the ‘loss of respect’ item was unrelated to the shame factor (standardized λ = 07, p = 44) Hence, our alternative cross-loading models demonstrated very clear support for our hypothesized measurement model Experimental Effects The descriptive statistics and intercorrelations of all measures are shown in Table Risk to social-image An analysis of variance (ANOVA) demonstrated that the focus manipulation affected perceived risk to social-image, F (1, 142) = 5.31, p = 023, partialη2 = 04.4 As expected, perceived risk to social-image was significantly higher in the victim (M = 3.68, SD = 1.37) than the perpetrator condition (M = 3.09, SD = 1.67) Reconciliation orientation A multivariate ANOVA (MANOVA) on empathy and relationship repair showed our manipulation had a multivariate effect on these two measures of reconciliation orientation, F(2, 138) = 15.91, p < 001, partialη2 = 19 More specifically, the focus manipulation had a significant effect on participant’s empathy with other ethnic groups, F (1, 139) = 30.68, p < 001, partialη2 = 18, as empathy was significantly higher in the perpetrator (M = 5.13, There was no multivariate effect on guilt or shame, F (2, 136) = 1.33, p = 27, partialη < 02 European Journal of Social Psychology 48 (2018) O62–O72 Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd O67 Seeking revenge or seeking reconciliation? N Gausel et al SD = 1.56) than in the victim condition (M = 3.66, SD = 1.59) Also, as expected, the manipulation had a significant effect on relationship repair, F (1, 139) = 15.79, p < 001, partialη2 = 10, as relationship repair was higher in the perpetrator (M = 5.01, SD = 1.57) than the victim condition (M = 4.06, SD = 1.07) Revenge orientation A MANOVA on anger and revenge showed that our manipulation had a multivariate effect on these two measures of revenge orientation, F (2, 139) = 4.15, p = 018, partialη2 = 06 The focus manipulation had a significant univariate effect on participants’ orientation towards revenge, F (1, 140) = 8.37, p = 004, partialη2 = 06, as the revenge orientation was significantly higher (p = 004) in the victim (M = 3.90, SD = 1.48) than in the perpetrator condition (M = 3.10, SD = 1.77) However, there was no significant effect on anger, F (1, 140) = 86, p = 36, < 01, although victims’ anger (M = 3.96, partialη SD = 1.29) was higher than perpetrators’ anger (M = 3.72, SD = 1.70) Structural Equation Modelling To examine the proposed explanations of revenge and reconciliation orientations, we specified a ‘structural regression model’ (see Kline, 2005) using Structural Equation Modelling with AMOS 22 software This ‘structural regression model’ (also known as a ‘hybrid model’) approach has the benefit that it allows for fewer variables, which in turn gives more statistical power as one has more participants per parameter (i.e., it allows for a better representation of the participants’ responses) Randomly missing data (Rubin, 1976; see Kaplan, 2009) were imputed with mean levels in order to enable bootstrapping analyses (10 000 resamples, see Preacher & Hayes, 2008) As our study has two conditions (or categorical variables), we used effect coding (victim condition = +1, and perpetrator condition = À1) to trace the main effects of the experimental conditions on our dependent measures (Rutherford, 2001) We also specified perceived risk to social-image as a manifest variable that could predict the latent factor of revenge orientation (consisting of two positively correlated composite indicators; anger and revenge, r = 32, p < 05) and the latent factor of reconciliation orientation (consisting of two positively correlated composite indicators; empathy and relationship repair, r = 60, p < 05) simultaneously Hence, our ‘structural regression model’ allowed the four outcome manifest variables to indicate a theoretically sound latent factor each corresponding to a specific motivation that is allowed to be predicted by a causal path model Despite a significant chi-squared, our hypothesized model, χ (9) = 17.13, p = 047, χ 2/df = 1.90, fit the data very well (Kline, 2005) as underlined by several other fit indices (IFI = 962, CFI = 958, RMSEA = 079, AIC = 87.13) In the upper half of Figure 2, one can see that risk to social-image was a significant, positive, predictor of revenge orientation, β = 54, p = 003 In fact, risk to social-image fully mediated the link between victim-focus and revenge orientation (Standardized Point Estimate (SPE) = 115, SE = 07, Unstandardized Point Estimate (USPE) = 051, SE = 04, p = 035, 95% BC CI 001, 140), explaining as much as 33% Fig 2: Structural regression model, victim and perpetrator conditions predicting feelings and orientations Solid lines indicate significant relationships, p < 05 O68 European Journal of Social Psychology 48 (2018) O62–O72 Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd N Gausel et al Seeking revenge or seeking reconciliation? of its variance.5 Also, in the upper half of Figure 2, and in line with our expectations, risk to social-image was a significant, negative, predictor of reconciliation orientation, β = À.26, p = 006 (SPE = À.018, SE = 042, USPE = À.013, SE = 03, p = 70, 95% BC CI À.076, 044).6 Hence, perceived risk to social-image increased orientation towards revenge and decreased orientation towards reconciliation As we wanted to investigate the distinct explanations of shame and guilt on reconciliation orientation, we also specified shame and guilt as manifest variables In the lower half of Figure 2, one can see, as expected, that felt shame was an additional positive predictor of reconciliation orientation, β = 32, p < 001 Also, as expected, felt shame was unrelated to revenge orientation, β = À.02, p = 82 In line with our expectations, felt guilt was outweighed by felt shame, as it was unrelated to reconciliation orientation, β = À.06, p = 48, and to revenge orientation, β = À.16, p = 18.7 In sum, shame served as a distinct explanation of orientation towards reconciliation that was unrelated to perpetrator- or victim-focus, β = 08, p = 36 Discussion The Measurement Model As hypothesized, the Confirmatory Factor Analysis demonstrated that our measures (of guilt, shame and perceived risk to social-image) were distinct Indeed, our measurement model was superior to six different alternatives For instance, our alternative cross-loading models showed that single items could not be removed from their hypothesized scale without distorting the meaning of the scale (see Carmines & Zeller, 1979; Gausel et al., 2016) The validation of our measures enabled to maximize degrees of freedom, and thus statistical power, in our structural regression model by treating the key variables as manifest rather than latent variables Perpetrator versus Victim Focus Participants who focused on their group as a perpetrator of harm expressed significantly more empathy with other ethnic groups that had suffered during the war, than did those in the victim-focus condition And they were significantly more inclined to believe that repair of the social bond with the other groups was possible When analysed in isolation from shame and guilt: SPE = 089, SE = 06, USPE = 040, SE = 033, p = 021, 95% BC CI 001, 120 Without accounting for guilt and shame, risk to social-image served as a partial explanation for the lesser reconciliation orientation (SPE = À.050, SE = 031, USPE = À.034, SE = 024, p = 023, 95% BC CI À.095, À.003) Separate analyses of the victim-focus condition and the perpetratorfocus condition seem to imply that shame is more predictive of reconciliation for perpetrators than for victims, but due to the low statistical power offered in these separate analyses, we refrain from providing a certain conclusion about this These findings are consistent with recent research showing that individuals can respond pro-socially to the perpetration of immorality by their group (Berndsen & Gausel, 2015; Berndsen & McGarty, 2012; Brown & Čehajić, 2008; Gausel & Brown, 2012), and they are consistent with Nadler and Shnabel’s (2008) theorizing that perpetrators often desire moral redress and forgiveness perhaps in an effort to reestablish the group as a moral actor deserving of inclusion in the community (Nadler, 2012; see also Gausel & Leach, 2011) In contrast, participants encouraged to have a victimfocus expressed significantly less empathy with other ethnic groups and were significantly less inclined to believe that the relationships could be repaired Our results also support the notion that victims tend to have less concern for the suffering of others (Retzinger, 1991; Scheff, 1994) and less desire for reconciliation when they focus mainly on their own suffering as victims (Brym & Araj, 2006; Mazziotta et al., 2014; Noor, Brown, Gonzalez, Manzi, & Lewis, 2008; SimanTovNachlieli & Shnabel, 2014) Our results also support Nadler’s (Nadler, 2012; see also Nadler & Shnabel, 2015) theorizing that the victim role is a complicated one in reciprocal conflicts In support of the idea that identifying as a victim can lead to anti-social motivations (e.g., Brym & Araj, 2006; Mikula, 1993; Wohl & Branscombe, 2008), enabling a victim-focus made participants express greater orientation towards revenge against the perceived perpetrators As such, our results lends support to Brym and Araj (2006), Kanyangara et al (2014) and Retzinger’s (1991) arguments that victims in reciprocal conflict can seek revenge Also, in a replication and extension of the findings of Mazziotta et al (2014), SimanTov-Nachlieli and Shnabel (2014) showed that in the context of the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict, viewing one’s group as a victim promoted anti-social tendencies towards the adversary Our results are also consistent with the idea that victims may use revenge in an attempt to resolve a ‘stalemate’ and to recover the social-image put at risk by victimization (see Brym & Araj, 2006; Mikula, 1993) Risk to social-image In line with our expectations, individuals with a victim-focus had greater concern that their social image was at risk This finding supports Bandura (1999) and Brym and Araj’s (2006) argumentation that victimization is experienced as a painful loss of social status (see also Baumeister et al., 1990; Mikula, 1993) that can severely damage social-image in the eyes of others Hence, as expected, victim’s revenge orientation was based in the concern that their group’s socialimage was at risk This is consistent with Gausel and Leach’s (2011) argument that perceived damage to a group’s social-image leads to anti-social motivation, including hostile lashing out (see also Scheff, 1994) In this way, for a victim, being disrespected and isolated seems a bigger threat to their social standing than their own immoral perpetration Seeking revenge may European Journal of Social Psychology 48 (2018) O62–O72 Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd O69 Seeking revenge or seeking reconciliation? N Gausel et al therefore be an attempt to ‘settle the score’ with the perpetrator by making them suffer a similar kind of victimization (for a discussion, see Brym & Araj, 2006; Retzinger, 1991), and by such, force the perpetrators to respect them Shame As expected, felt shame (but not guilt) proved to be a distinct explanation of reconciliation orientation This goes against the more traditional view that shame is a maladaptive emotion that leads to defensiveness and avoidance (e.g., Brown et al., 2008; Nadler, 2012; Tangney & Dearing, 2002) Instead, it supports recent theorizing (Gausel & Leach, 2011) and nuanced empirical investigations of shame (Gausel et al., 2012, 2016) that explain that shame can predict pro-sociality, especially when moral or other failure is viewed as reparable (Leach & Cidam, 2015) Thus, there is a growing body of evidence that felt shame is related to the motivation to object to ongoing immorality (Berndsen & Gausel, 2015), to protest in-group immorality (Shepherd, Spears, & Manstead, 2013) and a contrite desire to repair and compensate victims (Gausel, 2006; Gausel et al., 2012, 2016) In sum, the results offer important support, in an under-studied context, that group-based shame predicts reconciliation As shame is an intense form of moral self-reproach (Gausel & Leach, 2011), shame should motivate efforts to repair the self and social-relations whether the group is viewed as perpetrator or victim In this way, shame provides a more constant basis of motivation to reconcile in reciprocal conflict or in other instances of moral wrongdoing Possible Limitations One possible limitation in our study is the lack of a control condition that did not focus individuals on their group as victim or perpetrator In theory, this could have helped us investigate whether the focus manipulation increased or decreased revenge or reconciliation orientation from a presumed baseline of no perpetrator or victim focus However, in the context of the reciprocal conflict that we examined, the groups were both perpetrator and victim In this civil war, as in most, the uninvolved third party position was a luxury not afforded to any Thus, a control condition of no victim or perpetrator focus would have had little ecological validity in this context More pragmatically, previous research and theory strongly suggests that those in a reciprocal conflict prefer to focus on themselves as victims rather than perpetrators (Mazziotta et al., 2014) As such, a no-focus control condition would have likely been a reproduction of the victim-focus condition without the experimental control and internal validity afforded by the victim-focus condition Another possible limitation might be that our study asked participants to recall the experience of perpetration and victimization This can potentially be different from a situation where an external source (e.g., a therapist) is the reminder One can imagine that a helper is O70 able to aid the victim come to terms with the victimization (or perpetration) without evoking a desire for angry revenge Although we acknowledge this, Retzinger (1991) underlined that helpers in reciprocal conflicts must often intervene to hinder an orientation towards angry revenge Moreover, she warns that the desire for revenge can be directed, not only onto the other in the conflict but also against helpers (see also, Lewis, 1971) Thus, the possible difference between an external versus an internal reminder may be more apparent than real Concluding Thoughts We realize that it is important to validate victim’s suffering However, we would like to warn against simplistic thinking concerning reciprocal conflicts In many cases, reciprocal conflicts are marked by mutual humiliation and attacks (Brym & Araj, 2006; Retzinger, 1991; Staub, 2006; Stevenson et al., 2007) This feature of reciprocal conflict complicates the clear-cut understanding of who is the victim and who is the perpetrator Also, Mazziotta et al (2014) warned that both parties in a reciprocal conflict might construe themselves as the more sympathetic victim and resist the more suspect role as perpetrator, which is synonymous with responsibility for harm (see also Leach et al., 2013; Mikula, 1993; Noor et al., 2012) According to our results, this victim-focus may motivate revengeful rather than a reconciliatory orientation in all parties involved in reciprocal conflict This is of serious concern Hence, it is important to take into account that a precondition for reconciliation is respect of the involved parties and their different perspectives (Mazziotta et al., 2014; Nadler, 2012), and to remember that these perspectives may elicit different orientations; some oriented towards reconciliations, some oriented towards revenge By also encouraging the involved parties to focus on their role as perpetrators of immorality and harm, we may reduce the perceived risk to the group’s social image and also more directly increase their orientation to the empathic relationship repair seemingly necessary for true reconciliation References Bandura, A (1999) Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3, 193–209 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957 pspr0303_3 Batson, C D., Lishner, D A., Carpenter, A., Dulin, L., Harjusola-Webb, S., Stocks, E L., Gale, S., … Sampat, B (2003) “ As you would have them unto you”: Does imagining yourself in the other’s place stimulate moral action? 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Brown, R (2012) Defend or repair? Explaining responses to in- group moral failure by disentangling feelings of shame, inferiority, and rejection Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102, 941–960... factor of revenge orientation (consisting of two positively correlated composite indicators; anger and revenge, r = 32, p < 05) and the latent factor of reconciliation orientation (consisting of. .. perpetration Seeking revenge may European Journal of Social Psychology 48 (2018) O62–O72 Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd O69 Seeking revenge or seeking reconciliation? N Gausel et al therefore