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ABSTRACT
Research on intergroup emotions has largely focused on the experience of emotions and surprisingly little attention has been given to the expression of emotions. Drawing on the social-functional approach to emotions, we argue that in the context of intergroup conflicts, outgroup members’ expression of disappointment with one’s ingroup induces the complementary emotion of collective guilt and correspondingly a collective action protesting ingroup actions against the outgroup. In Study 1 conducted immediately after the 2014 Gaza war, Jewish-Israeli participants received information about outgroup’s (Palestinians) expression of emotions (disappointment, fear, or none). As predicted, outgroup’s expression of disappointment increased collective guilt and willingness to participate in collective action, but only among those who saw the intergroup situation as illegitimate. Moreover, collective guilt mediated the relationship between disappointment expression and collective action, moderated, again, by legitimacy perception. In Study 2, we replicated these results in the context of racial tension between Black and White Americans in the US. We discuss the theoretical and applied implications of the findings.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Racheli Cohen, Shani Fachter, Keren Aurbach, Yossi Hasson, and Eric Shuman for their help in the process of conducting this research and the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
Notes
1. Although, a total of 114 participants were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions, 23 failed the attention-check questions (see note 3 for these attention check questions). Therefore, the final analyses included 91 participants. When we included the participants who gave the wrong answers to the attention check questions of the story, the results described in the current study showed the same pattern.
2. The current study was conducted as a part of a larger research project.
3. Participants in the emotional expression conditions answered relevant three multiple choice attention-check questions. These questions were as follow: (1) “According to the article, who participated in the study?”, (2) “According to the article, when is the study conducted?”, and ( 3) “According to the study, what is the most dominant emotion reported by participants?”. Participants in the control (no emotional expression) condition answered two multiple choice attention check questions that are relevant with the cover story: (1) “What is the name of the restaurant?”; and (2) “Where did Muhamad work before he became the owners of the restaurant?”
4. We ran the same analysis described under “assessing the moderated mediation model for collective action” by identifying political ideology as a moderating variable (instead of legitimacy perception). The results indicated that the interaction’s indirect effect was not significant.
5. Although, a total of 164 participants were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions, 106 participants identified themselves as White/European Americans. Of them three failed the attention-check questions (see note 6 for these questions). Therefore, the final analyses included 103 participants.
6. Participants in the control condition, answered two multiple choice attention check questions. These questions were as follow: (1) “According to the article, who participated in the survey”, and (2) “According to the study, what is the most dominant emotion reported by participants?” Participants in the control condition answered only one multiple choice attention check question (“According to the article, what are the incidents that have attracted research attention in the recent years?”).