Citation

Piff PK, Martinez AG, Keltner D. Cogn. Emot. 2011; 26(4): 634-649.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology , University of California , Berkeley , CA , USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/02699931.2011.595394

PMID

21827331

Abstract

People can experience great distress when a group to which they belong (in-group) is perceived to have committed an immoral act. We hypothesised that people would direct hostility toward a transgressing in-group whose actions threaten their self-image and evoke collective shame. Consistent with this theorising, three studies found that reminders of in-group transgression provoked several expressions of in-group-directed hostility, including in-group-directed hostile emotion (Studies 1 and 2), in-group-directed derogation (Study 2), and in-group-directed punishment (Study 3). Across studies, collective shame-but not the related group-based emotion collective guilt-mediated the relationship between in-group transgression and in-group-directed hostility. Implications for group-based emotion, social identity, and group behaviour are discussed.

Language: en