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Dealing with Ingroup Committed Atrocities: Moral Responsibility and Group-Based Guilt

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The Social Psychology of Intractable Conflicts

Part of the book series: Peace Psychology Book Series ((PPBS,volume 27))

Abstract

In this chapter, I address two questions. First, I discuss the question of how people face the knowledge that their ingroup fellows have committed grave harm towards other groups. Through providing a brief empirical overview of the above question, I argue that acknowledgment of ingroup responsibility should be regarded as an important social, psychological, and political process for sustainable intergroup reconciliation (see Bar-Tal, Intractable conflicts: psychological foundations and dynamics, 2013 on peacebuilding processes). In the second part of this chapter, I discuss and analyze the relationship between two psychological processes, which might arise as a consequence of acknowledgment of ingroup responsibility. Those are personal acceptance of ingroup responsibility (as a moral response) and group-based guilt (as an emotional response). I discuss the relationship between these two constructs, not only in the light of empirical evidence from a post-conflict context in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also using the theoretical framework on societal beliefs as proposed by Bar-Tal (2000).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sarajevo School of Science and Technology, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

    Sabina Čehajić-Clancy

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  1. Sabina Čehajić-Clancy
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Correspondence to Sabina Čehajić-Clancy .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Psychology, Interdisciplinary Center in Herzilya, Herzilya, Israel

    Eran Halperin

  2. Psychology, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

    Keren Sharvit

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Čehajić-Clancy, S. (2015). Dealing with Ingroup Committed Atrocities: Moral Responsibility and Group-Based Guilt. In: Halperin, E., Sharvit, K. (eds) The Social Psychology of Intractable Conflicts. Peace Psychology Book Series, vol 27. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17861-5_8

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