Departmental Papers (ASC)
Document Type
Technical Report
Date of this Version
3-2018
Publication Source
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Volume
44
Issue
3
Start Page
430
Last Page
448
DOI
10.1177/0146167217744197
Abstract
Collectively blaming groups for the actions of individuals can license vicarious retribution. Acts of terrorism by Muslim extremists against innocents, and the spikes in anti-Muslim hate crimes against innocent Muslims that follow, suggest that reciprocal bouts of collective blame can spark cycles of violence. How can this cycle be short-circuited? After establishing a link between collective blame of Muslims and anti-Muslim attitudes and behavior, we used an “interventions tournament” to identify a successful intervention (among many that failed). The “winning” intervention reduced collective blame of Muslims by highlighting hypocrisy in the ways individuals collectively blame Muslims—but not other groups (White Americans, Christians)—for individual group members’ actions. After replicating the effect in an independent sample, we demonstrate that a novel interactive activity that isolates the psychological mechanism amplifies the effectiveness of the collective blame hypocrisy intervention and results in downstream reductions in anti-Muslim attitudes and anti-Muslim behavior.
Copyright/Permission Statement
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Keywords
collective blame, collective responsibility, vicarious retribution, prejudice, Islamophobia, intervention
Recommended Citation
Bruneau, E., Kteily, N., & Falk, E. B. (2018). Interventions Highlighting Hypocrisy Reduce Collective Blame of Muslims for Individual Acts of Violence and Assuage Anti-Muslim Hostility. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 44 (3), 430-448. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167217744197
Included in
Cognition and Perception Commons, Community Psychology Commons, Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Communication Commons, Mass Communication Commons, Personality and Social Contexts Commons, Social Influence and Political Communication Commons, Social Psychology Commons
Date Posted: 15 June 2018
This document has been peer reviewed.