The effect of group categorization on injustice standards, harm judgements, collective guilt and motivated behavior
Abstract
This study focuses on whether or not participants' group categorization would impact the standards they used to judge future harm to an outgroup. In this case, harm is
referring to current paper waste in university computer labs and the financial and stressrelated
consequences this carries for future students. Also of interest is whether or not the participants' judgements of harm would impact collective guilt (the guilt felt on behalf of the ingroup) and if collective guilt would impact willingness to help the outgroup (i.e.
engage in conservation of resources-proenvironmental actions). Participants in the
inclusive condition (who saw themselves as part of a group including future students)
were expected to set lower standards of harm (require less evidence to believe harm had
been done), judge more harm had been done, feel more collective guilt, and be more
willing to engage in proenvironmental actions, as compared to participants in the
exclusive condition (current students only). The manipulation alone was not sufficient to
impact the predicted variables; however, the interaction of the group categorization
manipulation and level of group identification did differentially impact collective guilt
and willingness to engage in proenvironmental actions in an unexpected way. Participants
who were highly identified with their group and were in the exclusive condition felt more
collective guilt and were more willing to engage in proenvironmental actions than
participants who were less identified with their group. Implications of the findings are
discussed in terms of changing proenvironmental behavior.
Subject
Ethics
Responsibility
Intergroup relations
Group identity
Human behavior
Guilt
Permanent Link
http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1793/54068Description
A Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science-Psychology-Experimental