Abstract
This study conducts a meta-analysis of the impact of collective victimhood beliefs on conflict-related attitudes. Examining 745 estimates from 103 articles, we assess the relationship between collective victimhood beliefs and hawkishness, reconciliation, out-group exclusion, and in-group attachment. While we find an aggregate positive association between collective victimhood beliefs and conflict-enhancing attitudes, there is an important distinction between non-inclusive and inclusive forms of collective victimhood: non-inclusive collective victimhood beliefs are associated with greater conflict-enhancing attitudes, whereas inclusive collective victimhood beliefs generally have opposing effects. These results are consistent across a wide range of geographic contexts, types of conflict experiences, and identities. They also extend to the association between collective victimhood beliefs and the emotions and cognitive perspectives that are often identified as mediators. Methodologically, observational and experimental studies reach similar conclusions about the direction of collective victimhood beliefs' impact, but experimental studies find consistently smaller effect sizes.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
