Racial wrongs and restitutions the role of guilt and other group based emotions

Because it is an unpleasant feeling of self-blame that people prefer to assuage, group-based guilt is associated with efforts to make restitution to those harmed.. Group-based emotions s

Racial wrongs and restitutions:

The role of guilt and other group-based emotions

Aarti Iyer University of California, Santa Cruz

Colin Wayne Leach University of California, Santa Cruz

Anne Pedersen Murdoch University

In N R Branscombe & B Doosje (2004) (Eds.), Collective guilt: International perspectives (pp.

262-283) New York: Cambridge University Press.

Racial inequality is everywhere Throughout the

world, people of color tend to be disadvantaged relative to

those classified as “white.” There is little doubt that the

historical indenture, enslavement, and colonization of

people of color has contributed to this systemic

inequality It is also clear that contemporary forms of

group privilege and discrimination carry racial inequality

into the present and future This seeming intransigence

has led many an observer to conclude that racial inequality

is an unavoidable product of diverse societies (e.g

Sidanius & Pratto, 1999)

Given the apparent inevitability of racial

inequality, one might wonder how anyone is able to

muster opposition to it Yet, a subset of people in every

society opposes racial inequality, sometimes at great

personal risk This surprising, and extremely important,

fact is our focus We want to know why people oppose

racial inequality We are especially interested in why

members of advantaged groups oppose systems of

inequality from which they benefit

In this chapter we examine how members of

advantaged groups come to recognize, and react against,

the illegitimacy of racial inequality We give special

attention to group-based guilt as one way in which the

advantaged respond to racial wrongs The first section of

the chapter reviews the conceptual and empirical

arguments for what racial guilt i s Because it is an

unpleasant feeling of self-blame that people prefer to

assuage, group-based guilt is associated with efforts to

make restitution to those harmed This is what guilt does

to motivate opposition to racial inequality In the second

section, we examine the relationship between guilt and

two forms of racial restitution at issue in contemporary

politics: apology and compensation After characterizing

what racial guilt is and what it does, we describe the

limits of guilt in the third section We argue that, despite

its association with restitution, guilt is neither a frequent

response to racial advantage, nor a basis of general

opposition to racial inequality Given these limits, we

move beyond guilt in the last section to consider other

emotional reactions to racial inequality Group-based emotions such as sympathy and moral outrage do not emphasize self-blame, and thus should be important bases

of support for general efforts against racial inequality Guilt is…

Available theory and research suggest that group-based guilt is characterized by three interrelated properties:

a focus of attention on the group self, a sense of group responsibility for an immoral act, and an extremely unpleasant feeling that people prefer to assuage through restitution or avoidance

…self-focused

Several approaches to emotion conceptualize guilt

as focused more on the self than on other people (see Ortony, Clore, & Collins, 1988; Salovey & Rosenhan, 1989; Weiner, 1982) Personal guilt, for example, is a self-conscious reflection on one’s immoral behavior as an individual (Tangney & Fischer, 1995; Weiner, 1982) This self-focus leads people who feel guilt to attend less

to those they have wronged, and more to how they themselves feel about their transgression Those who feel personal guilt think about themselves much more than they think about others (Baumeister, Reis, & Delespaul, 1995) Thus, the relatively self-focused nature of guilt makes it seem more a selfish concern for one’s own pain than a sympathetic concern for others (Batson, 1998; Steele, 1990)

Feeling guilty about what one’s group has done should also focus attention more on the self than on the victimized other (Leach, Snider, & Iyer, 2002) Unlike personal guilt, however, group-based guilt focuses attention on the group self rather than on the individual

self (Branscombe, Doosje, & McGarty, 2002) This

self-focus is suggested by several studies which have produced

group-based guilt by directing the advantaged group’s

attention to their position relative to disadvantaged or

harmed outgroups For example, Montada and Schneider

(1989) assessed the guilt Germans felt when thinking

about their economic advantage over migrant workers;

Doosje, Branscombe, Spears, and Manstead (1998)

assessed the guilt felt by in-group members when they

were told that previous in-group members had mistreated

an out-group; and Swim and Miller (1999) assessed the

guilt European Americans felt in response to the

inequality between “whites” and “blacks” in the United

States

Although these studies relied on (group)

self-focus to produce (group-based) guilt, none of them

directly examined focus of attention The self-focus of

attention presumed in group-based guilt has been more

directly examined in recent research by Iyer, Leach, and

Crosby (2003), who used both self-focused and

other-focused beliefs about inequality to predict general feelings

of “white” guilt (see the left half of Figure 1 for a

conceptual representation of this model) Iyer et al (2003,

Study 1) measured European American students’ belief

that their group enjoyed privileges and benefits because

they are “white.” Taken from Swim and Miller’s (1999)

research, these questions assessed belief in a self-focused

form of racial inequality by emphasizing European

Americans’ systemic advantages Iyer et al also assessed

participants’ belief in an other-focused form of racial

inequality These other-focused questions measured the

belief that African Americans face racial discrimination in

several important domains, such as housing and

employment (see Swim & Miller, 1999)

Confirming the self-focused nature of guilt, only

the self-focused belief in privilege independently predicted

feelings of “white” guilt The other-focused belief that

African Americans face discrimination did not

independently predict general feelings of “white” guilt

These findings were confirmed in a second study using

different methods and measures (Iyer et al., 2003, Study

2) Rather then presenting European Americans with

scales to assess their belief in self-focused privilege and

other-focused discrimination, Iyer et al manipulated focus

of attention with a subtle linguistic change in a measure

of perceived racial discrimination To encourage a self-focus, European American participants were asked if they believed that European Americans discriminated on the basis of race To encourage an other-focus, the items were reworded slightly to ask if African Americans faced racial discrimination This change in the subject of the sentences was expected to lead participants to focus either

on their fellow European Americans as perpetrators or on African Americans as targets As in their first study, Iyer

et al (2003, Study 2) found higher levels of “white” guilt when participants (self-) focused on their group as perpetrators than when they (other-) focused on the targets

of the group’s discrimination Thus, Iyer et al.’s research

on European American guilt regarding racial inequality shows this form of group-based guilt to be self-focused in nature As we discuss below, this self-focus has important implications for guilt’s other characteristics

…based in group responsibility for an immoral act

Feelings of personal guilt focus people’s attention specifically on their personal responsibility for an immoral act (Kugler & Jones, 1992; Roseman, Spindel,

& Jose, 1990) Although those who feel guilty wish that they had not acted immorally (Roseman, Wiest, & Swartz, 1994), their sense of guilt is based in taking responsibility for what they have done to harm others (O’Connor et al., 1997; Smith & Ellsworth, 1985; Weiner, 1982; Frijda, Kuipers, & ter Shure, 1989) Similarly, group-based guilt is grounded in the belief that one’s group is responsible for an immoral act against another group (Leach et al., 2002)

This sense of responsibility may operate more or less directly in group-based guilt (Leach et al., 2002) A rather indirect form of group-based guilt can occur when

people’s group membership associates them with those

who have committed moral violations (Branscombe et al., 2002) For example, Doosje et al (1998, Study 2) induced “guilt by association” by giving Dutch students clear evidence that Dutch colonists had treated Indonesians

unfairly in the past Although these Dutch participants did

not feel directly responsible for the injustices their ancestors had perpetrated, they felt guilty because the perpetrators had been Dutch like them This type of “guilt

by association” seems likely in situations where group members are made to face their ancestors’ harmful actions, and may lead people to take steps to acknowledge their group’s past wrongdoing Such actions include contemporary discussions of replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous people’s day in the Americas; the building of a monument to slavery in the Netherlands; and

“sorry day” to remember the European invasion of Australia and its negative repercussions

Group members may also feel responsible for their

group’s collective misdeeds in the present This kind of

shared responsibility for current wrongs should promote a more direct kind of guilt, or “guilt proper.” Guilt proper

can be based in the belief that one’s group benefits

illegitimately from institutionalized privilege For

example, some “white” people believe that they as a

group enjoy unearned group privileges in racially biased

societies These may vary from the privilege of seeing

one’s group well-represented in the media to the privilege

of not fearing the possibility of racial discrimination

(McIntosh, 1989; Lipsitz, 1998) Given that this kind of

group privilege is accorded all people ascribed to the

social category “white,” all those who see themselves as

belonging to this group can believe that they benefit from

illegitimate racial inequality (Hoffman, 1976; Leach et

al., 2002) Believing that this kind of group privilege

benefits one as a group member has recently been shown

to promote group-based guilt For example, Swim and

Miller (1999) showed European American students’ level

of guilt over racial inequality to be strongly associated

with the degree to which they believed European

Americans benefited from racial privilege (see also Iyer et

al., 2003, Study 1; relatedly, see Branscombe’s 1998

study of gender privilege)

Guilt proper can also be based in the belief that

one’s group is (collectively) responsible for

discrimination against another group As mentioned

above, Iyer et al (2003, Study 2) showed that perceiving

one’s group as responsible for racial discrimination leads

to greater levels of group-based guilt than does simply

acknowledging the existence of discrimination Again, in

this study Iyer et al asked European American students

one of two sets of subtly different questions regarding

contemporary racial discrimination In one form of

questioning, they asked participants to indicate the degree

to which they believed that “whites” discriminate on the

basis of race in housing, employment, college

admissions, and other dimensions These self-focused

questions identified European Americans as those

responsible for racial discrimination In an other-focused

version, these questions were rephrased to ask if African

Americans faced racial discrimination in these same areas

The other-focused questions emphasized only the existence

of discrimination against African Americans Iyer et al

(2003, Study 2) found that participants assigned to the

self-focused questions were more likely to experience guilt

than those assigned to the other-focused questions Thus,

European Americans faced with questions that focused

attention on the ingroup’s responsibility for racial

discrimination were more likely to report feeling guilty

about racial inequality

…an unpleasant feeling that people prefer to assuage

through avoidance or restitution

People do not enjoy feeling guilty Personal guilt

is associated with a “sinking feeling” (Roseman et al.,

1994), mainly because it is uncomfortable to focus on

oneself as personally responsible for an immoral act

(Baumeister, Stillwell, & Heatherton, 1994) Indeed,

personal guilt is experienced as an extreme dysphoria, as

accepting responsibility for a transgression threatens one’s self-image as a good person (Tangney & Fischer, 1995) This unpleasant self-blame motivates people to rid themselves of the personal guilt they feel (Frijda, 1986; Estrada-Hollenbach & Heatherton, 1998) People often seem to rid themselves of guilt by challenging the reasons they feel guilt in the first place Thus, guilt may be most easily assuaged by undermining the basis for the guilt feeling itself (Leach et al., 2002) This can be accomplished by perceiving less personal responsibility for an immoral act, or by shifting attention away from the self (Batson, 1998; Estrada-Hollenbach & Heatherton, 1998; Schmitt, Branscombe, & Brehm, this volume) Sometimes, however, guilt is not so easily escaped In such cases, guilt can be most directly assuaged

by providing restitution to those harmed (O’Connor et al., 1997; Salovey, Mayer, & Rosenhan, 1991; Tangney, Miller, Flicker, & Barlow, 1996) Efforts at restitution seek to repair the damage done by one’s wrongdoing by restoring morality to the intergroup relation In this way, attempts at restitution seek a “restorative justice” for both perpetrator and victim Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a central figure in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s efforts to cope with the great injustices of apartheid, contrasts the notion of restorative justice to the concern for punishment central to retributive justice:

Retributive justice is largely Western The African understanding is far more restorative—not so much to punish as t o redress or restore balance that has been knocked askew The justice we hope for i s restorative of the dignity of the people

(Minow, 1998, p.81)

Given their sense of responsibility for immorality, those feeling guilt are highly motivated to make restitution Emotion research has shown guilt to be associated with two particular forms of restitution: apology (Roseman et al., 1994) and material compensation (Baumeister et al., 1994;

Niedenthal, Tangney, & Gavanski, 1994) By apologizing for wrongdoing, perpetrators show their (restored) respect for morality and justice (Minow, 1998) Perpetrators’ attempts to compensate victims for the harm they have caused seeks to restore morality in a similar way

By compensating victims, perpetrators acknowledge that something tangible was destroyed by their injustice Material compensation may seek to restore both the material and the moral loss

As with guilt in general, group-based guilt should motivate these same forms of restitution Unlike personal guilt, however, group-based guilt should motivate apology and

compensation to the out-group on behalf of the

in-group That is, group-based guilt should be

associated with group efforts at restitution, in the

form of collective apology or compensation to

the aggrieved group (but see McGarty & Bliuc,

this volume)

Guilt does

promote group apology

Several official group representatives have

stated that they feel bad about their group’s

mistreatment of other groups For example, on a

recent visit to South Korea, Japan’s Prime

Minister, Junichiro Koizumi, expressed his

“heartfelt remorse and sorrow over the great pain

and suffering inflicted on South Koreans by

Japan’s colonial rule” (“Japanese premier,” 2001,

p B6) Remorse is a term closely related to

guilt, in that both express a sense of

responsibility for wrongdoing (Wierzbicka,

1992) By stating his remorse, the Japanese

Prime Minister was accepting collective

responsibility for his country’s misdeeds

Across the world, those harmed by racial

inequality and their allies are asking for formal

apologies, because a p o l o g i e s imply

responsibility and guilt At the 2001 U.N

Conference, for example, a number of African

delegates expressed disappointment that the

former slave trading countries did not apologize

for their role in slavery (Constable, 2001)

Political efforts have been mobilized worldwide

in an effort to force societies—and the

governments that represent them—to admit guilt

and to apologize for collective wrongdoing In

the United States, for instance, there is a

growing political and legal effort to pressure the

government into offering an official apology for

the enslavement of the Africans from whom

most African Americans have descended (Smith,

2001; for a review see Brooks, 1999)

In Australia, there is serious debate over

whether the Australian Federal Government

should apologize to Indigenous Australians for

the injustices they have endured In two recent

studies, McGarty et al (2002) examined the

emotional basis of Australians’ support for a

government apology In one survey of 164

randomly selected non-Indigenous residents of

Perth, Western Australia, they used Swim and

Miller’s (1999) measures of perceived “white”

privilege and guilt to predict support for an

official government apology It is important to

note, however, that the overall level of support

for an apology was low That is, only 27% of

the Perth sample believed the Federal

Government should apologize for the treatment

of Indigenous Australians

Given that feelings of personal guilt are strongly associated with the desire to apologize

to those harmed by one’s actions (Roseman, et al., 1994), McGarty et al (2002) reasoned that a similar process should operate at the group level

Thus, the (limited) support demonstrated for apology should be associated with guilt Indeed, McGarty et al (2002, Study 1) showed “white”

guilt to independently predict support for an official government apology to Indigenous people Importantly, a mediation analysis showed that the belief that “whites” are advantaged relative to Indigenous people predicted support for an apology in part because perceived advantage was associated with greater guilt

Thus, believing in “white” advantage predicted guilt, which in turn predicted support for an official government apology The structure of this conceptual model is shown in the bottom half of Figure 1

McGarty et al.’s findings confirm group-based guilt as a self-focused feeling of responsibility that serves as the basis for restitutive apology (see also Doosje, Branscombe, Spears, & Manstead, this volume;

Zebel, Doosje, & Spears, this volume) The results of this questionnaire study are also

corroborated by a recent qualitative study of

everyday discourse in Australia In an analysis of personal opinions e-mailed to a newspaper website, Lecouteur and Augoustinos (2001) found that people opposed to saying “sorry”

defined an apology as implying responsibility and guilt Thus, opposition to an apology was explained as opposition to the acceptance of responsibility and, by extension, opposition to feelings of guilt

promote material compensation

Providing material compensation for the damage done is another form of collective restitution that can assuage group-based guilt (Baumeister et al., 1994; Niedenthal et al., 1994) By compensating those victimized by one’s (group’s) immoral actions, the guilty seek

to make restitution by providing some material equivalent of the harm done In the United States, tens of thousands of African Americans have applied for tax credits from the government based in the myth that this is an available form

of compensation for the enslavement of their ancestors (Kristof, 2002) More formally, several groups are currently pursuing legal action against the government and private corporations as illegitimate beneficiaries of slavery (Smith,

2001; for a review see Brooks, 1999) These

groups hope to gain legal judgements that will

force the responsible parties to compensate the

descendants of the slaves upon whose labor the

parties made profit Winning this kind of

court-ordered compensation is dependent on a legal

demonstration of the perpetrator’s responsibility

for the harm done In this way, victims of

injustice appeal to perpetrators to accept

responsibility and (legal, if not emotional) guilt

Although current efforts to force

reparations for slavery in the United States are

meeting with little success, there is supportive

precedent for the provision of compensation as

restitution In the 1980s, for example, the

Japanese American Citizens League lobbied the

United States Congress for both an apology and

financial reparations for the wrongful internment

of Japanese Americans during World War II In

1988, the Civil Liberties Act awarded each

survivor $20,000 and an official letter of apology

from President Bush (Minow, 1998; Nagata,

1990) Although the U.S took over forty years

to make reparations to the interned Japanese

Americans, soon after World War 2 the U.S and

its allies forced Germany and Japan to

compensate those countries damaged by invasion

and war War reparations are perhaps the most

long-standing precedent for such direct material

compensation to victims of injustice (Minow,

1998)

Post-apartheid South Africa provides

another example of timely efforts at collective

compensation In 1995 the first democratically

elected parliament in South Africa created a

Committee on Reparation and Rehabilitation as

part of the larger Truth and Reconciliation

Committee This committee was empowered to

fund direct financial compensation as well as the

provision of health and social care to victims of

apartheid (Minow, 1998) In addition, South

Africa’s post-apartheid Constitution (1996) and

the more recent Employment Equity Act (1998)

enable affirmative action to be used to

compensate those hurt by past discriminatory

laws (Tummala, 1999) The notion that

victimized groups can be compensated by

favoring them in hiring, promotion, and

educational access decisions is codified in South

African law Similarly, India has practiced a

system of “reservation” since its independence in

1947 to compensate for past and present

discrimination on the basis of caste

(Hodges-Aeberhard, 1999)

Social psychological research is consistent

with the notion that guilt is associated with

efforts at compensation For example, research

by Doosje et al (1998, Study 2) supports the

idea that “guilt by association” motivates efforts

at restitution Doosje et al (1998) found that Dutch students who felt guilty about their country’s colonial exploitation of Indonesia were more likely to support compensation by giving money to a “good cause” in Indonesia

There is also evidence that the more direct form of group-based guilt motivates support for the adoption of compensatory state policies Iyer

et al (2003, Studies 1 and 2) examined the predictors of European Americans’ support for compensatory affirmative action, a policy that frames preference for African Americans in hiring and college admissions as compensation for racial discrimination In both studies, Iyer et al

showed that guilt independently predicted support for compensatory affirmative action Guilt also partially mediated the relationship between belief

in “white” privilege and support for compensatory affirmative action (Study 1) This suggests that support for compensation can be based more straightforwardly in the belief that group inequality exists, and also that group-based guilt is an important basis of the desire to compensate for injustices

Guilt is not

We have argued that guilt is an extremely unpleasant feeling based in a self-focused sense

of responsibility for immorality This self-focus motivates those who have harmed others to make

up for their wrongdoing As such, people who feel guilty seek to provide restitution In the case

of racial wrongdoing, “white” guilt promotes efforts to compensate and/or apologize to those disadvantaged by racial inequality We believe that this is what group-based guilt is and what group-based guilt does

Despite its role in efforts at restitution, however, guilt has serious limitations as a response to group wrongs (Leach et al., 2002)

In our view, this is due to two factors The first

is that guilt is, in fact, infrequent Given the extreme dysphoria caused by this self-focused and self-blaming emotion, guilt is avoided where possible Thus, by its very nature, guilt is rare (Leach et al., 2002; Branscombe et al., 2002)

This infrequency limits guilt as a basis for action against group inequality Second, even when experienced, guilt’s narrow concern for restitution may limit it as a basis for other efforts against inequality and injustice Thus, the many non-restitutive efforts against inequality in operation at present may find little support among those feeling group-based guilt

frequent

Members of racially advantaged groups try

to avoid the experience of group-based guilt

(Leach, et al., 2002; Branscombe et al., 2002)

Such avoidance may occur even in situations

where the group’s responsibility for inequality is

indisputable South Africa’s handling of racial

inequality is one particularly striking case While

the post-apartheid South African Constitution

encourages the consideration of membership in

disadvantaged groups in employment and

education decisions, several judges have still

questioned this form of compensation in recent

lawsuits (Hodges-Aeberhard, 1999) Even in a

society that had such clear and brutal forms of

institutionalized discrimination that were only

recently repealed, many members of the groups

advantaged by these systems fail to experience

guilt (Leach, 2002)

The low prevalence of guilt is likely due

to the fact that “white” people, as members of

the advantaged group, do not tend to believe that

people of color are disadvantaged as a group As

discussed above, group-based guilt is based on

the notion that one’s group has done something

wrong If many group members do not believe

that the in-group enjoys systemic advantages,

there is little reason to feel guilt

In a recent study, McGarty et al (2002,

Study 1) found that group-based guilt is

infrequent among the non-Indigenous residents of

Perth, Western Australia Indeed, only 14% of

the sample expressed explicit agreement with

questions assessing guilt regarding inequality

between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people

These low levels of guilt appear due to the fact

that very few non-Indigenous people believe that

the Indigenous are, in fact, disadvantaged Thus,

less than half of the respondents (36%) perceived

Indigenous Australians to be disadvantaged

relative to non-indigenous Australians Much

more prominent is the belief that Indigenous

people have an unfair advantage over other

Australians In fact, nearly half of McGarty et

al.’s (2002) “white” respondents (44%) saw

themselves as disadvantaged compared to

Indigenous people

It seems that this reversal of perceived

disadvantage is based in the belief that there is

“reverse racism” against “white” people An

analysis of open-ended questions asked of

McGarty et al.’s sample of Western Australians

supports this notion (see Waller, Mansell, Koh,

Raja, and Pedersen, 2001) For example, one

respondent said, “They [Indigenous Australians]

are paid to attend school, driving lessons and

licenses are paid for, school excursions, etc

Whites don’t get these benefits.” Another

complained, “As we are all considered to be

‘Australian’ we should all be treated the same and all the extra benefits and privileges for the Aborigines—mostly money ones—should be stopped At the moment the discrimination is against non-Indigenous people—who have to work for everything they get It’s not handed to them on a platter—as is with the Indigenous people.”

The belief that it is non-Indigenous people who are disadvantaged appears to be perpetuated

by the notion that the government provides outlandish support to Indigenous Australians

For example, one respondent said, “I understand that the Government spends over $50,000 a year

on each of the people who claim they are Indigenous.” Another seemed to agree, stating that “Aborigines should pay land tax and rates on the land.” Such beliefs appear to be widespread

Indeed, Pedersen, Contos, Griffiths, Bishop, and Walker (2000) recently showed two randomly selected samples of non-Indigenous Australians

to have completely unfounded beliefs that Indigenous people are granted illegitimate advantages by the government For example, 65% of respondents erroneously believed that Indigenous Australians get more social security benefits than do non-Indigenous Australians

Denying that racial inequality exists is a straightforward way to prevent feelings of group-based guilt Often, however, members of advantaged groups do recognize racial inequality, and turn to other strategies to avoid feeling guilty about it For example, they may deny responsibility for inequality, or avoid responsibility for inequality by distancing themselves from the disadvantaged Both of these strategies may be based in an attempt to preserve

a sense of positive group identity

Refusing responsibility Although the advantaged may believe that group inequality exists, they can refuse any responsibility for it and thus avoid experiencing group-based guilt

Iyer et al (2003, Study 2) examined the extent to which European American students believe in racial discrimination when it was framed explicitly in terms of ingroup responsibility or outgroup disadvantage Half the participants completed a measure of the self-focused belief that European Americans discriminate against African Americans, and the other half completed

a measure of the other-focused belief that African Americans face racial discrimination Participants

in the self-focused condition were less likely to believe in the existence of racial discrimination than were participants in the other-focused condition In other words, European Americans were less likely to believe that racial

discrimination is a problem when their own

group was held responsible for the wrongdoing

Most official expressions of dysphoria

over group wrongs appear to avoid direct

acceptance of collective responsibility and, thus,

also avoid feelings of guilt For example,

Australian Prime Minister John Howard has

recently expressed “regret” about the past

treatment of Indigenous Australians In a similar

fashion, the 2001 United Nations Conference

Against Racism, Racial Discrimination,

Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance expressed

“profound regret” for modern slavery (Constable,

2001) The semantics here are important because,

unlike “guilt” or “remorse,” terms such as

“regret” and “sorrow” imply no sense of

responsibility for wrongdoing (Ortony et al.,

1988; Wierzbicka, 1992) To regret what has

happened is simply to wish that it had not

happened To express guilt or remorse on behalf

of the group is to accept collective responsibility

for a misdeed

The absence of guilt (and thus felt

responsibility) in these official statements

suggests that these advantaged groups have made

no attempt to apologize for the mistreatment

they acknowledge Formal apologies are based in

perceived responsibility and guilt When guilt is

not felt because responsibility for wrong-doing is

not acknowledged, there is no desire for

restitution through apology or compensation

Avoidance through d i s t a n c e The

unpleasant state of guilt may also be avoided by

physically or psychologically distancing oneself

from those harmed by one’s immorality (for a

review, see Batson, 1998) That is, one can

simply walk away from, or ignore, the harm one

has caused others This may be accomplished by

seeing those harmed as less than human

(Baumeister et al., 1994), or by blaming the

disadvantaged for their (group’s) low status

(Branscombe et al., 2002) In this way, the

disadvantaged are perceived as outside of one’s

moral system, and therefore not worthy of any

attention or assistance (Opotow, 1990) This

kind of dehumanization appears to have allowed

many European and European-American slave

holders, for example, to deny basic human rights

to large classes of people without guilt (Leach,

2002)

Protecting group identity People who are

highly identified with their group may be

especially motivated to avoid feeling group-based

guilt This is due to the fact that the experience

of guilt threatens group members’ social

identity, as it calls attention to the misdeeds or

illegitimate advantages of their group In a study

of Dutch students’ feelings of group-based guilt,

Doosje et al (1998, Study 2) presented participants with somewhat ambiguous evidence

of the Netherlands’ past misdeeds in Indonesia

Participants who were highly identified with the in-group experienced less group-based guilt than did those who were less identified with the in-group Doosje et al (1998) argue that the high identifiers were more invested in the positive image of the in-group, and thus were more defensive about their group’s past actions

a basis of general opposition to inequality

There are many reasons that members of advantaged groups will not feel guilt in response

to racial inequality On the rare occasions that they do, however, we have argued that guilt is associated with group efforts at restitution, typically in the form of apology or material compensation As outlined above, group-based guilt is associated with restitution mainly because the experience focuses attention on the ingroup self’s responsibility for wrong-doing

Both apology and compensation have the potential to restore justice and morality to the intergroup relation by addressing the group’s responsibility for the harm done Through restitution, those feeling guilt can assuage their extremely unpleasant feelings of self-recrimination Restitution is only one strategy against group inequality, however Guilt’s narrow focus on restitution may limit its role in other forms of opposition to inequality

Compensation, for example, is only one type of policy that seeks to combat racial inequality There are other strategies that may be just as, or more, effective at opposing racial inequality Most affirmative action programs that seek to reduce racial inequality in the United States are not characterized by compensation

Such programs might focus on monitoring hiring practices to detect discrimination, or increasing the opportunities of disadvantaged groups by recruiting them to apply for positions they would not otherwise know about (Kravitz et al., 1997) Given its narrow focus on restitution through compensation, group-based guilt should not provide a basis of support for these equal opportunity policies that do not explicitly focus

on compensation This has been shown recently

in the previously mentioned research by Iyer et

al (2003)

Iyer et al (2003, Study 2) used feelings of

“white” guilt to predict support for two kinds of affirmative action programs One form of affirmative action was described as compensating for past and present racial discrimination by encouraging preferential treatment for African

Americans in employment and education.

Another type of policy was presented as an equal

opportunity program that sought to encourage

African Americans to apply for positions and to

provide limited support to qualified applicants

This latter, non-compensatory, form of

affirmative action is by far the most commonly

used and most-supported program in the United

States (Kravitz et al., 1997) Despite its

prevalence and popularity, however, support for

affirmative action aimed at increasing

opportunities was not predicted by “white” guilt

over racial inequality European American guilt

was only associated with support for affirmative

action that sought to compensate African

Americans for racial discrimination and injustice

(Iyer et al., 2003, Study 2)

Why should guilt be limited in this way?

As argued above, guilt is associated with

restitution because it can restore morality to the

intergroup relation In this way, restitution can

re-establish the moral value of both perpetrator

and victim Those feeling guilty, however,

appear to be particularly concerned with their

sense of themselves as moral and good people

Acts of restitution may be more focused on

restoring a sense of self that has been challenged

by self-blame Non-compensatory policies are

not concerned with restitution, and therefore

should not serve to assuage feelings of guilt

Guilt thus should not serve as a basis of support

for such policies

Guilt’s particular association with

compensation can be taken as a sign of its

narrow focus This strong concern for

self-redemption through restitution is the main

reason that some characterize guilt as a

potentially selfish motivation to help others

(Batson, 1998; Steele, 1990) Research on

helping behavior has shown self-focused negative

emotions, such as guilt, to provide only limited

motivation to help the disadvantaged (Batson,

1998; Salovey & Rosenhan, 1989) This

research suggests that emotions that focus on the

plight of the disadvantaged themselves provide

bases of more general support for helping

behavior For these same reasons, other-focused

emotional reactions to racial inequality may

provide a basis of opposition to a wider range of

strategies against inequality

Beyond guilt

Sympathy

Sympathy is an emotional reaction to

recognizing and understanding the thoughts,

feelings, and intentions of others (Salovey &

Rosenhan, 1989).1

As a response to another’s distress, sympathy is based in identification with another and his/her misfortune It is a relatively other-focused emotion, as attention is paid to the victim’s suffering, rather than to one’s own position in the inequality (Leach et al., 2002)

For these reasons, group-based sympathy offers

an important contrast to the more self-focused feeling of group-based guilt

Iyer et al (2003, Study 2) compared group-based sympathy to group-based guilt As a first conceptual step, Iyer et al examined the other-focused nature of group-based sympathy

Half of their European American participants completed a measure of the self-focused belief that European Americans discriminate on the basis of race The other half completed a measure assessing their other-focused beliefs that African Americans are discriminated against (without naming specific perpetrators) Participants who were considering their other-focused belief in discrimination were more likely to experience feelings of sympathy than were participants concentrating on their self-focused belief in discrimination This finding confirms that group-based sympathy is relatively other-focused in orientation

Directing attention to the victim tends to increase helping behavior (for reviews, see Batson, 1998; Salovey & Rosenhan, 1989) This

is why sympathy has been suggested as a motivation for sustained prosocial activism (Hoffman, 1991) Thus, when members of socially advantaged groups focus on those disadvantaged by inequality, they should wish to help them (as illustrated in Figure 1) In the case

of racial inequality in the United States, affirmative action can be regarded as one way of helping the disadvantaged (Pratkanis & Turner, 1999) As both compensatory and equal opportunity affirmative action policies seek to help the disadvantaged, sympathy should serve as

a basis of support for both types of policies

This sets sympathy apart from guilt, which is only associated with compensatory approaches to opposing inequality

In their comparison of group-based guilt and sympathy, Iyer et al (2003, Study 2) found support for these ideas European American sympathy for African Americans was strongly associated with support for equal opportunity affirmative action, and was somewhat associated with support for compensatory affirmative action This is in sharp contrast to guilt, which only predicted support for compensatory affirmative action Thus, sympathy appears to serve as a broader impetus than guilt of support for racial equality

Sympathy is, however, a helping emotion

(Batson, 1998; Weiner, 1982) It does not excite

the same kind of direct action against systems of

inequality that is part of other system-focused

emotions such as a specific kind of anger called

moral outrage (Montada & Schneider, 1989; see

also Frijda, 1986; Ortony et al., 1988; Weiner,

1982)

Moral Outrage

As a response to relative advantage, moral

outrage is quite similar to guilt Both

group-based emotions are group-based in recognition of

illegitimate inequality, and both are directed at

placing blame for this inequality The key

difference between them, however, is focus of

attention: moral outrage places blame for the

inequality on the system or a third party—it is a

more system-focused response (Leach et al.,

2002) This means that the experience of moral

outrage does not include self-recrimination

Rather, because there is no self-blame involved,

people who experience moral outrage have no

qualms about demanding a change in the existing

status system Indeed, this justice-oriented

emotion is both a statement against illegitimate

advantage and a call to action (Leach et al.,

2002) Moral outrage thus should be a powerful

motivator of efforts towards justice and equality

(Goodman, 2001)

Anger at the system or the government for

racial inequality is a basis for action for many

activists who are members of privileged groups

Tim Wise, a European American anti-racism

activist says, “My job is to do everything in my

power to resist collaborating with what I

consider a truly evil system—nothing more,

nothing less It’s really about using my white

(and male) privilege—as a weapon against the

very system that bestows the privileges to begin

with” (Brasel, 1999, p 1) The Anti-Racism

Campaign, a Dublin-based group of native Irish

people formed “to combat refugee and

anti-immigrant hysteria,” has proclaimed, “The Irish

government is determined to pursue a

mean-spirited and penny-pinching attitude to asylum

seekers and immigrants The deportation of

asylum seekers and the stirring up of racism is

part of this That is why it is important that a

strong and vibrant anti-racism movement is

built” (Anti-Racism Campaign, 2000, p 1)

Tim Hitchcock argues that anger and moral

outrage are important to galvanizing anti-racism

actions among all “white” people: “[W]hen white

people finally free ourselves from the blinders

our culture imposes upon us, we feel anger In

time the anger gets channeled into activism,

words and deeds intended to make our country live up to its values of freedom and democracy”

(Hitchcock, 1999, p 1)

Very little empirical work has examined moral outrage as a response to relative advantage

In one of the few studies on group-based moral outrage, Montada and Schneider (1989) found that feelings of moral outrage predict efforts at social change In their study, German nationals’

feelings of moral outrage at social inequality was

a strong predictor of a commitment to helping disadvantaged groups In fact, moral outrage was

a stronger predictor than guilt of every prosocial activity in the study, including giving monetary contributions, signing a petition, or participating

in demonstrations The system focus of moral outrage makes it a better predictor than guilt of general support for social change strategies (Montada & Schneider, 1989)

Our recent research in Australia is also suggestive of the way that moral outrage against

a system of inequality can motivate political action Pedersen, Iyer, and Leach (2002) conducted a survey of nearly 200 residents of Perth, Western Australia, who identified themselves as politically active in Aboriginal issues These respondents saw Indigenous people

in Australia as extremely disadvantaged compare

to non-Indigenous people This belief in racial inequality was strongly associated with feelings

of anger and outrage As one 31 year old woman said in an open-ended response, “I feel sad and angry that politicians and the media demonstrate

no strong leadership in the changing of public opinion.” For these politically active pro-Indigenous people, their moral outrage was predictive of greater support for a Federal apology and greater intentions for political action

in support of an apology (e.g writing letters to the editor, marching in protest, voting)

Although guilt over racial inequality was positively associated with this moral outrage, guilt was not itself strongly related to support for an apology or intentions of political action

Thus, there is some preliminary evidence that moral outrage over racial inequality motivates political action against it in a way that self-focused guilt does not Obviously, this issue is

in need of further research

Conclusions Guilt is one (emotional) reaction members

of advantaged groups can have when faced with the fact of group inequality It is important because it is based in a felt responsibility for moral wrong-doing, and therefore has potential for motivating efforts to bring about equality It

is, however, a relatively self-focused emotion.

Unlike sympathy or moral outrage, which focus

attention more on the plight of the disadvantaged

and the system that perpetuates inequality, guilt

focuses more on the advantaged group and their

feelings about being immoral

As a relatively self-focused sense of

responsibility for group immorality, this

extremely unpleasant experience motivates

people to assuage their guilt If group-based guilt

cannot be escaped easily, it is strongly associated

with efforts at restitution This is what guilt

does Guilt-based restitution can take the form of

apology or material compensation Both these

forms of restitution attempt to restore morality

to the previously immoral intergroup relation

Its role in promoting efforts at restitution makes

group-based guilt important to intergroup

relations “White” guilt, for example, is central

to support for an official federal apology to

Indigenous Australians f o r historical

mistreatment (McGarty et al., 2002, Study 1)

“White” guilt also appears to be an important

basis of support for affirmative action that seeks

to compensate African Americans for systems of

racial privilege and discrimination in the United

States (Iyer et al., 2003) Thus, group-based

guilt seems to motivate members of advantaged

groups to take responsibility for inequality, and

thus work to make restitution

Despite its important role in efforts at

restitution, guilt does not provide a basis for

many other efforts against inequality Indeed, its

narrow concern for restitution may limit guilt’s

role in more general social change strategies For

example, “white” guilt in the United States is

not associated with support for affirmative action

programs that seek to increase opportunities for

those facing racial discrimination This is a

disturbing finding, because such

opportunity-oriented policies are some of the least

controversial, most widely-supported policy

efforts designed to combat racial inequality

(Kravitz et al., 1997) It seems, however, that

guilt’s focus on the self prevents it from serving

as a basis of support for such policies that are

not explicitly focused on compensation

This suggests that other emotional

responses, that focus on the plight of the

disadvantaged themselves, may provide a broader

basis of support for efforts against inequality

(Leach et al., 2002) We discussed one study by

Iyer et al (2003) that provides support for this notion They showed that other-focused sympathy was associated with support for both

c o m p e n s a t o r y a n d opportunity-oriented affirmative action in the United States These results support Leach et al.’s (2002) argument that other-focused group emotions are better than self-focused guilt as a general basis of action against group inequality

It is clear that this chapter offers an ambivalent rendering of group-based guilt

Consistent with most others in this book, we believe that guilt is an important basis for the disavowal of group advantage We also believe that group-based guilt has serious limits Like all other emotions (group or personal), guilt is a specific way of interpreting group relations (Montada & Schneider, 1989; Smith, 1993) The phenomenological and conative specificity of guilt are what make it a useful characterization of intergroup relations When we know a group is guilty, we know that the group members feel bad about the harm that they have done, and that they are likely to intend restitution This specificity is also, however, a reason not to expect more from

guilt than it can provide What guilt is relates to what guilt does (Frijda, 1986) This is why guilt

is associated with a (narrow) concern for restitution, and is not a basis for more general efforts to combat inequality

The specific experience of guilt is only one way in which group members can experience their group position Sympathy and moral outrage are other ways that group members can interpret their relation to disadvantaged groups

These feelings have their own phenomenological and conative specificity: that is, emotions are different things and do different things (Leach et al., 2002) This is the main advantage of the intergroup emotion approach to intergroup relations Specific group-based emotions offer a nuanced and textured rendering of group experience that enables a more detailed analysis

of the ways in which groups interpret and act

toward one another By studying the way people

use emotion language to characterize the specific ways they experience their group’s position relative to that of other groups, we may better understand how psychological experience interacts with social structure and politics to maintaininequality