Rejecting an Intergroup Apology Attenuates Perceived Differences Between Victim and Perpetrator Groups in Morality and Power

Abstract

Intergroup crimes are a ubiquitous element of our political reality, as are attempts to redress these crimes through apologies. Six experiments (N = 2, 432) demonstrate that the victim group’s response to an offered apology has the power to shape uninvolved third parties’ impressions of the conflicting groups and influence their willingness to support the victim group. Across a variety of intergroup contexts, a victim group’s apology rejection attenuated perceived differences between the victim and perpetrator groups by diminishing the morality but increasing the power of the victim group while simultaneously reducing the power of the perpetrator group in the eyes of third parties (Experiments 1–4). These judgments, particularly the less favorable morality judgments of the victim group, suppressed the allocation of valued goods (Experiment 3a), political support (Experiments 3b–4), and actual donations (Experiment 4) granted to the victim group. Regarding the social costs imposed on the perpetrator group, we found mixed evidence. Taken together, these findings highlight the relevance of victim group responses in navigating posttransgression reactions and offer implications for understanding apologetic interactions from the perspective of uninvolved observers.