Benefit Finding Promotes Moral Obligations to Other Victimized Groups

Abstract

Reminders of past injustice against one’s ingroup propels group members to seek meaning. A central means of that is benefit finding, which involves thinking about positive consequences of negative events. The meaning derived from benefit finding may include lessons learned, strength gained, and so forth. Prior research demonstrates that focusing on the lessons derived from past victimization can promote feelings of moral obligation among members of victimized groups toward other victims of injustice. We test the effect of benefit finding on moral obligations toward other minorities in a set of three experiments. In Studies 1 (N = 92 Jewish Americans) and 2 (N = 306 American gay men), we conceptually replicate previous findings by measuring moral obligations toward other minority groups after a direct manipulation of benefit finding. Consistent with previous work, participants randomly assigned to consider the positive consequences of a past negative experience reported higher moral obligations to members of other minority groups than participants who thought about negative consequences of the same negative event. In Study 3 (N = 269 American gay men), we extend this line of research by testing the influence of perceived severity (of injustice) in the relationship between benefit finding and moral obligations toward other minority groups. We found evidence of unique mechanisms through which benefit finding and perceived severity predict moral obligations; specifically, the indirect effect of benefit finding on moral obligations was mediated by posttraumatic growth, and the indirect effect of perceived severity on moral obligations was mediated by just world beliefs. We discuss future directions for this research, including direct comparisons between victims and observers of injustice, and implications, such as promoting solidarity between members of different marginalized groups.