Collective Guilt and Selective Avoidance

Abstract

Why are Native Americans frequently omitted from mainstream American consciousness? One possible explanation is that reminders of the ways that non-Native Americans historically harmed Native Americans lead to feelings of collective guilt, thereby causing reduced attention toward stimuli related to Native Americans in an effort to regulate the uncomfortable emotion. To test this hypothesis, participants (N = 256) read a passage about early settlers inflicting harm on Native Americans, which varied by whether the harm was intentional or unintentional and whether the settlers were framed as the ingroup (Americans) or an outgroup (Europeans). Participants reported feelings of collective guilt, anger, sadness, and shame, as well as if they agreed that it would be appropriate to teach the information in the passage in various situations. To measure selective avoidance, participants described an image that depicted Native Americans in the periphery, which were coded for if they mentioned the Indigenous figures. Participants completed additional measures of selective avoidance: willingness for intergroup contact and explicit avoidance of information related to Indigenous peoples. Intentional harm led participants to express more anger, shame, and sadness than unintentional harm, though did not impact collective guilt or selective attention. American identity significantly moderated some of the relationships—highly identified participants tended to express increased anger in the unintentional condition and decreased anger in the intentional condition. Also, highly identified participants tended to report higher levels of shame in the intentional conditions and ingroup conditions. Political orientation also emerged as a significant predictor of collective guilt and selective avoidance across a variety of measures. This study adds to the body of literature on collective emotions in response to intergroup harm.